Witch Hunting

27 women were lynched after being accused of witchcraft, followed by 24 in Odisha. This is not an old concept, but a reality, not just in rural areas, but a common mode of boycotting women even in urban cities.

Fifty-five hundred tribal women from 100 villages in Gujarat came together to fight several social evils like witch hunting, using folk forms – dance, theatre and singing – to spread awareness about these issues.

The excerpt from the book 'My Half Of The Sky’ by Indrani Raimedhi talks about Birubala Rabha who has been crusading against witch-hunting for several years now. She went door-to-door to spread awareness about the cause and became architect of the country’s most stringent laws against witch-hunting recently enacted by Assam.

Birubala Rabha has been tirelessly fighting the cause of witch-hunting since the 1980s and is now a household name in Assam. Recently, she won the prestigious Upendra Nath Brahma Soldier of Humanity in Kokrajhar.