“The road has been tough, in fact very tough at times. On many occasions the miscreants had threatened to kill me because I advocated for the innocent women who have been branded as witch,” said Birubala Rabha in an interview with TwoCircles.net in January 2014.
Hailing from the Thakurbilla village in one of the remotest part of the Goalpara district along the Assam-Meghalaya border, Birubala is one of the strongest voices in the state against witch-hunting related superstitions, discrimination and atrocities. Since the 1980s, this tribal woman has dedicated a majority of her life to this cause, which started out as a personal one.
Owing to his mental illness, Birubala’s son Dharmeshwar was labelled a ‘witch’, and denied proper medical care. In 1985, a Deodhani (people believed to be incarnations of God) even told Birubala’s husband that their son would die in three days. He is still alive today.
A few years later, as the secretary of the village’s Mahila Samiti, Birubala was invited by the Goalpara’s Assam Mahila Samiti Samta Society (AMSS) to weigh in on a discussion regarding witch-hunting. The women present included five who had been branded as witches, tortured and removed from the village. Still, it wasn’t easy to speak up against such atrocities, as Birubala described in an interview with Tehelka, “When the AMSS activists asked women of the area if they knew anything about witch hunting, no one was ready to open their mouth even though everyone knew the truth. This enraged me, and I stood up and said that all the five women were victims of witch hunting.” After this, she immersed herself in AMSS’s activities, and began identifying and rescuing victims of the superstitious practice in various rural areas.
“One of the biggest issues was the deep-rooted faith of the people in those quacks,” she explained, pointing out a large part of the problem. Quack doctors are prominent in remote rural societies and tribal areas where schools and hospitals are scarce, and awareness is low. Traditional healers are turned to when someone suffers from a prolonged disease, and lack of improvement is seen as black magic and witch-craft. As shown in Witch Hunt Diaries, a documentary film by Channel News Asia’s investigative series Undercover Asia tracing this practice in Assam, another side of the problem is that often a group of people’s vested interests use superstition to instigate violence.
Birubala’s efforts to cull witch-hunting were not without adversity. She received threats to her life, was thrown out of her village once facing ostracisation, and even social boycotting. Bipul Rabha, one of Birubala’s greatest supporters, remembers, “I was a teenager when Birubala was boycotted. At that time, I thought the elders in the village took the right decision because she was seen as opposing a collective decision. Initially, the villagers thought that she would melt down under pressure but when she challenged the villagers, it became a clash of male ego versus a woman trying to go beyond her social limits.” During the years she was socially boycotted, she campaigned against witch-hunting and travelled with NGOs for the cause. Over time she developed relationships with government officials, and was instrumental in getting pucca roads within the village. She also helped innocent boys from the village who were picked up by anti-insurgency security forces, and got them released. These acts helped her win back the trust of her village.
In her crusade against the archaic atrocities, saved over 40 people (majority of them women) from being branded as witches, tortured and killed, and managed to mobilise several people within the society to work towards legal and social reforms. In 2011, local organisations, activists and women came together as Mission Birubala, campaigning for a law to be passed to ban witch-hunting practices. Apart from having personally rescued men and women from having a ‘witch’ target on their backs, the awareness Mission Birubala raised also aided cases of such atrocities to be reported, rather than go unnoticed.
Birubala Rabha has been awarded several prestigious honours over the years for her fight against witch-hunting practices that target both men and women in Assam. In Kokrajhar, she won the Upendra Nath Brahma Soldier of Humanity award. The Gauhati University recognised her campaign and awarded her an honourary doctorate, and she also received the Assam government’s Best Social Entrepreneur award. A book titled My Half of the Sky documents Birubala’s work and struggles. Still, one of her greatest achievements remains the legal change she brought about.
In August of 2015, a 126-member-strong Assam assembly passed the Prevention of and Protection from Witch Hunting Act, 2015. The law punished anyone who identified or called a person a ‘witch’ with imprisonment up to seven years and a fine up to five lakh rupees. As she told the Hindustan Times, “We have been fighting for a strict law to discourage witch-hunting, which often has to do more with family and property disputes under the veneer of superstition. This Act should have come earlier, but it is better late than never.” This legal recognition of the crime ensures documentation of such offences, investigation into the incidents, and a higher conviction rate. Additionally, the fact that it is punishable will act as a deterrent to the crime within the community. Till date, Birubala Rabha continues to fight against witch-hunting in Assam—a cause she dedicated most of her life to.