Scientology Inc. has asserted that killing people is a "religious right" (aka, invoking the "Religious Freedom 'Restoration' Act"

as innoculation against criminal prosecution regarding the homicide of Lisa McPherson). And they're so right! India could sure use Scientology Inc.'s help making their government understand that fact.

Witch Burning and Human Sacrifice in India by Richard Petraitis

Fifty years after being granted independence by Britain, superstition is still exacting a high price in life within the borders of India. Witch burnings are commonplace in re-mote areas and tantrics, India’s version of shamans, are behind a spate of child sacrifice committed, on their advice, by their followers.

India has the dubious honor of being an atom-bomb-wielding nation inhabited by citizenry still swept up in witch-hunts and bouts of black magic hysteria. Modern India has an exploding human population and is home to several hundred million citizens who can’t read or write, but who often seek refuge from life’s realities through astrology or the magical arts of shamans. Not since the Thuggee terror of the nineteenth century has there been so much havoc caused by the magical thinking of the subcontinent’s inhabitants. (The Thug sect caused societal chaos over a three-century span with the ritual strangling of some two million victims.1) However, with the end of British co-lonial rule, and the last Western efforts to stamp out magical belief in India, there has been an al-most anti-Western backlash at this Twentieth Cen-tury’s end, manifesting itself in the renewal of ancient superstitions for many Southern Asians.

Devastatingly, magical thinking cultures seem to often focus their horrific attention on society’s weaker members – i.e., women and children. India’s women and children are the latest victims of these beliefs, such as ap-peasement of spirits through human sacrifice or lynching of one’s neighbors for the accusation of witchcraft. From 1990 to 1997, in India’s southern state of Bihar, 407 alleged witches were killed by rural mobs. Many of the killings were conducted at the instigation of local shamans called "ojhas." The true to-tal number of dead in the state of Bihar alone may be as high as one thousand victims.2

India’s shamans carry great societal clout in the areas of India dominated by ancient worldviews, particularly those encompassing the practice of magic. One particularly influential group of magic men are the "tantric priests." They generally charge a hefty fee for summoning other worldly agents to do the bidding of paying clients. This occult game doesn’t just carry great hazards for the shamans’ customers, but it also can pose great hazards for the shamans themselves. Like any business, magic can have its dissatisfied customers. In India, the reputed magic man can find himself at the receiving end of a severe thrashing by angry citizens, who have been known to rip out the teeth of alleged sorcerers. (The removal of teeth is believed to prevent the sorcerer from using incantations to summon evil spirits.3)

According to the police reports of 1998, nine children un-der the age of ten were offered as human sacrifices. Worship-pers have attempted to gain occult power by mutilating young innocents – gouging out eyes, cutting off tongues, noses, or even private parts, as a part of magic-based rituals.4

In some states, police are suspected of under-reporting these incidents or, more sadly, of taking bribes from local tantrics to report the human sacrifices as murder, thereby making accurate figures for these occult crimes more difficult to compile for any investi-gating agencies. Earlier this year, six people were sentenced to die by a Delhi court for the sacrifice of a young boy in a fertility rite. (A local tantric had advised a childless couple, with the aid of some friends, to perform a gruesome magic ritual on the eighteen-month-old during a festival for chasing away evil spirits, in order to help the couple conceive.5)

Tragically, child sacrifice is still conducted in remote parts of India for obtaining magical aid for the conception of chil-dren, or in finding treasure. To the consternation of thousands, last year saw three child-murderers escape the death penalty when their sentences were overturned by India’s Supreme Court. These men had kidnapped four children between 1992 and 1995, and ritually murdered three of them to obtain super-natural assistance in a treasure hunt, collecting the victims’ blood over the spot where a treasure trove was believed hidden from view.6

In an ugly backlash to these continued reports of child sacrifice, more than sixty women have been killed by lo-cal vigilantes as suspects connected to child kidnappings, be-cause they were believed to be involved in cultic child sacrifice. Over the past eighteen months, these killings occurred in northern Bengal, and the Jalpaiguri district.7

The desperate speech made by India’s President, K.R. Narayan, during In-dia’s celebration of its 53 rd anniversary of independence from Britain, is certainly understandable in light of this information; he targeted superstition and ignorance as major impediments to curbing India’s spiraling crime wave.8

Can we truly believe that India’s battle against irrational-ity will be brought to a victorious conclusion in a relatively short time? News reports continue to remind the world com-munity that it will probably take India generations to win this particular war. During this summer alone, a crowd of villagers burned to death five suspected witches, four women and one man, in the state of Andrah Pradesh.9

While nearby in the Raipur district, a woman suspected of witchcraft was paraded naked through the town square, with her hapless husband’s calls for intervention ignored by local authorities.10

Also this year, the district of Kokrajhar was plagued by occult mayhem – nearly twenty people were murdered as suspected practitioners of magic, generally tortured first and then later hacked to death.11

Other parts of India have been the scene of mass hys-teria caused by rumors of an invisible killer who chops off chil-dren’s heads in the middle of the night. As a result of the belief in a murderer with such magic powers, several people have been misidentified as the alleged killer, and were severely beaten within an inch of their lives by frenzied mobs. However, some citizens believed that the hysteria was simply created to increase the sale of torches for nighttime use.12

In the face of such irrational beliefs, what measures should be adopted by the Indian government to combat the excesses of a magically thinking citizenry ?

In India’s fight against superstition, one ray of hope lies with the rationalist minority in that land. Over the past two decades, a valiant effort has been made to curb superstitious belief by the Indian Rationalist Association and similar groups. In 1983, rioting in the district of Medak had caused the deaths of four people accused of practicing black magic. Police had to fire on rioting mobs to save the lives of other alleged sorcerers, finally forcing the Superintendent of Police for Medak to seek outside aid. That outside help came in the form of an eleven member team from a rationalist group.13

Thousands of alleged victims of sorcery were examined by the medical doctors and scientists belonging to that rationalist team. Team doctors found that of the 7,000 alleged victims of witchcraft they ex-amined, the majority seemed to be suffering from physical and psychological ailments, not witchcraft. Later, a rationalist team magician demonstrated his professional craft to large crowds, helping to dispel the myth of supernatural powers for many gathered at his exhibition. It was truly a sad day for tantrics and shamans. As India moves into the twenty-first century, more of the same efforts to curb superstition will be needed, with strong governmental support, to roll back the superstitious beliefs of millions.

Bibliography

1. Carrier, Rhona, Editor, The Guinness Book of Records (1999), Guinness Publishing Ltd., 1999, pp. 142-143

2. Ahmed, Faizan, "Magic curse stalks India’s poorest states,"

Reuters, Feb. 03, 2000, accessed on May 3, 2000, at ABC News.com.

3. "Combating Witch-craft & Sorcery," taken from tran-script:

"Atheist Center 1940-1990: Golden Jubilee Interna-tional Conference," Vijayauda, Feb. 3-5, 1990, accessed on May 16, 2000, at http://www.aracnet.com/~atheism... / s1990b11.ht.

4. West, Julian, "Boy strangled and his blood drained in ‘exorcism’ human sacrifice to the bloodthirsty Goddess Kali goes on in India," Sunday Telegraph (London), June 27, 1999, accessed on May 16, 2000, at http://members.

tripod.com/~Curio_5_/indianws.html5/16/00.

5. Stock, Jonathan, "Six to die for fertility rite sacrifice of baby," South China Morning Post, accessed on May 02, 2000, at http://www.scmp.com/News/Asia/Article/Full Text_asp_Article ID – 2000050203.

6. Bhagatar, Rakesh, "Killers of children escape death pen-alty,"

The Times of India, Thursday, May 4, 2000, ac-cessed on May 18, 2000, at http://www.timesofindia.com/ today/04indi 7.htm.

7. "Child sacrifice in India," accessed on June 08, 2000, at http://web_hazard.tripod.com/news12.htm.

8. "India plagued by ‘rising crime,’" BBC News Online, August 14, 2000, Monday Edition, accessed on August 14, 2000, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/worl.../880389.st.

9. "Indian villagers burn witches," BBC News Online, August 03, 2000, Thursday Edition, accessed on August 09, 2000, at http://news6.thdo.bbc.co.uk/hi/ english.../865017.st.

10. Das, Kumar Kumud, "Branded as a witch, she was pa-raded naked in Raijpur district," The Hindustan Times (Online), Monday, August 07, 2000, accessed on August

14, 2000, at http://www1.hindustantimes.com/n... / detSTA07.ht.

11. Guwahati, "Five of family killed in Kokrajhar district for ‘practising Witchcraft,’" The Hindustan Times (Online ), Friday, June 02, 2000, accessed on June 10, 2000, at http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_9655.html.

12. "Superstitious villagers search for ‘murderer,’"The Times of India, accessed on August 14, 2000, at http://www.

ananova.com/news/story/sm_9655.html.

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