ABSTRACT
This book is about public witchcraft accusations in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. What holds this book together is the accusation of Santhi Bai, an ordinary rural woman, who was accused of causing her nephew’s illness and then making him disappear into thin air. Relatives, including her sons, and villagers turned on her and tortured her. Sensing her life was at stake she confessed her crimes and named another woman as an accomplice. This book is flash ethnography —110 fragments, broken into Parts—of approximately 1,000 words using the metaphor of a shattered urn. Part 1 sets the scene by introducing the reader to Santhi Bai, the rationale for writing her story in fragments, Chhattisgarhi witches and their meanings in popular usage, language and the research process. It shows how modalities of enactment bring social realities into being, and the notion of scaling which complicates the understanding of social actors and their actions. Part 1 grounds the contradictory and confusing understandings of witches and witchcraft using Sherry Ortner’s (1973) model for recognising and using key symbols.
