Highlighting Indian witch-hunting

by Feòrag

A New Zealand woman and her husband are to make a film about witch-hunting in India. In an interview with the Sunday Star Times, Geethanjali Kurian talks about her own unusual background as the child of a Hindu/Catholic couple, and the incidents which inspired the film.

Each year, an estimated 200 women are killed as witches in rural India. They are hacked, hung or burned to death. Their families don't escape either; children's heads are smashed on rocks, husbands are beaten to death. Other women escape death, but have their breasts chopped off, are forced to eat human excrement, or are banished from their homes.

When Simon Kurian stumbled across evidence of such witch hunting 10 years ago, he couldn't have guessed that one day he'd end up making a feature film about the horror that punctuates daily life in tribal India. A documentary maker of 17 years, he was so appalled he decided to give up the objectivity of documentary; he enlisted his wife Geethanjali (Anji) to transform the experience into a film script that would go beyond the bald facts and create a human story.

She also discusses the politics behind the attacks:

Sometimes it is because property is passed on to a woman, and the only way for a male relative to get his hands on it is to get her out of the way. Sometimes it is because the woman has rejected a man's advances. Sometimes it is for political reasons. In recent years Indian and international bodies have tried to change the attitudes that allow this to continue, but ignorance, illiteracy and inflexible tradition have meant there has been little progress.

On the trail of the witch hunters - Sunday Star Times, 19th October 2003.