Citation

Macdonald HM. Contrib. Indian Sociol. 2011; 43(2): 285-315.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/006996670904300204

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The Indian state of Chhattisgarh has been continually confronted with violent assaults and murder targeting individuals who are believed to practice witchcraft. By sketching the murder of accused witch, Kulwantin Bai Nishad, in 1995, I highlight the way prevailing assumptions about witchcraft, long held by the media, police and state, were contested. Intersecting with a national and state discourse of modernist ideals, witch-related violence has been transformed into a politicised object that signals extreme underdevelopment in a state whose legitimacy depends upon progress and development. The Indian Police Service (IPS), the foremost organisation to contend with these issues, maintains a crucial role in administering the citizen–state encounter. Commonly associated with attributes of corruption, misuse of authority, violence and partisan politics, the police official emerged in the findings as an ordinary citizen having a special and sometimes difficult public job. By examining a discretionary 'practice' at work in police dealings with witchcraft accusations, I argue that power shapes what is recognised as criminal behaviour, the significance assigned to a crime and therefore, practices of policing. This article concludes that discretionary power opens up a terrain of unpredictability and 'formlessness' that lends hope for citizen rights.