This paper deals with the community-oriented lynching and killings of Oraon tribal women in the form of witch-hunting who is lynched by their own community, connoting them as witches. It tries to study the violence inflicted in the name of religion as collective violence on tribal women. My paper attempts to explore the practice of witch-hunting in the context of Oraon women of Jharkhand. The belief in witchcraft exists around the globe given in every society and almost every religion encircled by the belief system of magic, ritual, supernatural power, ghosts, sorcerers, and witches. These notions have been very prominent during the Victorian era in European societies as well as within the tribes of Africa.
Similarly, the same notion of witchcraft, witch craze and witch-hunting exist among the tribes of India too. This paper focuses on anthropological concepts of magic, totem, sorcery, taboos, sacred, profane, and bongaism, which tries to understand the deeper problems of witch-hunting. The research area is located in the Jharkhand state of India. The research work is majorly qualitative and draws upon available literature on witch-hunting. A few pieces by scholars like Roberta Senechal on collective violence and another work by Shashank Sinha have a more profound implication on the genesis of violence as a 'collective' being the root cause of witch-hunting. The findings of these papers are based on FIRs (First Information Reports), which were obtained from the police station during the fieldwork. It proposes the concept of 'culture of violence or violence of culture', which dominates the tribal society leading to a heinous crime where the victim is criminalised, denied justice and right to dignified life.
