Book Review: The Witch-Hunt by FG Bailey

You could say I’ve been on a history-of-witch-hunts kick lately, which largely began out of my attempts to understand the political moment of Donald Trump’s presidency as well as numerous recent hate incidents targeting Jews, people of color, queer people, and more. I hope this review convinces you to look into this title and others for insight into the nature of fascist conspiracy theories, particularly contemporary ones such as QAnon or the Groomer Panic that target Jews, queer people, left-wingers and people of color.

The Witch-Hunt, or the Triumph of Morality

by F. G. Bailey.

Anthropology, Asian studies.

One day in the rural village of Bisipara, East India, the British anthropologist FG Bailey found himself in the midst of a scapegoating exercise. A teenage girl was struck with cerebral malaria and died a very excruciating death. For her parents and the villagers, this presented a handful of serious problems.

First, the girl was of marriageable age. Second, she was neither a young child nor an old woman, so her dying of malaria is extremely unusual. Third, it was not even malaria season. Finally, the nature of cerebral malaria, which attacks the brain, meant her death was not only extremely painful, but marked by symptoms believed to be consistent with possession by a malicious spirit. Indeed, village authorities subsequently concluded that the unusual circumstances of her death indicate she was not killed by cerebral malaria at all, but a deva.

A deva is a general term for a divine being, which can be anything from a minor guardian spirit to Parvati, wife of Shiva the Destroyer. In Bisipara, one does not worship a deva so much as have a relationship with them. Usually consisting of small statues or shrines, a deva can be inherited, sold, and given away. They can guarantee prosperity and health for oneself and one’s family in exchange for certain ritualized favors, but they are not to be confused with wholly benevolent beings such as how Western Christians usually conceive of God.

Just like a normal person, a neglected or mistreated deva may become angry. One might get loose and harm an innocent person. Permitting one’s deva to go rogue can carry fines and other penalties in the same manner as if one let one’s bull loose and it trampled a neighbor’s vegetable patch. The village authorities eventually conclude that this is exactly what happened.

After a long, ritualized investigation, the culprit is identified as an aspect of Parvati belonging to a wealthy villager. After some back-and-forth, the man agrees to pay a series of hefty fines that eventually amount to several months’ wages.

Of course, this man is completely innocent, unless you sincerely believe in devas or think religious commitments can unproblematically overlap with a secularized justice system. By reading between the lines of the supernatural explanation, Bailey concluded it had nothing to do with his deva and everything to do with the Dharmic disconnect between his low caste and his comparative wealth.

Bailey concludes that the village authorities believed the village dharma, or the way of things, was upset when this low-caste individual rose above his station by becoming wealthy through independent means. They sincerely believed knocking him down a peg or two would help appease the angry divinities that commanded natural forces.

I recommend anyone who finds this summary interesting to check it out for themselves, especially since it covers events and aspects of East Indian culture and religion that are just as important to the story but not possible to cover here, such as ritual purity and sexism. With that said, I want to conclude with the value this book offers in understanding contemporary political struggles.

Today, right-wing backlash against the 2020 George Floyd Uprising and the increasing acceptance of queer people, trans people in particular, aim to restore what is perceived as a just hierarchy. To groups such as Moms for Liberty, the hierarchy of white supremacy as expressed by policing is a justified one– and thus not a hierarchy at all– since the behavior of black people actually warrants violence (“Pull up your pants and you won’t get shot!”). If this is the case, the 2020 summer of protest cannot have come from a place of genuine grievances and attempts at community self-defense against white supremacist aggression, but instead from a conspiracy of schoolteachers indoctrinating students with Critical Race Theory. Just like with the low-caste man and his rogue deva, implicit in this push to rid schools of CRT is the restoration of society’s natural harmony. In their minds, black people rising above their station by challenging white supremacy requires them to be knocked back down a peg or two. The same way of thinking applies to not only to racial minorities, but gender and sexual minorities.

Cisheteronormativity, the idea that cisgender and heterosexual people are a “default” from which queer people deviate, is another natural order that is upset by increasing acceptance and visibility of people whose very existence demonstrate its falsity. Queer children in particular are seen as a threat, since a deviation cannot be natural by definition, and children exist in a state of Edenic natural innocence. Thus, the only explanation is once again that schoolteachers are conspiring to "groom” them, playing off old the homophobic trope that gay men are pedophiles. Figures such as James Lindsay and Chaya Raichik have built entire careers off of “exposing” said “groomers”. In Raichik’s case, she even indirectly encourages her followers to take direct action to restore the natural harmony by harassing individuals she features and even calling in bomb threats to hospitals. Once more, the social order creates its own mechanisms of self-preservation in the form of reactionary, authoritarian violence.

Sometimes it is difficult to understand, let alone notice these mechanisms at play within our own culture. Although it is easy to dismiss conspiracy theorists such as Lindsay or Raichik as just crazy, stupid, or bigoted, reading about similar incidents from other cultures goes a long way towards untangling and understanding their twisted logic, better preparing us to counter them.

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