A Voice in Control

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108 Anthropology Southern Africa. 2005, 28(3&4)

A voice in control?: narratives of accusedwitches in Chhattisgarh, IndiaHelen M. Macdonald

Dept. Social Anthropology, University of Cape Town, R Bag Rondebosch 7701, South Africa.mcdo nald@h umanities. uct. ac. zaOne characttristic of violence is the unmaking of language an d fracturing of the victim 's social world. In recent theorising,narrative is posited to play an impo rtant role in restoring the victim to his/her status as a social person. Fiona Ross (2003) hasargued that it is naive to assume th e 'speaking self equateswith the healed self. She shows that individuals can be harmedwhen they lose control over their narratives circulated in the public sphere. Using an encounter with a woman accused ofwitchcraft, my article traces the way her experience has been appropriated by her family and in broader spaces of engagementbetween villagers, police, media and finally, the anthropologist. The article raises questions about the contexts in which thereno voice for a woman to assert her control.Seeking to contribute to an ethical theory of risk an d vulnerability, this papersuggests that closer attention should be paid to the processes of forgetting and grieving as forms of control articulated througthe body.Keywords: ethics, Chhattisgarh, forgetting, mem ory, narrative, voice, violence, witchc raft

How. in whose voice, or rather, in which of manyvoices, ought an anthropologist tell such stories? Andwhat does he tell when the most poignant parts oftheir voices are their silences?(Daniel 1996:121)

IntroductionThe Ethical Guidelines fo r Good Research Practice, adopted bythe Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and theCommonwealth in March 1999, clearly outlines the anthro-pologist's responsibilities towards research participants. Ourprofession requires us to 'protect the physical, social and psy-chological well-being' of those we study. We are asked to'anticipate harm' and 'minimise the disturbances' to subjectsthemselves. In case the message is no t clear, w e are reminde dthat research participation can be a 'disturbing experience'and 'an intrusion into private and personal domains'. This hasimportan t implications for the study of violence, risk and vul-nerability. In most circumstances, anthropologists aredetached from the synchronicity of participant observer inthat they are usually not in a position to observe violentevents directly. This is certainly the case of public accusationsof witchcraft in Chhattisgarh, India, where too often thesemen and wom en com e to the attention of the State authori-ties only after they have been murdered (Macdonald 2004).Information is then gleaned from those who survive them -from their relatives, the victim of mystical aggression, theaccusers or the local healer - after the ha rm has beenincurred. Even when they escape wi th their lives, the storiesof accused witches are silenced in a number of ways.Brenneis (1988) points out that narratives invoke manyvoices, both co -operative and contending, so that authorship,authority and the right to speak are under active negotiation.The work by Blommaert et, al . (2000) shows that not all nar-ratives are equal: 'The words of some, providing they match

argue that the researcher is ethically obligated to speak forthese ruptured, even absented narratives that flow fromhuman contact (a characteristic of research). Yet in the proc -ess of appropriation by the researcher the narrative fo rm andintent will be transformed. There lies an ethical concern forthe researcher, that is, of bringing coherency of a differentkind to the incoherent or absent voice while simultaneouslyattempting to preserve its original form.

In an exploration of voice, Fiona Ross (2003) illustratedthe ways in which testimonies from the South African Truthand Reconciliation Commission proliferated outside the con-trol of the individual. While recovered narrative can play acrucial part in restoring the fractured victim to his/her statusas a social person, Ross showed that Individuals can beharmed when they lose control over their narratives as theycirculate in the public arena. Following Stanley Cavell, Rossargues that the aims of the Commission to restore dignity tovictims of violence m ust be more than simply restoring voice.It must be 'a voice in contro l - that is, a voice w ith a signa-ture' (2003:336). In summary, Ross states that.

Transcription, translation, entextualisation, inter-pretation, dissemination: all these are core to theanthropological task. As scholars, we need todevelop a critical ethical theory o f risk andvulnerability in relation to subjectivities forged inand inhabiting globalized linguistic forms (2003:337, my emphasis).

My paper aims to c ontribute to a critical ethical theory of riskand vulnerability by asking the crucial question: 'what hap-pens where there Is no voice?' I use the example of LakshmiBai, a woman accused of witchcraft, who struggles to articu-late the trauma she underw ent at the hands of o ther villagers.There was a specific way in which violence was used inthe tontfi (witch) accusation, where the body was directlymanipulated to create involuntary and powerful (embodied)


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Anthropology Southern Africa, 2005, 28(3&4) 109This paper takes up the wide r anthropological debate on indi-vidual and social memory and the relation between narrativeand mem ory. It argues that closer attention should be paid t othe processes of forgetting (as a form of not remembering) andgrieving as forms o f co ntro l articulated through the body.ContextAs indicated by the title of my paper, much of the discussionwill concentrate on public accusations of jadu-tona (witch-craft) from Chhattisgarh, a predominantly adivafi (tribal) stateof central India. Despite the surge of academic, non govern -mental organisation (NGO) and media interest in witchcraftaccusations in India from the m id 1980s peaking during thelast five years, little research has been conducted in Chhattis-garh. The pow erful and ahistorical discourses of Chhattisgarhiwitchcraft that circulate in the popular media focus predomi-nantly on adivasi culture and beliefs. Given my stron g reserva-tions that witchcraft accusations as a social phenomenoncould be solely studied within the boundary of a village (or a'tribe') in its entirety, my research developed into a multi-sited study focusing on non-od/Vos/ peasant society. By thevery nature of their being public, the sites on which witch-craft accusations were produced cross several institutions,moving across family, community, police, administration,courts of law, the media, the medical profession and thestate. A ce ntral part of m y research involved following 'criticalevents' (w itchcraft accusations) out of a household and villagearena into broader spaces of engagement between villagers,police, media, state and political actors.

In total, records of 63 witchcraft accusations (84 personsaccused as tonfTi and tonha)^ dating from 1993 to 2001 wereobtained, collated from newspapers, court and policerecords and NGOs. One village was selected for an in-depthcase study. Sem i-structured interv iev we re conducted inapproximately forty villages; in some instances up to fourrepeat visits we re made. The m ost consistent finding was thatwitch accusations in Chhattisgarh were overwhelminglymade against women. In ninety per cent of cases, womenwere accused as tonfTi, and as a rule, they were publiclyaccused by men. H owever, it was impossible to identify invar-iant social characteristics of accused tonfu. True, ChhattisgarhitonlTi can be conceived as marginal unprotected women

accused by more powerful male relatives, but they may beold or young; married, unmarried or widowed; with or with-out children; prosperous or poor; neighbours, relatives orelse non caste members; male or female, and powerless orpolitically dom inant.

I first became aware of Lakshmi Bai, a 45 year-old agricul-tural worker, who was publicly accused of practising jadu-tona and branded as a tonfTi, from a lengthy newspaperreport^. I knew from the newspaper report that LakshmiBai's neighbour Kumari Bai died days after giving birth andher husband, suspecting foul play, placed the body on theveranda of Lakshmi Bai's house.^ As villagers gathered, Lak-shmi Bai was charged w ith 'eating' Kumari Bai, and demandswe re made for her to bring Kumari Bai back to life.^ Villagersthreatened her with death, and declared she must make anoath on her children's lives at the village tem ple. I also kne wthat after the situation diffused, Lakshmi Bai attempted toend her life by consuming poison but was thwarted by herhusband's 'timely intervention'. Judging her village to bewithin a day's return journey I set off with my driver andresearch assistant to investigate her case. Three years afterher accusation, we entered Lakshmi Bai's village after receiv-ing directions fro m a nearby police station. I was dismayed tolearn that she and her husband Arjun had migrated for sea-sonal work and would return with the onset of monsoonrains to begin planting their fields.

Six months later I returned along the same potholed mudroad made all the worse by the monsoon rains.^ The femalekotvar (village guard) escorted us to Lakshmi Bai's house,where we met Dayalam, Lakshmi Bai's son who works as atailor. Dayalam warned us that his parents were working inthe fields and that it could take some time for them to returnto the house. As we waited for nearly an hour there was aninflux of curious customers picking up their finished gar-ments. Arriving from the fields first, Arjun closed the doorsand shooed away anyone who tried to loiter. He began hisdescription of the events:

On that day, I was putting manure on my bullockcart and dropping it in my field. I began a secondtrip. In the m eantime, my son came to me and toldme what was happening, that Parmanand hadbrought his wife's dead body and to please come.1. It was evident that the dichotomy between tribe and caste, made possible by the colonial discourse, remains deeply entrenched in theperceptions of dominant Indian groups (Macdonald 2004). My research specifically challenged the perception that witch killings in non-tribal society are rare, thus the fieldwork site was narrowed to the non-tribal agricultural plain of Chhattisgarh, particularly Raipur,Dhamtari, Mahasamund, Durg, Bilaspur and Rajnandgaon districts.2. A note on terminology may be appropriate here. Western terms like sorcery or witchcraft are awkward translations of Indian notions.Classical anthropological distinction between 'witchcraft' and sorcery' proposed by Evans-Pritchard based on his Azande material donot apply to the material discussed here. Although gender specific words for male and female witches exist, the feminine tonhi is usedto refer in genera) to Chhattisgarhi witches. This reflects the fact that Chhattisgarhis regard witchcraft to be a feminine occupation. Iuse the word tonhi in the same context except where referring specifically to a tonha (male witch).3.1 made nine visits to Ballabgarra village (pseudonym) spanning eighteen months. In total I spent approximately three months in Ballab-garra.4. Details that may lead to Lakshmi Bai's identification have been omitted.5. All non-Muslim Chhattisgarhi women are addressed as 'Bai' (which literally means 'woman').6. Despite the consistent image of cannibalism, Chhattisgarhi witches do not literally eat the flesh or drink the blood of their victims. Rareinstjinces of child ritual sacrifice are not perceived as the work of tonhi. In the local context, life can be returned to a body if it has


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10 Anthropology Southern Africa, 2005, 28(3&4)Forty minutes later Lakshmi Bai entered the room and squat-ted down on the mud floor to my left. Within minutes of lis-tening to her husband's description of her torturous ordealshe was visibly distressed. She continue d t o let him speak andadded very little to the conversation. When she did speak,her distress was audible. Her quiet voice wavered, punctu-ated by stoppages and tears, and, on the taped recording ofour interaction, is almost drowned out by the sound of mon-soon rains on the roof. I quickly realised that she would nothave the stamina or resources to succeed in telling her story.Then she simply stopped acknowledging my presence and fellinto silence disturbed by the occasional low moan. With nooutward signs of comfort being shown from Arjun to LakshmiBai, I became increasingly uncomfortable with what I per-ceived as his indifference to his wife's distress as he continue dhis narration uninterrupted. Wracked wit h remorse for insti-gating the retrieval of an informant's apparent anguishedmem ories, I ended the interview quickly and left. In the sameway that Lakshmi Bai did not have the stamina or resourcesto tell her story, I lacked the same necessary capacity to hearher story. I had not come to the encounter unprepared, yet Ifound I was. It was of little relief that my reaction was similarto that of the 'fear, confusion, shame, horror, skepticism,even disbelief exhibited by listeners to Holocaust testimo-nies (Langer 1991:20). Langer found that the m ore painful,dramatic and overwhelming the narrative, 'the more tense,wary and self-protective is the audience, the quicker theinstinct to with draw ' (ibid).

Das, writing of the desolating experience of violencepleads with her reader: 'I hope I shall be evoking these textsnot in the manner of a thief wh o has stolen another voice b utin the manner of one who pawns herself to the words of thisother' (1996:69). Here would be the logical place to providea detailed transcript of the interview with Lakshmi Bai, some-thing I choose not to do for ethical reasons I now explain.Lakshmi Bai had few words to pawn. Das (1995:184) arguesthat violence 'mutilates' or 'annihilates' language whereby thefear experienced cannot be brought into the 'realm of theutterable' - language can be struck dum b. K irmayer(1996:175) suggests that these stories sit at the edge of one'sconsciousness to be 'worked around or told in fragments' -words, phrases, gestures, silences etc. Although narrativeplays an important role in remaking the victim's social w orl d,Ross (2003) has argued that it is naive to assume the 'speakingself equates with the healed self. For Lakshmi Bai the witchaccusation had not been domesticated in a manner thatallowed her voice to have contro l. Because of the violation o fsocial norms on that day, Lakshmi Bai's perception of herselfin that role continued to assail her three years after the event.Held prisoner by the past, Lakshmi Bai's memories remainedso overwhelming that her need to remake her being-in-the-world continued to be deferred. Ethically I argue that Lak-shmi Bai's narrative of disorder, silence, and irreversible lossshould not be contained in writin g.

App ropriating the voiceArjun and his family performed a difficult task when theyaccepted their relationship with Lakshmi Bai as an accusedwitch whom persons in the wider community had simply castaside. By claiming the victim, Arjun consequently ended upreproducing the suffering of his wife and thereby making itpart of his disco'urse. As outsiders we in tur n witness hisauthority over cultural rights, especially the right to regulatethe spheres of p olitics, family and memory. During ou r inter-view Arjun revealed that he had in the past challenged the vil-lage headman in an incident that subsequently embroiled allaround him in an ongoing financial and social boycott againsthis family. He listed a litany of grievances: they were deniedwater, the registry title of purchased land, and anyone whotalked to them was subjected to an automatic fine. Whereonce Arjun was a respected member of the elders' counciland entrusted with overseeing village finances, 'now thingsare quite changed. Now I live my life alone here.' It wouldappear that the accusation of witchcraft levelled against Lak-shmi Bai Wcis simply another means by which various men(including her husband) continued their ongoing battle. In thissituation where Lakshmi Bai's autonomy and equality werenot salient, her story was rejected o r heard in a different way.

Typically in such instances, the community emerges as apolitical actor by disempowering the victim a second time.Revealing a particular link between witchcraft narratives and'excitement,' Bleek suggests that community members wanta dramatic explanation, not simply a 'socially relevant' one(1976: 536). Further, stories may not always be intended toprovide clarity, but may equally be instruments fo r 'obscuring,hedging, confusing, exploring or questioning what went on,that is, for keeping the coherence and comprehensibility ofnarrated events open to question' (Bauman 1986:5-6 cited inBrenneis 1988:281). In order to resume social life, manyaccused tonhJ had apparently agreed t o an implicit co ntractof silence (Macdonald 2004).

Lakshmi Bai's voice was robbed again through the dis-courses of the professional - police, media, administrationand anthropologist - each of which I discuss in turn. I wasaware that Lakshmi Bai had approached the police, as thenewspaper article reported the arrest of nineteen people for'abetment of suicide'. Having established a working relation-ship wi th th e police, I obtained a copy of the First InformationReport (FIR) and Lakshmi Bai's recorded statement to thepolice with relative ease. At the time of Lakshmi Bai's case,there was no law pertaining specifically to witchc raft accusa-tion s.' Despite the narrow definitions of violence againstwomen institutionalised in the legal discourse, womenaccused as tonlii (or the police acting on the ir behalf) adopteda wide-ranging number of legal avenues in which to register acase (Macdonald 2004).

Lakshmi Bai's statement (if it was indeed hers) began witha statement 'I reside in village [name] and work as an agricul-8. This point emerges clearly in his narrative. In the recordin g of o ur Interview , he recites th e conversation vi^ith villagers, alternating be-


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Anthropology Southern Africa, 2005, 28(3&4) I I Itural labourer'. During our interview, Arjun revealed that 'thepolice didn't believe what happened. When I requested them[to listen] and explained the who le m atter, then they believedit.' This implies that although Lakshmi Bai may have provideda verbal statement to the police, it was either not heard orrejected as unsatisfactory, and subsequently, Arjun's narrativebecame the authoritative version for recording. After a briefdescription of where she, her husband and son were eachlocated during the incident, there followed a long list ofnames, indicating those who accused her as a tonlv. Thereaf-ter follows descriptions of the physical hurt inflicted andthreats of death should the matter be reported to the police.Incorporated is a statement that witnesses other than herhusband and son will not come forward due to fear The FIRconcludes wit h the sentence 'the re port has been writ ten as Ihave stated and has been read back to me. I demand an inves-tigation'.

My research strongly suggested that in cases of witchcraftaccusations, a woman's experience was moulded to fit aframework of court admissible evidence, to testify to policeefficiency, or was simply deemed irrelevant and disqualified.The recorded details are sketchy and there is inordinatestress on the physical violence (particularly the implementsused). The police reports were devoid of any nuances ofwomen's subjectivities and languages - almost sterilised ofthem. Specifically analysing cases of domestic violence,Solanki concluded that women's voice 'is missed, silenced,absented simply because her personal history is found inade-quate in the wake of a bigger and better 'social' and 'legal'worldview' (2001:85). The official and moral obligationsembodied in a tonlv case found their way into the officialpolice report, transforming the verbal account of a woman'sexperience into a writt en testimony to police competenceand timely action. When a wom an approaches th e police, shesteps ou t of c omm unity life and enters a public arena of p re-dominantly legal activity and procedure. By the process ofexercising both its paternal and policing functions, LakshmiBai's right to speak was appropriated by the state in a waythat distances us from the immediacy of her experience andsilences her voice.Encountering unified narratives of witchcraftDuring the first months of my fieldw ork, I encountered a dif-ferent type of narrative privileging from that of the State offi-cial. Underwriting the majority of media reports writtenabout witchcraft or cases of witch accusations were twoassumptions: firstly, there was an inevitable, linear progres-sion towards nationhood and modernity and secondly, thisprogression of the nation was being hindered in specific ways(Pandey 1995). Society was referred to as 'modern, civilisedand in the 2 1 " cent ury' signifying that a belief in witchcra ftought to be outdated because of advancements made in thefields of 'science, education, medicine, women's empower-ment and human rights'. A tonfu was understood to be a 'w id-

owed, helpless and/or poor female victim' who is 'physicallyand mentally tortured' by those who have yet to develop (whomay be manipulated by others motivated by personal gain).' ^

Among the simultaneously diverse aspects of modernitywas the idea that one can be modern as a social identity. Pigg(1996) argued that the ideas of the modern generate a senseof difference by marking the identities of those persons whoare modern as different from and opposed to those who aretraditional. More importantly, she asks, 'Who recognises thisdifference?' The figure of the credulous villager helped mark adifference that the emerging urban m iddle class was particu-larly concerned to emphasise (Macdonald 2004). Being mod -ern was about standing in oppos ition to the villager who heldonto his or her deep-rooted superstitions, particularly theirbelief in tonlv and village healers. Being modern meant seek-ing help to problems in a manner different from that ofsuperstitious villagers. The claim that village healers wereexploitative quacks incapable of healing and seeking only toenrich themselves implied the use of another f orm of healingor problem-solving. A modern person used 'modern medi-cine' or consulted a ritual specialist with a 'higher kn owledge'who performs a 'social service to the people'. These ideasintersected with the interests of an active press to createmultiple meanings that both challenged and reinforced ideasof development, progress and modernity.

The accusation against Lakshmi Bai that she was a witchwas inserted into this form of public discourse. Surprisingly,the journalist reporting on this case actually travelled to thevillage. Only in rare situations were villagers regarded assources of information for tonlv cases by journalists, who typ -ically relied on information gathered from the police stationor copied (often erroneously) from the FIR (Macdonald2004). The family that accused Lakshmi Bai of witchcraftwere 'tight-lipped' and other villagers were either 'too scaredto open their mouths' or denied being present during theaccusation. Lakshmi Bai's sons refused to talk, stating, 'a lot ofharassment has happened, and we do not wan t to add to it bysaying any mo re'. Lakshmi Bai was found 'sitting in a state ofmental shock in a corner of her house and even the repeatedconsolations of her husband were unable to bring her back tonormal composure.' Instead, Arjun is described as 'giving adetailed account of the happenings to the correspondent'.The unusually long and detailed media report further illus-trates the power of Arjun's narrative. The report finishedwi th a postscript hinting at tensions be tween A rjun, his familyand other villagers. As repo rted by Arjun to the journalist, theprevious year the family were 'fined' Rs 1,000 (a substantialamount) by the village council and ostracised by the village,following a dispute over ruined bags of cement mix. Arjunwas held negligent for allowing bags of cement mix tobecome w et f rom rain and harden. His refusal to pay the costled to a social boy cott by the village.

I I. Police regulations require recording officers to record the informant's complaint 'wo rd for w ord as dictated' (with carbon copies) and


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112 Anthropology Southern Africa, 2005, 28(3&4)Aca dem ic silencing: Co nstru cting a dialogicale thnographyThus far I have show n that victims of v^ itch accusations havetheir voices taken away from them in a number of ways. Inthe case of Lakshmi Bai, her husband Arjun, the community,the police and media have all chosen to speak on her behalf. Iwant to now describe my experiences of writing about Lak-shmi Bai, and suggest that ethical dilemmas surrounded andcontinue to surround any attempt I make to write about henIn the first instance, neither life experience nor academicschooling had prepared me for the trauma of Lakshmi Bai'smemory, and the subsequent vulnerability it evoked and con-tinues to evoke in me in the face of another's suffering.Despite my own sympathetic understanding, I did not knowhow to manage Lakshmi Bai's memory which had broughther past directly into the present. Applied anthropologicalresearch methods courses had done little to aid understand-ing of the complexities and awareness of the challenges ofdoing research on gender violence. Requisite literaturereviews had guided me through academic writing thatfocused predominantly on underlying motives for witchcraftaccusations with an emphasis on contradictions in particularinterpersonal relationships. Conceptually, I was prepared fora study of witchcraft accusations. Fieldwork, on the otherhand, was a matter of 'finding my ow n w ay'; an anthropologi-cal rite of passage surrounded in mysticism.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the notes I madefollowing my interview with Lakshmi Bai:My apologies, which typically pull [m y informants]from their thoughts, didn't work in this case. Ialways apologise fo r having caused any distress andso far, with out exception, they have been quick toreassure me tha t I haven't. I always make a point ofsaying this, knowing what the response will be. Iknow it is incredibly selfish on my pa rt, but it's myway of assuaging guilt for bringing these memoriesback. When I think back to my earlier thoughtsabout her [Lakshmi Bai] being a perfect case for alife history, I know now that I could never havehandled her pain.

My fieldnotes allude to engagements of relative comfort andeasy management that prevailed prior to my meeting LakshmiBai. All my informants expressed a willingness (some seemedcompulsively driven) to be interviewed, despite the demand-ing effort that remembering violence entailed. Some weremore skilful storytellers than others, drawing on physicalmovements, gestures, parody, metaphors and tone to conveytheir significance and simultaneously signal a distancebetween themselves and what was being said. In addition tothe variety of p resentation styles, their narratives had a ratherformulaic quality, repeating how the story had been toldbefore rather than reproducing the memories themselves.My notes also indicate that I had both detected strategies(gentle urgings and apologies) to bring a faltering informantback to the present, and utilised them to this effect.Although writing specifically of Holocaust testimonies,

argues, serves dual functions. Firstly, common memoryrestores the narrator to his/her pre- and post-witch accusa-tion normality. Secondly, common memory offers a detachednarrative of what it must have been like during the witchaccusation from the position of the immediate present. 'Oneeffect of common memory, with its talk of normalcy amidchaos, is to mediate atrocity, to reassure us that in spite of theordeal some human bonds were inviolable' (Langer 1991:9).This contrasts to what Langer (1991) calls 'deep' or 'sense'memory, where the self as it was during the witc h accusationis voluntarily and involuntarily recalled, a feature that appearsto be characteristic of Lakshmi Bai's testimony. Whatremained for Lakshmi Bai was a post-accusation narrativewhere m emory is a site and source of anguish. When LakshmiBai did not shift from deep to common memory, I under-stood for the first time that I had attempted and, more signif-icantly, failed to urge her subtly in that direction. It wasthrough this trou bled encounter that I became self-consciousof my own partiality in favour of secure common memorynarratives. With this in mind, I wrote Lakshmi Bai into mydocto ral thesis.

In the introdu ctory chapter of the thesis, in a section enti-tled 'The Dangers of Remembering and Telling', I exposedand scrutinised my role as a researcher as part of a widerproject to write a dialogical ethnography (Macdonald 2004).It formed a critique of witchcraft discourse that in the pasthad often failed to include and scrutinise the researching self.In doing so, I translated Lakshmi Bai's experience into one o fmy own; an approach which Pat Caplan, following Ricoeur,defines as 'the comprehension o f the self by the deto ur o f theother' (1988; 9). Our encounter became a demonstrablestory for examiners and a wider anthropological audience ofan introspective pa rticipant obse rver juxtaposed in the analy-sis. Caplan goes on to say, 'we need to acknowledge, and thishappens but rarely, that in making this detour, the self alsochanges' (ibid). Firmly ensconced in this hermeneutic circle, Ihave glimpsed another change in myself.

By writin g about my personal discoveries as a researcherin the field, I effectively quashed any attempt Lakshmi Baimade to communicate with me. With this acknowledgementlies the recognition that I remain locked in a relationship wi thher I see this most clearly as my fingers move ove r the com -puter keyboard and uneasy memories project Lakshmi Bai'here' to my left, sitting on the polished mud floor in silence.It is striking that some narratives are recycled continuously byresearchers, suggesting a personal (possibly unfinished) rela-tionship to the narrative's original author, its contents, theencounter in which it emerged and/or the final interpretivetext where it is translated for the reader. I cannot undo whathas been previously written, except by adding to it, that is,speaking some more of Lakshmi Bai's story.A voice in control: The first syllablesVeena Das cautions against the apparently heroic task ofbreaking silences. 'Even the idea that we should recover thenarratives of violence becomes problem atic w hen w e realize


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Anthropology Southern Africa. 2005, 28(3&4) 113flow from the dialogue between researcher and informant,then here lays an ethical issue. When one dwells alone in the'ruins of memory', as Lawrence Langer (1991) calls them,how can the narrator seek a voice in control, and how doesthe anthropologist write that voice without causing harm yetagain to the victim? Seeking to c ontribute to an ethical theoryof risk and vulnerability, this paper suggests that closer atten-tion should be paid to the processes of forge tting and grievingas forms of control articulated through the body. I discusseach of these in turn.

Kirmayer (1996) suggests that as more stories enter thepublic realm, they assist in making it possible for individuals torecollect and tell their personal stories. Where the narrativehas crystallised, the accused wom an a ttempts through narra-tive to comprehend and remake her world using what Das(1990, 1991) calls 'organising images'. By constructing a fic-tion for Lakshmi Bai through the organising images of otheraccused tonlTi, the reader is afforded the experience of collu-sion in seeking out, and hiding from mem ory possible mean-ings. I take a moment to acknowledge the risks of such anendeavour in relation to Kirmayer's project and mine. A con-structed fiction runs the risk of homogenising or essentialisingthe narratives of wom en accused as tonfTi.

When Lakshmi Bai was questioned about what shethought 'now' of what happened three years prior, sheanswered in a flat, matter-of-fact tone with a single word -'nothing' - before her husband started complaining about aland dispute oth er villagers had foist upon his family. This sim-ple utterance expressed by Lakshmi Bai conveys control asshe stands in opposition t o her husband's active pro mo tion ofremembrance. Her answer does not indicate just how muchshe remembers or forgets, but it expresses both a need toforget and the strategies by which she may be attempting todo so (denial, refusal to speak). I do n ot suggest that silence istherapeutic. In fact, the need to forget sustains the need toremember what must be forgotten, a paradox highlighted byLattas (1996). However, I suggest that closer attention shouldbe paid to the process of forgetting as a controlled form ofnot remembering. In cases of w itc h accusations we are dealingwith what Battaglia calls a 'willed transformation of memory'(1992:14) where not remembering can be identified as meansof systemic and controlled action. Acts of remembering andforgetting emerge as forces for mediating and constitutinghow those involved in toniv accusations define themselves inthe present. Certain memories are invested with powerfuland culturally salient meanings, causing them to become lessmeaningful or actively suppressed (Carsten 1995; Eves 1996).For Kirmayer (1996), memory following trauma is activelysuppressed (involving a conscious effort not to think some-thing) by concentrating effo rt on alternative narratives, refus-ing to speak about events and flat denial (to self and others)that the events oc curred . These strategies, he argues under-mine the process of rehearsal and semantic bridge buildingnecessary for ready recall.

In trying to write the meaning of violence in tonfTi accusa-tions, I found the languages of pain and rupture inadequate in

yvhere meaning can be articulated.In the genre of lamentation, women have controlboth through their bodies and through theirlanguage - grief isarticulated through the body, forinstance, by infliction of grievous hurt on oneself,"objectifying" and making present the inner state,and is finally given a home in language (Das1996:68).

Veena Das suggests that an articulated transaction betweenbody and language can be created. Calling on the philosophi-cal writings of Wittgenstein's The Blue and Brown Books, shediscusses how the pain of self can reside in the body ofanother, arguing that pain can be shared in imagination,despite lack of understanding and the inability of language toexpress pain. It is here that my experience with Lakshmi Baifinds a home. In a sense, I grieve for a personal loss of inno-cence brought about by bearing witness to Lakshmi Bai'spainful and deeply disturbing story.

Das goes to say that, "w e need to think o f healing as akind of relationship with death" where one is permitted togrieve and lament whereas "the silent death is the asocial'bad death' without kin support" (/b/


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114 Anthropology Southern Africa, 2005, 28(3&4)the researcher and the recycled narratives that continuouslyweave through the academic production of text. My initialrelationship with Lakshmi Bai lay in the final interpretativetext that translated the encounter in which it emerged. Byfailing to recognise her as the original author of the narrativeand the contents of her narrative (limited as they were), herstory remained unfinished - hers is a voice lacking her con-trol. In an attempt to correct this I have chosen to 'speaksome more' by mapping out the alternative trajectories ofLakshmi Bai's experience through family, community, (X)liceand media, before attempting to recover some of her voicevia the voices of oth ers.

When a narrative is so annihilated by violence that itbecomes largely unutterable, what becomes of the silencesand non-verbalised language? Unless we see the relationbetween language and pain, the problems of vulnerability willgo unaddressed. By understanding violence as a form ofdeath, non-verbalised languages of pain afford victims of vio-lence a means of control articulated through their bodies,even if this simply means endurance. Lamentation goes a stepfurther: it suggests a voice in control. However, by concen-trating on picking up different threads, the paradox of forget-ting (the need to forget sustains the need to remember whatmust be forgotten) can be located in the narratives of thosewho have endured most. I leave the last word (from inter-views) to them :

I was brought into this world to suffer this burden.My virtue has been lost and this I can't regain.(Binda Bai)

I'd like to die, but I will never com promise. (RadhaBai)

I cannot face people because of the shame. (LathaBai)

I am very scared. The villagers can do anything tome . My neighbour said, 'I am prepared to go to jail,but before I do, I will k ill you'. (Rameen Bai)

Some avoid me. Those that talk to me are still cool.They d on't react in any specific way. If they comeacross me, they stare at me and don't talk. If anurncracks and you want to patch it up, it will alwayshave cracks in it. (Bati Bai)

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A Voice in Control