What connection does tea and women being raped, stripped, tortured and killed in the name of witch hunts have? The book Witches, Tea Plantations, and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India: Tempest in a Tea Pot, explores the connections between tea production and village level conflicts among the plantation workers that lead to women being targeted and persecuted in the name of witches. The setting of the book is in the tea plantations of Jalpaiguri, India where adivasis (tribal) were brought over from neighboring states to work as plantation laborers. It is within this labor community that witchcraft accusations take place where the primary targets are adivasi women.

The book illuminates how witchcraft accusations should be interpreted within the backdrop of labor-planters relationship, where a complex network of relationships—ties of friendship, family, politics, and gender—provide the necessary legitimacy for the witch hunt to take place. At the height of the conflict, the exploitative relationship between the plantation management and the adivasi migrant workers often gets hidden, and the dain becomes a scapegoat for the malice of the plantation economy.

Soma Chaudhuri is assistant professor in sociology and the school of criminal justice at Michigan State University. For more information on her recently published book, Witches, Tea Plantations, and Lives of Migrant Laborers in India: Tempest in a Tea Pot, click here.