A Darkness Ignored

A month ago, in June 2025, a 58-year-old man from Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu, was arrested for the unspeakable, killing his own 38-day-old grandson in a twisted superstitious belief that the child would bring bad luck and financial ruin upon him.

- DEEPAM CHATTERJEE

Just days earlier, an elderly couple in Gujarat, the parents of a police inspector, were butchered by neighbours who believed that stealing their jewellery would empower dark occult practices.

We recoil in horror upon reading the headlines, and turn away with a grimace of disbelief. "This is madness. This is tribal backwardness. We are modern. We are educated." Yet, the truth is far more uncomfortable. Superstition is not a relic confined to remote villages; it festers in the shadows of our cities, in the hearts of families and neighbourhoods like yours and mine.

In July 2025 alone, India witnessed at least five brutal killings linked to superstition and black magic. In Bihar, five family members were burnt alive after false witchcraft accusations, in Delhi, men sacrificed a 6-year-old in a ritual at a construction project, in Madhya Pradesh, a man beheaded his 60-year-old maternal uncle over black magic suspicions. These are not freak incidents but symptoms of a deeper societal rot.

Let us pause and ask ourselves what it means to be civilised.

To be educated. Is it merely to have a degree, to reside in an air-conditioned office tower, to use smartphones and pay taxes? Or is it something profoundly more. Because the facts are clear that ignorance, fear, and blind faith continue to drive people to unimaginable horrors across India, irrespective of geography or class.

The same superstition that fuels mobs to lynch women labelled witches in Bihar and Chhattisgarh thrives in our urban homes, scrubbed clean of grime but not of irrational fears.

It whispers through astrology apps downloaded by the educated elite, rings in temples in glittering skyscraper neighbourhoods, and haunts social media hysteria that fuels mass panic.

Ask yourself, if you were born not in an educated family but in a tribal hamlet steeped in superstitious beliefs, would you have the rationale to recognise what you were doing was wrong.