Today I woke up to a post on my social media news feed which said that a certain Bengali woman had performed kaala jaadu on a man (I do not here intend to talk about the woman and man in question. I believe justice will prevail). However, what I am concerned about here is the association of Bengali women and necromancy.
This post took me back to my college days when some of my friends had seriously asked me the question, “Do you Bengalis know kaala jaadu?” I was not merely shocked but deeply hurt to hear this. Again, recently, when I was teaching in a college, one of my very qualified colleagues raised the same issue. This time it came not as a question but as a statement because the other person had no doubts regarding the statement. I could not accept it and what followed was a long argument.
It is hurtful to note that despite all the education and qualification, people still blurt out such nonsense deliberately. Besides being an improper code of conduct, this is also a breach of the law as a particular community is being labelled here. This is unacceptable and should be dealt with severity.
As a Bengali woman, I can tell you the truth. Bengali women or women from any other community do not practise necromancy. It is high time people learn to come up with more credible stories than associating necromancy with women.