Boksi (Witch): A Social Construct

Abstract

This article intends to explore the Nepali cinema Boksi Ko Ghar, written and directed by Sulakshan Bharati. It concentrates on the way the movie tells us what/who is a Boksi is and why/how one becomes a Boksi. Boksi Ko Ghar delves deep into the hardcore socio-cultural aspects of a rural Nepali community and the psychology of the villagers living there. The methodology commissioned here is a qualitative analysis of the elements of cinema, such as actors, narration, dialogue, and symbols, to meet the objectives of this paper. The lens employed to analyze the text is Foucault’s theory of discursive formation. This paper anticipates the ways in which Bharati constructs the boksi. The construction of the Boksi can be divided into two broad categories: individual and social. The individual category incorporates appearance, education, and events, while the social category incorporates setting, school, parents, husband, in-laws, maternal and paternal in-laws, villagers, the Jhankri, the lady journalist, Prateek, and the filmmakers. Junu, a small, intelligent, and naïve girl, is made a Boksi because she encounters child marriage, rape by her husband and father-in-law, her husband’s death, widowhood, the blame of being inauspicious by her in-laws, and the blame of being a Boksi by the Jhankri and other villagers. The study concludes that the "Boksi" is a social construct used to marginalize women who have been victimized by traditional power structures.