How do we deal with witch hunts and the related witchcraft beliefs that underlie them? We deal with it as a contemporary problem, drawing lessons from the end of the witch hunts in early modern Europe. Whether in India or Africa, the colonizers passed laws to punish witch persecutions. Their actions led to the perception that the colonizers were supporters of witches. When the indigenous peoples in central India or African peasants rebelled against colonial rule, their insurgencies were accompanied by internal cleansings of supposed witches. This was so among the Santhal and Munda in India, as also the Maji Maji uprising in Tanzania. It also occurred in the run-up to the end of apartheid in South Africa.

Subsequently, some of the newly independent nations formulated official policies of dealing with witchcraft with state-sponsored witch hunts. Benin was the most notable of these examples. Tanzania, Cameroon, South Africa, and other countries also formulated policies to end witchcraft. In Cameroon and Malawi the judiciary played an important role in trying those accused of witchcraft. In South Africa cadres of the new ruling party, in league with traditional witch finders, carried out witch hunts in the Northern Province.

In India the situation was different, as the indigenous peoples were part of the federal Indian legal system. But when the provincial state of Jharkhand, dominated by the indigenous people, was set up, there was more attention given to the reported increase in witch hunts. A series of laws against witch persecutions and even against witch accusations were enacted by Jharkhand and other concerned states in India: Bihar, Rajasthan, and Odisha.

There have been three types of approaches to dealing with witch hunts. The first is to deem it a criminal act and legally deal with it accordingly. Whether explicitly or not, the implication is that there is no such thing as witchcraft. The second is to make the oppression of supposed witches legal, whether legal in codified terms or customary in community terms. For example, the European witch hunt was of the second type, sanctioning the killing of socially notified witches. This approach assumes that there are witches who utilize their supernatural powers to harm others.