|
 Email This Post
|
 Print This Post
|
Nov. 25 – Thousands of Indians from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and other states bordering Nepal have traveled to Bara district in Southern Nepal to attend a Hindu festival where animals will be sacrificed in exchange for wishes from the goddess Gadhimai.
Gadhimai Mela, usually a week-long fair, is one of the most important festivities on the Hindu calendar and is held every five years. Animal sacrifice is illegal in many states across India, however devotees of the practice regularly make the pilgrimage to Bara, where the practice is still alive.
Raman Thakur, a farmer from Sitamarhi in Bihar sacrificed 105 buffaloes to show his gratitude to the Goddess Thakur who he said had answered a prayer he had made five years ago by granting him a son. One devotee, Kalaiya Devi, was quoted in The Times of India as saying: “My son Vishnu has been ill for years and can’t walk.” He says he was going to sacrifice a pigeon and come back with a buffalo at the next fair if the goddess gave his son the strength to walk.
There are other problems with the fair as livestock like goats and roosters are smuggled across the porous Indo-Nepal border thereby bypassing Nepali quarantine posts.
The local MP for the region estimates about 15,000 buffaloes were killed yesterday reports The Times of India with the total number of slaughtered goats, roosters and pigeons eventually running into the hundreds of thousands.
The local temple authorities have built a new slaughter house worth almost US$140,000 while a huge pit has been dug to bury the heads of the butchered animals. The animal skins are being bought by tannery owners in India and Nepal.
Nepal’s government has refused to ban the massacre despite warnings by animal lovers and livestock experts that it could cause an outbreak of animal-borne diseases like goat plague, swine flu and bird flu.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
I have no pity for these poor, ignorant and superstitious people. I hope decay and disease results from all the rotting flesh in the streets. No educated person will believe that all this meat will be stored in freezers!!! These people are poor and most of them don’t even own a refrigerator. What will these people say when their people start falling from disease – will they say the underworld spirits need more blood?? Perhaps the underworld spirits will need HUMAN BLOOD???? The world be better off without these horrible people!!! SHAME ON THEM AND PITY FOR THE ANIMALS!
November 26th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
The fair has attracted finally a great deal of media attention and from animal welfare groups. It is indeed a thing that belongs to the past, and really the Nepali government needs to filter out these sorts of barbaric institions. Education is key here not just in Nepal but also in India. It’s a shocking display of backward superstitions.
November 27th, 2009 at 11:16 am
This type of act is happening everywhere, not just in Nepal. Killing of ‘life’ cannot be justified. It doesn’t matter whether you kill an animal, bird or a human being. It doesn’t matter whether you kill for religious sacrifice or to make a juicy steak. I am not a religious freak, but simply an admirer of LIFE. Now…think about it.
November 29th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
This is disgusting and vile and obviously shows how backward this country really is, the tourism of this country should be boycotted. Everyone who goes to Nepal should know how ignorant it is.
It is impossible for 250 butchers to slaughter 20,000 animals in two days, I have seen the pictures they lay half decapitated drowning in their own blood.We can only appeal to their stupidness by telling them that The Goddess Gadhimai was angry at all that blood so she killed two women and a child camping there.
And hope that in five years time there isnt a country called Nepal left on this earth.
If a famine or disease came to them they would deserve it all.