A festival believed to be the largest animal sacrifice ritual in the world began Friday in southern Nepal, where devotees believe the sacrifices bring good luck and a Hindu goddess will grant their wishes.
In the fields outside a temple before dawn, a priest dropped five drops of his own blood and sacrificed a rat, chicken, pigeon, goat, and pig to start the festival. More than 5,000 buffaloes were ritually killed during the day.
Many other animals will be killed during the two-day festival at Gadhimai temple in the jungles of Bara district about 160 kilometres south of Katmandu.
Organizers and the authorities defend the festival held every five years as a generations-old tradition, though animal rights activists says it is barbaric. During the 2009 festival, an estimated 200,000 animals and birds were sacrificed.
Animal activists have decried the event, which attracts thousands of devotees from Nepal as well as close-by regions of India. Gadhimai is the Hindu goddess of power, and it is believed sacrificing an animal in her honour will bring prosperity. Many of the animals — most of which are babies — are brought illegally over the border from India.
Last month, India’s Supreme Court ordered the government to ensure that no live cattle or buffalo were exported out of India and into Nepal without licence, and its Ministry of Home Affairs directed its border patrol to ensure that “the movement of cattle for sacrifice during Gadhimai Mela [Fair] be stopped.”
So far, activists said, more than 2,000 animals have been seized along the India and Nepal border, and 100 people arrested.
“It’s madness, it’s really madness,” said N.G. Jayasimha, director of the Humane Society International of India, who is at the temple site this week.
“There are no roads, no infrastructure, not a single public bus, no sanitation and no drinking water. There are human feces everywhere. A number of people have come, and everybody is carrying an animal to be sacrificed.”
Jayasimha said that activists think there has been a drop in attendance in the festival this year over five years ago, when an estimated 5 million people attended. Jayasimha said he thought border control efforts and public awareness campaigns in Nepal and India may have been having some effect. Yet the festival remains a public health concern.
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