I take my hat off to them. Brave people, with a desire to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
Two passages in the diary caught my eye:
1. "There were at least close to a million people living there with numbers peaking around the days of animal sacrifice. Everyone was bathing and defecating in public. Walking through human faeces and the skeletal remains of the sacrificed heads of the buffaloes from 2009 (buried in a pit and freshly dug up for this year’s sacrifice), we reached the place where the founder of this temple, Bhagwan Chowdhary, was buried". Apart from the unspeakable animal cruelty, these hardly seem fit conditions for nearly a million people to live. That is yet another reason to stop the "festival". A million people cannot be housed, albeit for a few days, in the middle of the countryside with no sanitary provisions and the risk of disease.
2. "About 265 years ago Chowdhary had had a dream that the goddess Gadhimai wanted blood in return for freeing him from prison, protecting him from evil and promising prosperity and power. Initially the goddess asked for a human sacrifice, but Chowdhary offered an animal instead, this was accepted and has been offered every five years since". If that is an example of organised religion, I want none of it. Any "god" who requires the live decapitation of many thousands of animals in return for some sort of favour must be a cruel "god" indeed.
Many blessings to those brave volunteers! If I am honest, I'm not sure that I would have the stomach to witness the mass cruelty and beheadings. The volunteers are wonderful people, who deserve "favours", if anyone does!
Two passages in the diary caught my eye:
1. "There were at least close to a million people living there with numbers peaking around the days of animal sacrifice. Everyone was bathing and defecating in public. Walking through human faeces and the skeletal remains of the sacrificed heads of the buffaloes from 2009 (buried in a pit and freshly dug up for this year’s sacrifice), we reached the place where the founder of this temple, Bhagwan Chowdhary, was buried". Apart from the unspeakable animal cruelty, these hardly seem fit conditions for nearly a million people to live. That is yet another reason to stop the "festival". A million people cannot be housed, albeit for a few days, in the middle of the countryside with no sanitary provisions and the risk of disease.
2. "About 265 years ago Chowdhary had had a dream that the goddess Gadhimai wanted blood in return for freeing him from prison, protecting him from evil and promising prosperity and power. Initially the goddess asked for a human sacrifice, but Chowdhary offered an animal instead, this was accepted and has been offered every five years since". If that is an example of organised religion, I want none of it. Any "god" who requires the live decapitation of many thousands of animals in return for some sort of favour must be a cruel "god" indeed.
Many blessings to those brave volunteers! If I am honest, I'm not sure that I would have the stomach to witness the mass cruelty and beheadings. The volunteers are wonderful people, who deserve "favours", if anyone does!
