End Gadhimai: The World’s Largest Animal Sacrifice

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Source : Force Change
By Jennifer Hartmann

Target: Government of Nepal

Goal: End mass sacrifice of animals at Nepalese temple

Every five years, the Gadhimai Jatra festival takes place in Nepal where half a million animals are brutally slain in honor of the Hindu goddess of power. Because all 500,000 animals must be slaughtered in the first two days of the festival, the participant butchers spend 48 hours massacring thousands of water buffalo, pigs, goats, chickens, and even pigeons and mice.

By the end, their disease-filled slaughterhouses are strewn with the blood and headless bodies of thousands of animals that, prior to their painful deaths, scrambled to escape the massive blades that decapitated them. The next ritual is scheduled to take place in 2014, but with help from the government of Nepal, it is possible to stop this mass slaughter before it is allowed to begin again.

While animals are killed for slaughter every day in countries around the world, this particular tradition is uniquely appalling due to the inhumane methods employed by participants of the ritual in such short periods of time. In one event, the throats of sacrifice animals are slit with knives, leaving them to die a slow, agonizing death while priests sprinkle their blood over religious idols and symbols.

In another, more than 20,000 water buffalo are penned in a yard where men wielding swords attack them until they are all maimed to death. While many animal sacrifices end quickly, these animals are hacked at the neck and legs multiple times before they even fall to ground. The largest animals are mutilated over two dozen times by machete before they are given the mercy to die.

Maneka Gandhi, an Indian politician and activist, is outspoken in her disapproval of the tradition. She has explained that many villagers refuse to end the slaughter for fear that they will dishonor the goddess of power, called Gadhimai. In addition, Gandhi explained that the festival is an incredibly profitable enterprise for priests, moneylenders, and animal sellers, who have incentive only to continue the inhumane practice out of greed.

Sadly, this despicable crime is allowed to continue in order to honor the tradition and religion of the Hindu people, even though profitable business remains the driving force behind it. Despite the fact that many Nepali residents are opposed to the violence of the Gadhimai festival, there has yet to be governmental interference to end this mass carnage once and for all. Urge the government of Nepal to illegalize the world’s largest mass sacrifice of animals.

It is not the deity
that worships blood.
It is manunkind, whose cold heart
Pumps mud.

Karen Lyons Kalmenson