(NP) Indian help sought as Nepal refuses to ban ritual slaughter

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Indian help sought as Nepal refuses to ban ritual slaughter

November 3rd, 2009 - 5:57 pm ICT by IANS

 

By Sudeshna Sarkar

Kathmandu, Nov 3 (IANS) A group of Buddhists from Nepal as well as animal rights

organisations have begun urging India’s state administrations and animal welfare

organisations to help prevent the slaughter of thousands of birds and animals as

Nepal’s government said it would not ban a Hindu festival in the Terai plains

for fear of ruffling religious sentiments.

 

“We have asked the administration of India’s Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states,

which border Nepal, as well as other bordering Indian states to prevent the

smuggling of animals and birds from India to Nepal with the intention of

slaughtering them at the Gadhimai Fair,” said D.B. Bomjan, chairman of the

Tamang Rastriya Mukti Morcha, an NGO from an indigenous community that is

Buddhist by religion.

 

Bomjan said that Nepal’s animal rights organisations have also asked their

counterparts in India to help create mass awareness and stop hundreds of Hindus

from travelling to Nepal’s Bara district across the border at the end of this

month to take part in a religious festival they are describing as the “largest

animal killing fields in the world”.

 

The plea came after Nepal’s communist-led coalition government declined to

intervene in the festival at the Gadhimai Temple in Bara, scheduled to start

from Nov 24.

 

The festival, held once in five years, has grown in notoriety due to the growing

mass animal slaughter at the altar of the goddess. This year, the organisers of

the festival say about 500,000 birds and animals will be killed.

 

Though former Indian minister and noted animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi

wrote to Nepal’s Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, urging the government to

intervene, the spokesman of the government said the state would not use force as

it was a sensitive issue.

 

“We do not plan to use force to prevent the sacrifices,” said Information and

Communications Minister Shankar Pokhrel, who is also the government spokesman.

 

“It is a sensitive issue and we don’t want to hurt religious sentiments.”

 

Bomjan said that in the past, human sacrifices were also considered to be

essential for Hindu festivals. But they had been stopped.

 

“We also used to burn widows on the pyres of their husbands as part of

tradition,” he said. “But didn’t we end that atrocity?”

 

However, the response from Nepal’s major political parties - which three years

ago abolished Hinduism as the state religion and last year ousted the royal

family to turn the Himalayan kingdom into a republic - has been extremely

lukewarm, Bomjan said.

 

“We invited them to discussions to chalk out alternatives to the sacrifices,” he

said. “But they haven’t responded.”

 

A few of them had indicated that they did not want to go against prevailing

religious sentiments, Bomjan said.

 

The Buddhist community is pinning its hopes on Nepal’s “Buddha Boy”.

 

Ram Bahadur Bomjan, who shot to fame nearly five years ago when he started

meditating in a remote forest in the Terai for world peace, has been campaigning

in the nearby villages to stop sacrificing animals in the name of religion.

 

Bomjan said the teenaged wonder, who commands widespread respect and devotion

from Buddhists and Hindus alike, will go to the village where the Gadhimai

temple is located, on Nov 20, four days before the killings start, to make an

appeal.

 

The Gadhimai killings are condemned as the world’s greatest wanton cruelty of

animals and are a severe danger to the environment and public health.

 

In the past, two animal-borne diseases entered Nepal during the fair and this

time, livestock experts are fearing the spread of bird and swine flu.

 

The slaughtered animals are not eaten but the carcasses are left in the open

while rivers of blood drench the fields.

 

 

 

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Thank you for your compassion !

With best regards,

Debasis Chakrabarti

Compassionate Crusaders Trust

http://www.animalcrusaders.org