Animal sacrifice in religious diktats

November 22, 2009

*Dear all,*

* I see a comment that animal sacrifice is contrary to the

principles of Hinduism. It is not. See below. The most outspoken Hindu

figure in favour of animal sacrifice was none other than Swami Vivekananda.

**In his collected letters, this is what he writes about Ashoka, the emperor

who stalled animal sacrifice: " Ashoka stopped the sacrifice of hundreds and

thousands of animals, but how did that endeavour benefit humanity? To

maintain an active life, there is no better food habit than eating meat. My

guru(Ramkrishna) did not eat meat, but if he was offered meat obtained by

the way of animal sacrifice, he would touch the flesh with his finger and

then touch his forehead with the finger. " (Swami Vivekananda's Letters, pages

201and 202, Udbodhan Karjaloy, Kolkata, 1999).*

*Buddhism became popular because Buddha spoke of rationality rather than

blind faith. Many Buddhists challenged Hindu dogmas of animal sacrifice.

This what Buddha said : *

* " Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not

believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not

believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books. Do

not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many

generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything that

agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all,

then accept it and live up to it. " -Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha),

563-483 B.C. " *

*Two of the most important groups who have campaigned against animal

sacrifice in West Bengal are the Science and Rationalists Association of

India and the Humanists Association of India. I had an opportunity to

discuss the animal sacrifice issue with Probir Ghosh, founder secretary of

the Rationalists Association of India and Ms Sumitra Padmanabhan, General

Secretary of the Humanists Association of India. Both these organisations

have campaigned against animal sacrifice for more than a decade. Two years

ago in September they did a very successful demonstration against animal

sacrifice at the Sarbamangala Temple in Bardhaman. The members of these

organisations protested by wearing black badges and made video recordings

and talked to the local people in an effort to prevent animal sacrifice. The

results were quite tangible since instead of two hundred animals that were

scheduled to be sacrificed, twenty were killed. I would say that is huge

progress. They have also made a film on animal sacrifice that has been

telecast on Tara Bangla television. They have protested against the

sacrifice of 10,000 animals in the Boroballoon village in Bardhaman. *

* It is also a myth that Hinduism forbids cow slaughter and beef eating. See

attached.*

* In Islam, the most notable critic of animal sacrifice is author Taslima

Nasreen from Bangladesh. She has elaborated her views in her autobiography,

'Amaar Meyebela'(My Girlhood). What she got in return for her efforts was

virtual house arrest in India and exile in Sweden.*

*I have written against animal sacrifice and have raised my voice against

humane slaughter, on grounds of rationality and not for ostensible salvation

of souls. Protesting animal sacrifice and endorsing fatwas in favour of

humane slaughter is showing double standards. Maybe unavoidable but ought to

be acknowledged as such.*

*Best wishes and kind regards,*

**

* *

*Q: *Question: Is it true that the Vedas do not have animal sacrifices and

are vegetarian?

*A: *No. Animal sacrifice is very clear in the Vedas as a part of the

rituals. The Rig Veda has several very clear references to animal

sacrifices. In a reference to the sacrifice of a goat it says (1.162.2) “The

dappled goat goes straight to heaven, bleating to the place dear to Indra

and to Pusan.” In one of the hymns to the horse (1.162.9-11) it says, “What

part of the steed’s flesh the fly does not eat or is left sticking to the

post or hatchet, or to the slayer’s hands and nails adheres, among the Gods,

too may all this be with thee. Food undigested steaming from his belly and

any odor of raw flesh that remains, let the immolators set in order and

dress the sacrifice with perfect cooking. What from thy body which with fire

is roasted when thou art set upon the spit distills let not that lie on

earth or grass neglected, but to the longing Gods let all be offered.” As

well, the nonb-vegetarian aspect is clear that when this horse was

sacrificed, it was then distributed to those who “were eagerly waiting as

the meat was tested with a trial fork and then distributed (Rig

1.162.12ff.).”

The Yajur Veda contains many more references to animal sacrifices, clear and

often repeated references to animal sacrifices, mainly in association with

the full moon rite, the Soma sacrifice and its supplement. There is an

entire section of the Yajur devoted to optional animal sacrifices (ii.1)

http://www.karma2grace.org/webcomponents/faq/index.asp?det=62

The flesh of the victim was offered in part as a burnt offering, in part

eaten by the priests (who were not vegetarians; cf. the statement by Keith

in the Harvard Oriental Series, Vol 18, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi, Arthur

Berriadale Keith Vol I, p. cvii).

Here are a few clear examples of animal sacrifices in the Yajur Veda (The

Black Yajur, Vol I, Banarsidas, Delhi, A.B. Keith):

“To the Asvins he sacrifices a dusky, to Sarasvati a ram, to Indra a bull”

(Yajur 1.8.21.e)

“He who hates us and whom we hate, here do I cut off his neck…” (Yajur

1.3.1.c)

The latter one a reference to the symbolic and protecting nature of the

animal sacrifice that the sacrificer receives.

Sacrifice was done with several views. First there was simply the

gift-offering. There is also a sense in which the sacrifice gives power or a

way of spiritually carrying out something through the sacrifice such as the

severing of the heads of enemies through the gods. Sacrifice is seen as a

way of pleasing the gods and gaining their favor in contrast to those who do

not sacrifice (e.g. Rig 1.110.7 “those who pour no offering forth”). In the

Soma offering it is the priests offering the gods the juice that gives them

pleasure and strength to win wealth and help from the gods for those who

offer the Soma (cf. Rig 1.107 and 108).

Sacrifice gains spiritual favor and ascendancy in divinity. The Ribhus

gained immortality through their zealous sacrificing (Rig 1.110.4).

Sacrifice was to endue the sacrificer with power and wealth from the gods

(Rig 1.111.2).

The Old Testament Jewish sacrificial system (which also sacrificed animals)

was temporary and symbolic as representing the need for men to have

forgiveness of sins. In the ‘scapegoat’ sacrifice, the sins of the people

were symbolically laid upon the goat and then it was sent (to its inevitable

death) outside the camp as a way of visibly expressing the need of man for

forgiveness. In the day of atonement, the high priest would take hyssop (a

type of plant) and dip it in the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkle it on

the people. This was done to represent that fact that the people themselves

were guilty and their lives were forfeit. In the atonement sacrifice, there

was a substitute that was provided in the animal and the blood then

symbolized their forgiveness and the satisfaction of their sins. In the New

Testament, Jesus takes the title, “The Lamb of God,” who takes away the sins

of the world. This idea of sacrificial substitute provides the background

for giving a richness of understanding of the death of Jesus for the sins of

mankind. He is the lamb whose blood is poured out as the substitute for men.

The thing that is crucially different of course is that a lamb cannot take

the place of a man, as man is responsible for sin in a way an animal is not.

Jesus figuratively is the lamb, but in reality is of course a man. He can

take the place of a man as a substitute. The efficacy of the sacrifice of

Jesus is that he is not only a man, but claimed to be God incarnate as well

and so could have the “weight” to forgive not only one other man, but the

sins of the whole world.

*- Wyatt Robertson*

http://www.karma2grace.org/webcomponents/faq/index.asp?det=62

One man's beef...

Pankaj Mishra finds the roots of post-Partition conflict in DN Jha's account

of India's sacred cows, The Myth of the Holy Cow

Pankaj Mishra

The Guardian, Saturday 13 July 2002

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/13/historybooks.highereducation#histor\

y-byline>

*The Myth of the Holy Cow*

by DN Jha

183pp, Verso, £16

Shortly before he died, at the age of 101, the Anglo-Bengali scholar and

polemicist Nirad Chaudhuri received the leader of the Hindu nationalist BJP

party, LK Advani, at his home in Oxford. The Hindu nationalists, who

recently presided in Gujarat over India's worst-ever anti-Muslim pogrom, had

been pleased by some of Chaudhuri's offhand denunciations of the medieval

Muslim invaders of India.

They probably hoped that India's most distinguished intellectual exile would

do more for their fascistic cause, but they hadn't fully reckoned with

Chaudhuri, who interrogated Advani about his knowledge of India. He was

still full of scorn when I saw him weeks later. " These wretched BJP types, "

he told me, " they call themselves cultural nationalists, speak of an ancient

Hindu ethos, yet do not know Sanskrit, know nothing of their own history.

Such barbarous people! "

The sayings and beliefs of religious fundamentalists are often taken at face

value. As fervent believers, they seem not to have any truck with rational

politics. But it is important to realise how pathetically little they know

about the religious and spiritual traditions that supposedly inform their

political beliefs; and how the superior morality they noisily lay claim to

is important to them only so far as it can give legitimacy to resolutely

unspiritual ambitions to capture state power in their native countries. This

marks most of the fundamentalists as inescapably modern: people quite like

us.

The middle-class Hindu nationalists of India are no different. Their agenda

- a militaristic nation-state with a culturally homogeneous population of

Hindus - resembles not so much anything in the Bhagavad-Gita as it does the

nation- and empire-building projects of 19th-century Europe.

They redefine many of their preferred aspects of Indian tradition and

culture, and present them as eternal and immutable, interrupted only by

alien Muslims and other unclean foreigners. They fear the kind of

scholarship that reveals that Indian tradition, like all other traditions,

is a man-made thing, vulnerable to endless change, revision, and

appropriation.

The education minister in the present Indian government, a promoter of

astrology and something called " Vedic Mathematics " , recently compared

India's most distinguished intellectuals to terrorists. And now DN Jha, a

respected historian of ancient India, is under attack for daring to examine

the myth of the sacred cow.

His book was turned down by its original publishers in Delhi, who were

afraid of provoking the Hindu fanatics who have recently been seen

vandalising art exhibitions and burning books. One extremist even sentenced

Jha to death in a fatwa - plainly a venerable Hindu tradition, this.

It may be hard at first to figure out what the fuss is about. Certainly, Jha

did not set out to provoke. His main thesis - that beef-eating was not

unknown to Indians of the pre-Muslim period - is neither new nor startling.

Visitors to India are often baffled by the wide berth given to even those

very emaciated and diseased cows that seem to exist for no other purpose

than to slow down the traffic on some of the world's most dangerous roads.

But the cow wasn't sacred to the nomads and pastoralists from Central Asia

who settled North India in the second millennium BC and created the high

Brahminical culture of what we now know as Hinduism.

These Indians slaughtered cattle for both food and the elaborate sacrificial

rituals prescribed by the Vedas, the first and the holiest Indian

scriptures. After they settled down and turned to agriculture, they put a

slightly higher value upon the cow: it produced milk, ghee, yoghurt and

manure and could be used for ploughing and transport as well.

Indian religion and philosophy after the Vedas rejected the ritual killing

of animals. This may have also served to protect the cow. But beef eating

was still not considered a sin. It is often casually referred to in the

earliest Buddhist texts. The great Indian emperor Ashoka, who instituted

non-violence as state policy in the third century BC, did not ban the

slaughter of cattle.

It is only in the early medieval period that the eating of beef became a

taboo, if only for upper-caste Hindus. But the cow was far from holy. It is

significant that no cow-goddesses, or temples to cows, feature in India's

anarchically all-inclusive polytheisms.

Jha elaborates on how variously the ancient Indians saw their cattle; and he

does so, if not with a graceful prose-style, then with an impressive range

of textual evidence.

It is good to have all the relevant facts in one book. But, perhaps, Jha

would have better engaged the general reader had he explained in greater

detail why upper-caste Hindus have been more passionate about the cow in the

last century and a half than at any other time in India's history. Or, as DD

Kosambi put it in his Ancient India (1965), why " a modern orthodox Hindu

would place beef-eating on the same level as cannibalism, whereas Vedic

Brahmins had fattened upon a steady diet of sacrificed beef " .

The answer lies in the 19th century, when many newly emergent middle-class

Hindus began to see the cow as an important symbol of a glorious tradition

defiled by Muslim rule over India. For these Hindus, the cause for banning

cow-slaughter became a badge of identity, part of their quest for political

power in post-colonial India. Educated Muslims felt excluded from, even

scorned by, these Hindu notions of the Indian past; and they developed their

own separatist fantasies.

The newly invented traditions helped create two antagonistic political

elites, defined primarily by religion, and eventually led to the disastrous

partition of India. The nationalist myths are now incarnated by the two

nuclear-armed nation-states of India and Pakistan.

DN Jha is their most recent victim; but probably no one has suffered more

from them than the poor holy cow that, bereft of a clear economic or

religious role, slowly dwindles on Indian roads, until the day it is run

over, when it receives the final kindness of being allowed to bleed to

death.

*·* Pankaj Mishra is the author of The Romantics (Picador)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/13/historybooks.highereducation

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061011/asp/atleisure/story_6853219.asp

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Don’t be cruel

Animal rights activists are upbeat about a recent Calcutta High Court

judgement. But loopholes in the law continue to undermine the cause of

animal welfare, says ** Animal wrongs: A calf being

dragged to be sacrificed to Goddess Durga

When the Calcutta High Court delivered a judgement banning the sacrifice of

animals in public view at the Kalighat temple last month, animal rights

activists found a reason to celebrate. After all, the judgement came just

before the World Animal Day on October 4.

“The judgement is a step in the right direction,” says Debashis Chakrabarti,

managing trustee of Compassionate Crusaders Trust, an animal welfare

organisation based in Calcutta.

Of course, there are several laws in the country to look after the interests

of animals, the most prominent among them being the Prevention of Cruelty to

Animals Act, 1960. But activists feel that apart from the fact that this law

is not implemented effectively, it is also open to abuse. “The PCA Act is a

good Act but is not being properly implemented,” says Brindha Nandakumar,

legal consultant to Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA), an animal

welfare organisation based in Bangalore. At the moment, two petitions are

pending in the Supreme Court of India concerning non-implementation of the

PCA Act.

The PCA Act also grants some exemptions. Section 14 of the Act states,

“Nothing contained in this Act shall render unlawful the performance of

experiments on animals for the purpose of advancement by new discovery of

physiological knowledge which will be useful for saving of human life”.

Moreover, Section 28 of the Act says, “Nothing contained in this Act shall

render it an offence to kill any animal in a manner required by the religion

of any community.” Activists feel that these two sections are open to

misuse. As Dr Chinny Krishna, director of Blue Cross in Chennai, one of

India’s largest animal welfare organisations, points out, “Sadly, the

biggest offenders in both cases are government institutions and municipal

bodies.” He also emphasises that apart from the lack of enforcement, the

major failure of the law is the extremely low levels of penalties

prescribed.

Raj Panjwani, a practising advocate at the Supreme Court of India and author

of the book *Animal Laws of India* stresses that Section 28 of the PCA Act

is open to interpretation and is not without its concomitant difficulties.

“How does one define religion and the specific rituals required for animal

sacrifice,” questions Panjwani.

However, some lawyers do not see these sections as posing a threat to animal

welfare. Gitanath Ganguly, advocate at the Calcutta High Court and executive

chairman of Legal Aid Services, West Bengal, explains, “The express

provision of Section 28 of the PCA Act is subject to Article 25 of the

Indian Constitution that prohibits any religious action for the purpose of

public order, morality and health.”

It is also true that most people are ignorant of this law. “It is sad that

90 per cent of the lawyers in this country are woefully ignorant of animal

rights laws,” says Pradeep Kumar Nath, founder of the Vishakhapatnam Society

for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Nath cites a specific example

where the law is failing animals. “If we catch an overloaded lorry with

cattle (overloading a vehicle with animals is illegal under the PCA Act),

and file an FIR, seven out of 10 offenders go scot free with a fine of Rs 50

or Rs 250 per lorry,” he says. Nath suggests that mobile courts should be

set up to efficiently deal with cases of cruelty to animals.

Some activists feel that the PCA Act should be used along with other animal

laws to help Indian animals. Dr Sandeep Jain, state coordinator of the

People for Animals (Punjab) and a former member of the Animal Welfare Board

of India, says that cases of cruelty to animals can be dealt with under some

sections of the Indian Penal Code. “Sections 279, 289, 428 and 429 of the

IPC can be used to deal with animal cruelty cases where the animal is

crippled or dead,” he mentions. He also points out that the Prevention of

Cruelty to Draught and Pack Animals Rules, 1965, and the Performing Animal

(Registration) Rules of 2001 can be of help here.

Some, though, are of the opinion that for animal laws in India to be

effective, the parameters of cruelty need to be defined clearly. Sanjay

Upadhyay, a Supreme Court lawyer and managing partner of the Enviro Legal

Defense Firm in Delhi mentions that the PCA Act is liable to be misused

unless specific parameters are laid down to define what constitutes cruelty.

According to Upadhyay, the exemptions should be treated as exceptions to the

rule and not as integral norms. “It is important to understand the different

kinds of cruelty in order to take better legal action and to make the law

more effective,” he says.

Until that happens, we will continue to see animals being treated with

contempt and cruelty — goats kept in cramped meat shops, cattle pulling

overloaded carts and chickens being slaughtered in public view.

November 23, 2009

Dear

If you are referring to my opinion on the Gadhimai sacrifice, of course

there was sacrifice in the Vedic period, and I have very clearly said so.

However, the same Vedas also condemn killing and I prefer to respect and

quote those parts. After all, since Gadhimai is being conducted in the

name of the Hindu religion, it is important to highlight what the Vedas

say AGAINST the killing of animals, unless you want to perpetuate

sacrifice.

It is unfortunate that, even as the rest of educated India has progressed

and stopped animal sacrifice, Bengal and the North East (Assam, etc.)

continues to do so. I went to Kalighat where the stench of blood was

terrible. As a deeply religious and practising Hindu, I am moved when I

visit temples, but Kalighat left me cold and disgusted. I did not even let

the priest put the kumkum on my forehead, as I felt I would be cursed by

the tears of the animals. Yes, there is animal sacrifice in village

temples in the south too. But, as they grow in size and stature, they give

up sacrifice. I have personally stopped animal sacrifice in over 50

village temples of the south - why don't you make it your mission in West

Bengal?

As for Swami Vivekananda eating meat, the less said the better. In my

opinion, he was a political Hindu and not a realised soul, unlike his

contemporary Swami Ramana Maharshi. I do not want to comment about

individuals, but I have written extensively about meat and beef-eating

and what the Buddha said about sacrifice and meat-eating in my forthcoming

book on Sacred Animals of India, published by Penguin and to be released

at the World Book Fair in the end of January. (I have only touched on it

in my earlier version - the Penguin edition goes deeply into the subject).

In any case, even if my Vedic ancestors sacrificed animals, I don't care.

I feel we have evolved over the last 5000 years to know better. Since

there is enough in Hindu religious texts to support the concept of ahimsa

- which first appears in the Upanishads - I would like to quote from those

to dissuade potential sacrificers.

Finally, human sacrifice was in vogue too. So, should we revive that to

please a few blood-thirsty idiots?

Regards

Nanditha Krishna

*Dear all,*

> * I see a comment that animal sacrifice is contrary to the

> principles of Hinduism. It is not. See below. The most outspoken Hindu

> figure in favour of animal sacrifice was none other than Swami

> Vivekananda.

> **In his collected letters, this is what he writes about Ashoka, the

> emperor

> who stalled animal sacrifice: " Ashoka stopped the sacrifice of hundreds and

> thousands of animals, but how did that endeavour benefit humanity? To

> maintain an active life, there is no better food habit than eating meat.

> My

> guru(Ramkrishna) did not eat meat, but if he was offered meat obtained by

> the way of animal sacrifice, he would touch the flesh with his finger and

> then touch his forehead with the finger. " (Swami Vivekananda's Letters,

> pages

> 201and 202, Udbodhan Karjaloy, Kolkata, 1999).*

> *Buddhism became popular because Buddha spoke of rationality rather than

> blind faith. Many Buddhists challenged Hindu dogmas of animal sacrifice.

> This what Buddha said : *

> * " Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not

> believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do

> not

> believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books.

> Do

> not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and

> elders.

> Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many

> generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything

> that

> agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and

> all,

> then accept it and live up to it. " -Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha),

> 563-483 B.C. " *

> *Two of the most important groups who have campaigned against animal

> sacrifice in West Bengal are the Science and Rationalists Association of

> India and the Humanists Association of India. I had an opportunity to

> discuss the animal sacrifice issue with Probir Ghosh, founder secretary of

> the Rationalists Association of India and Ms Sumitra Padmanabhan, General

> Secretary of the Humanists Association of India. Both these organisations

> have campaigned against animal sacrifice for more than a decade. Two years

> ago in September they did a very successful demonstration against animal

> sacrifice at the Sarbamangala Temple in Bardhaman. The members of these

> organisations protested by wearing black badges and made video recordings

> and talked to the local people in an effort to prevent animal sacrifice.

> The

> results were quite tangible since instead of two hundred animals that were

> scheduled to be sacrificed, twenty were killed. I would say that is huge

> progress. They have also made a film on animal sacrifice that has been

> telecast on Tara Bangla television. They have protested against the

> sacrifice of 10,000 animals in the Boroballoon village in Bardhaman. *

> * It is also a myth that Hinduism forbids cow slaughter and beef eating.

> See

> attached.*

> * In Islam, the most notable critic of animal sacrifice is author Taslima

> Nasreen from Bangladesh. She has elaborated her views in her

> autobiography,

> 'Amaar Meyebela'(My Girlhood). What she got in return for her efforts was

> virtual house arrest in India and exile in Sweden.*

> *I have written against animal sacrifice and have raised my voice against

> humane slaughter, on grounds of rationality and not for ostensible

> salvation

> of souls. Protesting animal sacrifice and endorsing fatwas in favour of

> humane slaughter is showing double standards. Maybe unavoidable but ought

> to

> be acknowledged as such.*

> *Best wishes and kind regards,*

> **

> * *

> *Q: *Question: Is it true that the Vedas do not have animal sacrifices and

> are vegetarian?

> *A: *No. Animal sacrifice is very clear in the Vedas as a part of the

> rituals. The Rig Veda has several very clear references to animal

> sacrifices. In a reference to the sacrifice of a goat it says (1.162.2)

> “The

> dappled goat goes straight to heaven, bleating to the place dear to Indra

> and to Pusan.” In one of the hymns to the horse (1.162.9-11) it says,

> “What

> part of the steed’s flesh the fly does not eat or is left sticking to the

> post or hatchet, or to the slayer’s hands and nails adheres, among the

> Gods,

> too may all this be with thee. Food undigested steaming from his belly and

> any odor of raw flesh that remains, let the immolators set in order and

> dress the sacrifice with perfect cooking. What from thy body which with

> fire

> is roasted when thou art set upon the spit distills let not that lie on

> earth or grass neglected, but to the longing Gods let all be offered.” As

> well, the nonb-vegetarian aspect is clear that when this horse was

> sacrificed, it was then distributed to those who “were eagerly waiting as

> the meat was tested with a trial fork and then distributed (Rig

> 1.162.12ff.).”

> The Yajur Veda contains many more references to animal sacrifices, clear

> and

> often repeated references to animal sacrifices, mainly in association with

> the full moon rite, the Soma sacrifice and its supplement. There is an

> entire section of the Yajur devoted to optional animal sacrifices (ii.1)

> http://www.karma2grace.org/webcomponents/faq/index.asp?det=62

>

> The flesh of the victim was offered in part as a burnt offering, in part

> eaten by the priests (who were not vegetarians; cf. the statement by Keith

> in the Harvard Oriental Series, Vol 18, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi, Arthur

> Berriadale Keith Vol I, p. cvii).

> Here are a few clear examples of animal sacrifices in the Yajur Veda (The

> Black Yajur, Vol I, Banarsidas, Delhi, A.B. Keith):

> “To the Asvins he sacrifices a dusky, to Sarasvati a ram, to Indra a bull”

> (Yajur 1.8.21.e)

> “He who hates us and whom we hate, here do I cut off his neck…” (Yajur

> 1.3.1.c)

> The latter one a reference to the symbolic and protecting nature of the

> animal sacrifice that the sacrificer receives.

> Sacrifice was done with several views. First there was simply the

> gift-offering. There is also a sense in which the sacrifice gives power or

> a

> way of spiritually carrying out something through the sacrifice such as

> the

> severing of the heads of enemies through the gods. Sacrifice is seen as a

> way of pleasing the gods and gaining their favor in contrast to those who

> do

> not sacrifice (e.g. Rig 1.110.7 “those who pour no offering forth”). In

> the

> Soma offering it is the priests offering the gods the juice that gives

> them

> pleasure and strength to win wealth and help from the gods for those who

> offer the Soma (cf. Rig 1.107 and 108).

> Sacrifice gains spiritual favor and ascendancy in divinity. The Ribhus

> gained immortality through their zealous sacrificing (Rig 1.110.4).

> Sacrifice was to endue the sacrificer with power and wealth from the gods

> (Rig 1.111.2).

> The Old Testament Jewish sacrificial system (which also sacrificed

> animals)

> was temporary and symbolic as representing the need for men to have

> forgiveness of sins. In the ‘scapegoat’ sacrifice, the sins of the people

> were symbolically laid upon the goat and then it was sent (to its

> inevitable

> death) outside the camp as a way of visibly expressing the need of man for

> forgiveness. In the day of atonement, the high priest would take hyssop (a

> type of plant) and dip it in the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkle it on

> the people. This was done to represent that fact that the people

> themselves

> were guilty and their lives were forfeit. In the atonement sacrifice,

> there

> was a substitute that was provided in the animal and the blood then

> symbolized their forgiveness and the satisfaction of their sins. In the

> New

> Testament, Jesus takes the title, “The Lamb of God,” who takes away the

> sins

> of the world. This idea of sacrificial substitute provides the background

> for giving a richness of understanding of the death of Jesus for the sins

> of

> mankind. He is the lamb whose blood is poured out as the substitute for

> men.

> The thing that is crucially different of course is that a lamb cannot take

> the place of a man, as man is responsible for sin in a way an animal is

> not.

> Jesus figuratively is the lamb, but in reality is of course a man. He can

> take the place of a man as a substitute. The efficacy of the sacrifice of

> Jesus is that he is not only a man, but claimed to be God incarnate as

> well

> and so could have the “weight” to forgive not only one other man, but the

> sins of the whole world.

>

> *- Wyatt Robertson*

> http://www.karma2grace.org/webcomponents/faq/index.asp?det=62

>

> One man's beef...

>

> Pankaj Mishra finds the roots of post-Partition conflict in DN Jha's

> account

> of India's sacred cows, The Myth of the Holy Cow

>

> Pankaj Mishra

>

> The Guardian, Saturday 13 July 2002

>

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/13/historybooks.highereducation#histor\

y-byline>

>

> *The Myth of the Holy Cow*

> by DN Jha

> 183pp, Verso, £16

>

> Shortly before he died, at the age of 101, the Anglo-Bengali scholar and

> polemicist Nirad Chaudhuri received the leader of the Hindu nationalist

> BJP

> party, LK Advani, at his home in Oxford. The Hindu nationalists, who

> recently presided in Gujarat over India's worst-ever anti-Muslim pogrom,

> had

> been pleased by some of Chaudhuri's offhand denunciations of the medieval

> Muslim invaders of India.

>

> They probably hoped that India's most distinguished intellectual exile

> would

> do more for their fascistic cause, but they hadn't fully reckoned with

> Chaudhuri, who interrogated Advani about his knowledge of India. He was

> still full of scorn when I saw him weeks later. " These wretched BJP

> types, "

> he told me, " they call themselves cultural nationalists, speak of an

> ancient

> Hindu ethos, yet do not know Sanskrit, know nothing of their own history.

> Such barbarous people! "

>

> The sayings and beliefs of religious fundamentalists are often taken at

> face

> value. As fervent believers, they seem not to have any truck with rational

> politics. But it is important to realise how pathetically little they know

> about the religious and spiritual traditions that supposedly inform their

> political beliefs; and how the superior morality they noisily lay claim to

> is important to them only so far as it can give legitimacy to resolutely

> unspiritual ambitions to capture state power in their native countries.

> This

> marks most of the fundamentalists as inescapably modern: people quite like

> us.

>

> The middle-class Hindu nationalists of India are no different. Their

> agenda

> - a militaristic nation-state with a culturally homogeneous population of

> Hindus - resembles not so much anything in the Bhagavad-Gita as it does

> the

> nation- and empire-building projects of 19th-century Europe.

>

> They redefine many of their preferred aspects of Indian tradition and

> culture, and present them as eternal and immutable, interrupted only by

> alien Muslims and other unclean foreigners. They fear the kind of

> scholarship that reveals that Indian tradition, like all other traditions,

> is a man-made thing, vulnerable to endless change, revision, and

> appropriation.

>

> The education minister in the present Indian government, a promoter of

> astrology and something called " Vedic Mathematics " , recently compared

> India's most distinguished intellectuals to terrorists. And now DN Jha, a

> respected historian of ancient India, is under attack for daring to

> examine

> the myth of the sacred cow.

>

> His book was turned down by its original publishers in Delhi, who were

> afraid of provoking the Hindu fanatics who have recently been seen

> vandalising art exhibitions and burning books. One extremist even

> sentenced

> Jha to death in a fatwa - plainly a venerable Hindu tradition, this.

>

> It may be hard at first to figure out what the fuss is about. Certainly,

> Jha

> did not set out to provoke. His main thesis - that beef-eating was not

> unknown to Indians of the pre-Muslim period - is neither new nor

> startling.

>

> Visitors to India are often baffled by the wide berth given to even those

> very emaciated and diseased cows that seem to exist for no other purpose

> than to slow down the traffic on some of the world's most dangerous roads.

> But the cow wasn't sacred to the nomads and pastoralists from Central Asia

> who settled North India in the second millennium BC and created the high

> Brahminical culture of what we now know as Hinduism.

>

> These Indians slaughtered cattle for both food and the elaborate

> sacrificial

> rituals prescribed by the Vedas, the first and the holiest Indian

> scriptures. After they settled down and turned to agriculture, they put a

> slightly higher value upon the cow: it produced milk, ghee, yoghurt and

> manure and could be used for ploughing and transport as well.

>

> Indian religion and philosophy after the Vedas rejected the ritual killing

> of animals. This may have also served to protect the cow. But beef eating

> was still not considered a sin. It is often casually referred to in the

> earliest Buddhist texts. The great Indian emperor Ashoka, who instituted

> non-violence as state policy in the third century BC, did not ban the

> slaughter of cattle.

>

> It is only in the early medieval period that the eating of beef became a

> taboo, if only for upper-caste Hindus. But the cow was far from holy. It

> is

> significant that no cow-goddesses, or temples to cows, feature in India's

> anarchically all-inclusive polytheisms.

>

> Jha elaborates on how variously the ancient Indians saw their cattle; and

> he

> does so, if not with a graceful prose-style, then with an impressive range

> of textual evidence.

>

> It is good to have all the relevant facts in one book. But, perhaps, Jha

> would have better engaged the general reader had he explained in greater

> detail why upper-caste Hindus have been more passionate about the cow in

> the

> last century and a half than at any other time in India's history. Or, as

> DD

> Kosambi put it in his Ancient India (1965), why " a modern orthodox Hindu

> would place beef-eating on the same level as cannibalism, whereas Vedic

> Brahmins had fattened upon a steady diet of sacrificed beef " .

>

> The answer lies in the 19th century, when many newly emergent middle-class

> Hindus began to see the cow as an important symbol of a glorious tradition

> defiled by Muslim rule over India. For these Hindus, the cause for banning

> cow-slaughter became a badge of identity, part of their quest for

> political

> power in post-colonial India. Educated Muslims felt excluded from, even

> scorned by, these Hindu notions of the Indian past; and they developed

> their

> own separatist fantasies.

>

> The newly invented traditions helped create two antagonistic political

> elites, defined primarily by religion, and eventually led to the

> disastrous

> partition of India. The nationalist myths are now incarnated by the two

> nuclear-armed nation-states of India and Pakistan.

>

> DN Jha is their most recent victim; but probably no one has suffered more

> from them than the poor holy cow that, bereft of a clear economic or

> religious role, slowly dwindles on Indian roads, until the day it is run

> over, when it receives the final kindness of being allowed to bleed to

> death.

>

> *·* Pankaj Mishra is the author of The Romantics (Picador)

>

> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/13/historybooks.highereducation

>

> http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061011/asp/atleisure/story_6853219.asp

>

> Wednesday, October 11, 2006

>

> Don’t be cruel

> Animal rights activists are upbeat about a recent Calcutta High Court

> judgement. But loopholes in the law continue to undermine the cause of

> animal welfare, says ** Animal wrongs: A calf being

> dragged to be sacrificed to Goddess Durga

>

> When the Calcutta High Court delivered a judgement banning the sacrifice

> of

> animals in public view at the Kalighat temple last month, animal rights

> activists found a reason to celebrate. After all, the judgement came just

> before the World Animal Day on October 4.

>

> “The judgement is a step in the right direction,” says Debashis

> Chakrabarti,

> managing trustee of Compassionate Crusaders Trust, an animal welfare

> organisation based in Calcutta.

>

> Of course, there are several laws in the country to look after the

> interests

> of animals, the most prominent among them being the Prevention of Cruelty

> to

> Animals Act, 1960. But activists feel that apart from the fact that this

> law

> is not implemented effectively, it is also open to abuse. “The PCA Act is

> a

> good Act but is not being properly implemented,” says Brindha Nandakumar,

> legal consultant to Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA), an animal

> welfare organisation based in Bangalore. At the moment, two petitions are

> pending in the Supreme Court of India concerning non-implementation of the

> PCA Act.

>

> The PCA Act also grants some exemptions. Section 14 of the Act states,

> “Nothing contained in this Act shall render unlawful the performance of

> experiments on animals for the purpose of advancement by new discovery of

> physiological knowledge which will be useful for saving of human life”.

> Moreover, Section 28 of the Act says, “Nothing contained in this Act shall

> render it an offence to kill any animal in a manner required by the

> religion

> of any community.” Activists feel that these two sections are open to

> misuse. As Dr Chinny Krishna, director of Blue Cross in Chennai, one of

> India’s largest animal welfare organisations, points out, “Sadly, the

> biggest offenders in both cases are government institutions and municipal

> bodies.” He also emphasises that apart from the lack of enforcement, the

> major failure of the law is the extremely low levels of penalties

> prescribed.

>

> Raj Panjwani, a practising advocate at the Supreme Court of India and

> author

> of the book *Animal Laws of India* stresses that Section 28 of the PCA Act

> is open to interpretation and is not without its concomitant difficulties.

> “How does one define religion and the specific rituals required for animal

> sacrifice,” questions Panjwani.

>

> However, some lawyers do not see these sections as posing a threat to

> animal

> welfare. Gitanath Ganguly, advocate at the Calcutta High Court and

> executive

> chairman of Legal Aid Services, West Bengal, explains, “The express

> provision of Section 28 of the PCA Act is subject to Article 25 of the

> Indian Constitution that prohibits any religious action for the purpose of

> public order, morality and health.”

>

> It is also true that most people are ignorant of this law. “It is sad that

> 90 per cent of the lawyers in this country are woefully ignorant of animal

> rights laws,” says Pradeep Kumar Nath, founder of the Vishakhapatnam

> Society

> for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Nath cites a specific example

> where the law is failing animals. “If we catch an overloaded lorry with

> cattle (overloading a vehicle with animals is illegal under the PCA Act),

> and file an FIR, seven out of 10 offenders go scot free with a fine of Rs

> 50

> or Rs 250 per lorry,” he says. Nath suggests that mobile courts should be

> set up to efficiently deal with cases of cruelty to animals.

>

> Some activists feel that the PCA Act should be used along with other

> animal

> laws to help Indian animals. Dr Sandeep Jain, state coordinator of the

> People for Animals (Punjab) and a former member of the Animal Welfare

> Board

> of India, says that cases of cruelty to animals can be dealt with under

> some

> sections of the Indian Penal Code. “Sections 279, 289, 428 and 429 of the

> IPC can be used to deal with animal cruelty cases where the animal is

> crippled or dead,” he mentions. He also points out that the Prevention of

> Cruelty to Draught and Pack Animals Rules, 1965, and the Performing Animal

> (Registration) Rules of 2001 can be of help here.

>

> Some, though, are of the opinion that for animal laws in India to be

> effective, the parameters of cruelty need to be defined clearly. Sanjay

> Upadhyay, a Supreme Court lawyer and managing partner of the Enviro Legal

> Defense Firm in Delhi mentions that the PCA Act is liable to be misused

> unless specific parameters are laid down to define what constitutes

> cruelty.

> According to Upadhyay, the exemptions should be treated as exceptions to

> the

> rule and not as integral norms. “It is important to understand the

> different

> kinds of cruelty in order to take better legal action and to make the law

> more effective,” he says.

>

> Until that happens, we will continue to see animals being treated with

> contempt and cruelty — goats kept in cramped meat shops, cattle pulling

> overloaded carts and chickens being slaughtered in public view.

>

November 23, 2009

Dear ,

I am sure that you, of all people, are aware of the affidavit filed in

both

the West Bengal High Court and the Supreme Court by the Ramakrishna

Mission

(RM). It clearly and unequivocally states that the RM does not consider

itself a Hindu organisation.

Vivekananda was a political Hindu and, when he visited Madras both prior

to his 1893 visit to Chicago and afterwards, he specifically mentioned

how amazed and happy he was with the vegetarianism he saw.

Please remember that Ramakrishna and Vivekananda grew up in and around

Kalighat - a stinking hellhole for animals and the scene of unprecented

savage butchery. Any one growing up in this atmosphere will have become

totally desensitised before he or she can begin to reason. Vivekananda

was not " the most outspoken Hindu figure " as you called him. As I

mentioned, he himself did not consider himself a Hindu. His birthplace,

Bengal, and the rest of the North East is as Azam so poignantly put it,

the worst place for animals in India. This view has been expressed by

you in your many scholarly writings. In spite of the atmosphere he grew

up in, Ramakrishna was a vegetarian.

Hinduism is a way of life which is several thousand years old and, in

the course of the last five thousand years has absorbed many tribal

practices.

You are absolutely correct when you say that sacrifice is mentioned in

the Vedas and, with your learning, I am sure you can quote chapter and

verse where the Vedas speak against this pernicious practice.

The bottom line is simple: over the last five thousand years, have we as

human beings evolved or not?

Remember that man created God in his image and not the other way around.

To a butcher, his God would be the most efficient butcher; to a dog, his

god would be the largest super dog he can think of; to me as a Hindu,

many of the idols I bow before have eight arms because I have only two -

and what better way to show His greater power than by showing Him with

four times as many arms as an ordinary human? My universe is too small

for two Gods - in whatever way you call the supreme power, it remains

the same.

Warm regards

S. Chinny Krishna

aapn [aapn ] On Behalf Of

22 November 2009 20:00

AAPN List

Animal sacrifice in religious diktats

*Dear all,*

* I see a comment that animal sacrifice is contrary to the

principles of Hinduism. It is not. See below. The most outspoken Hindu

figure in favour of animal sacrifice was none other than Swami

Vivekananda.

**In his collected letters, this is what he writes about Ashoka, the

emperor

who stalled animal sacrifice: " Ashoka stopped the sacrifice of hundreds

and

thousands of animals, but how did that endeavour benefit humanity? To

maintain an active life, there is no better food habit than eating meat.

My

guru(Ramkrishna) did not eat meat, but if he was offered meat obtained

by

the way of animal sacrifice, he would touch the flesh with his finger

and

then touch his forehead with the finger. " (Swami Vivekananda's Letters,

pages

201and 202, Udbodhan Karjaloy, Kolkata, 1999).*

*Buddhism became popular because Buddha spoke of rationality rather than

blind faith. Many Buddhists challenged Hindu dogmas of animal sacrifice.

This what Buddha said : *

* " Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not

believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do

not

believe in anything because it is found written in your religious books.

Do

not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and

elders.

Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many

generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find anything

that

agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and

all,

then accept it and live up to it. " -Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha),

563-483 B.C. " *

*Two of the most important groups who have campaigned against animal

sacrifice in West Bengal are the Science and Rationalists Association of

India and the Humanists Association of India. I had an opportunity to

discuss the animal sacrifice issue with Probir Ghosh, founder secretary

of

the Rationalists Association of India and Ms Sumitra Padmanabhan,

General

Secretary of the Humanists Association of India. Both these

organisations

have campaigned against animal sacrifice for more than a decade. Two

years

ago in September they did a very successful demonstration against animal

sacrifice at the Sarbamangala Temple in Bardhaman. The members of these

organisations protested by wearing black badges and made video

recordings

and talked to the local people in an effort to prevent animal sacrifice.

The

results were quite tangible since instead of two hundred animals that

were

scheduled to be sacrificed, twenty were killed. I would say that is huge

progress. They have also made a film on animal sacrifice that has been

telecast on Tara Bangla television. They have protested against the

sacrifice of 10,000 animals in the Boroballoon village in Bardhaman. *

* It is also a myth that Hinduism forbids cow slaughter and beef eating.

See

attached.*

* In Islam, the most notable critic of animal sacrifice is author

Taslima

Nasreen from Bangladesh. She has elaborated her views in her

autobiography,

'Amaar Meyebela'(My Girlhood). What she got in return for her efforts

was

virtual house arrest in India and exile in Sweden.*

*I have written against animal sacrifice and have raised my voice

against

humane slaughter, on grounds of rationality and not for ostensible

salvation

of souls. Protesting animal sacrifice and endorsing fatwas in favour of

humane slaughter is showing double standards. Maybe unavoidable but

ought to

be acknowledged as such.*

*Best wishes and kind regards,*

**

*

*Q: *Question: Is it true that the Vedas do not have animal sacrifices

and

are vegetarian?

*A: *No. Animal sacrifice is very clear in the Vedas as a part of the

rituals. The Rig Veda has several very clear references to animal

sacrifices. In a reference to the sacrifice of a goat it says (1.162.2)

“The

dappled goat goes straight to heaven, bleating to the place dear to

Indra

and to Pusan.” In one of the hymns to the horse (1.162.9-11) it says,

“What

part of the steed’s flesh the fly does not eat or is left sticking to

the

post or hatchet, or to the slayer’s hands and nails adheres, among the

Gods,

too may all this be with thee. Food undigested steaming from his belly

and

any odor of raw flesh that remains, let the immolators set in order and

dress the sacrifice with perfect cooking. What from thy body which with

fire

is roasted when thou art set upon the spit distills let not that lie on

earth or grass neglected, but to the longing Gods let all be offered.”

As

well, the nonb-vegetarian aspect is clear that when this horse was

sacrificed, it was then distributed to those who “were eagerly waiting

as

the meat was tested with a trial fork and then distributed (Rig

1.162.12ff.).”

The Yajur Veda contains many more references to animal sacrifices, clear

and

often repeated references to animal sacrifices, mainly in association

with

the full moon rite, the Soma sacrifice and its supplement. There is an

entire section of the Yajur devoted to optional animal sacrifices (ii.1)

http://www.karma2grace.org/webcomponents/faq/index.asp?det=62

The flesh of the victim was offered in part as a burnt offering, in part

eaten by the priests (who were not vegetarians; cf. the statement by

Keith

in the Harvard Oriental Series, Vol 18, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi,

Arthur

Berriadale Keith Vol I, p. cvii).

Here are a few clear examples of animal sacrifices in the Yajur Veda

(The

Black Yajur, Vol I, Banarsidas, Delhi, A.B. Keith):

“To the Asvins he sacrifices a dusky, to Sarasvati a ram, to Indra a

bull”

(Yajur 1.8.21.e)

“He who hates us and whom we hate, here do I cut off his neck…” (Yajur

1.3.1.c)

The latter one a reference to the symbolic and protecting nature of the

animal sacrifice that the sacrificer receives.

Sacrifice was done with several views. First there was simply the

gift-offering. There is also a sense in which the sacrifice gives power

or a

way of spiritually carrying out something through the sacrifice such as

the

severing of the heads of enemies through the gods. Sacrifice is seen as

a

way of pleasing the gods and gaining their favor in contrast to those

who do

not sacrifice (e.g. Rig 1.110.7 “those who pour no offering forth”). In

the

Soma offering it is the priests offering the gods the juice that gives

them

pleasure and strength to win wealth and help from the gods for those who

offer the Soma (cf. Rig 1.107 and 108).

Sacrifice gains spiritual favor and ascendancy in divinity. The Ribhus

gained immortality through their zealous sacrificing (Rig 1.110.4).

Sacrifice was to endue the sacrificer with power and wealth from the

gods

(Rig 1.111.2).

The Old Testament Jewish sacrificial system (which also sacrificed

animals)

was temporary and symbolic as representing the need for men to have

forgiveness of sins. In the ‘scapegoat’ sacrifice, the sins of the

people

were symbolically laid upon the goat and then it was sent (to its

inevitable

death) outside the camp as a way of visibly expressing the need of man

for

forgiveness. In the day of atonement, the high priest would take hyssop

(a

type of plant) and dip it in the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkle it

on

the people. This was done to represent that fact that the people

themselves

were guilty and their lives were forfeit. In the atonement sacrifice,

there

was a substitute that was provided in the animal and the blood then

symbolized their forgiveness and the satisfaction of their sins. In the

New

Testament, Jesus takes the title, “The Lamb of God,” who takes away the

sins

of the world. This idea of sacrificial substitute provides the

background

for giving a richness of understanding of the death of Jesus for the

sins of

mankind. He is the lamb whose blood is poured out as the substitute for

men.

The thing that is crucially different of course is that a lamb cannot

take

the place of a man, as man is responsible for sin in a way an animal is

not.

Jesus figuratively is the lamb, but in reality is of course a man. He

can

take the place of a man as a substitute. The efficacy of the sacrifice

of

Jesus is that he is not only a man, but claimed to be God incarnate as

well

and so could have the “weight” to forgive not only one other man, but

the

sins of the whole world.

*- Wyatt Robertson*

http://www.karma2grace.org/webcomponents/faq/index.asp?det=62

One man's beef...

Pankaj Mishra finds the roots of post-Partition conflict in DN Jha's

account

of India's sacred cows, The Myth of the Holy Cow

Pankaj Mishra

The Guardian, Saturday 13 July 2002

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/13/historybooks.highereducatio

n#history-byline>

*The Myth of the Holy Cow*

by DN Jha

183pp, Verso, £16

Shortly before he died, at the age of 101, the Anglo-Bengali scholar and

polemicist Nirad Chaudhuri received the leader of the Hindu nationalist

BJP

party, LK Advani, at his home in Oxford. The Hindu nationalists, who

recently presided in Gujarat over India's worst-ever anti-Muslim pogrom,

had

been pleased by some of Chaudhuri's offhand denunciations of the

medieval

Muslim invaders of India.

They probably hoped that India's most distinguished intellectual exile

would

do more for their fascistic cause, but they hadn't fully reckoned with

Chaudhuri, who interrogated Advani about his knowledge of India. He was

still full of scorn when I saw him weeks later. " These wretched BJP

types, "

he told me, " they call themselves cultural nationalists, speak of an

ancient

Hindu ethos, yet do not know Sanskrit, know nothing of their own

history.

Such barbarous people! "

The sayings and beliefs of religious fundamentalists are often taken at

face

value. As fervent believers, they seem not to have any truck with

rational

politics. But it is important to realise how pathetically little they

know

about the religious and spiritual traditions that supposedly inform

their

political beliefs; and how the superior morality they noisily lay claim

to

is important to them only so far as it can give legitimacy to resolutely

unspiritual ambitions to capture state power in their native countries.

This

marks most of the fundamentalists as inescapably modern: people quite

like

us.

The middle-class Hindu nationalists of India are no different. Their

agenda

- a militaristic nation-state with a culturally homogeneous population

of

Hindus - resembles not so much anything in the Bhagavad-Gita as it does

the

nation- and empire-building projects of 19th-century Europe.

They redefine many of their preferred aspects of Indian tradition and

culture, and present them as eternal and immutable, interrupted only by

alien Muslims and other unclean foreigners. They fear the kind of

scholarship that reveals that Indian tradition, like all other

traditions,

is a man-made thing, vulnerable to endless change, revision, and

appropriation.

The education minister in the present Indian government, a promoter of

astrology and something called " Vedic Mathematics " , recently compared

India's most distinguished intellectuals to terrorists. And now DN Jha,

a

respected historian of ancient India, is under attack for daring to

examine

the myth of the sacred cow.

His book was turned down by its original publishers in Delhi, who were

afraid of provoking the Hindu fanatics who have recently been seen

vandalising art exhibitions and burning books. One extremist even

sentenced

Jha to death in a fatwa - plainly a venerable Hindu tradition, this.

It may be hard at first to figure out what the fuss is about. Certainly,

Jha

did not set out to provoke. His main thesis - that beef-eating was not

unknown to Indians of the pre-Muslim period - is neither new nor

startling.

Visitors to India are often baffled by the wide berth given to even

those

very emaciated and diseased cows that seem to exist for no other purpose

than to slow down the traffic on some of the world's most dangerous

roads.

But the cow wasn't sacred to the nomads and pastoralists from Central

Asia

who settled North India in the second millennium BC and created the high

Brahminical culture of what we now know as Hinduism.

These Indians slaughtered cattle for both food and the elaborate

sacrificial

rituals prescribed by the Vedas, the first and the holiest Indian

scriptures. After they settled down and turned to agriculture, they put

a

slightly higher value upon the cow: it produced milk, ghee, yoghurt and

manure and could be used for ploughing and transport as well.

Indian religion and philosophy after the Vedas rejected the ritual

killing

of animals. This may have also served to protect the cow. But beef

eating

was still not considered a sin. It is often casually referred to in the

earliest Buddhist texts. The great Indian emperor Ashoka, who instituted

non-violence as state policy in the third century BC, did not ban the

slaughter of cattle.

It is only in the early medieval period that the eating of beef became a

taboo, if only for upper-caste Hindus. But the cow was far from holy. It

is

significant that no cow-goddesses, or temples to cows, feature in

India's

anarchically all-inclusive polytheisms.

Jha elaborates on how variously the ancient Indians saw their cattle;

and he

does so, if not with a graceful prose-style, then with an impressive

range

of textual evidence.

It is good to have all the relevant facts in one book. But, perhaps, Jha

would have better engaged the general reader had he explained in greater

detail why upper-caste Hindus have been more passionate about the cow in

the

last century and a half than at any other time in India's history. Or,

as DD

Kosambi put it in his Ancient India (1965), why " a modern orthodox Hindu

would place beef-eating on the same level as cannibalism, whereas Vedic

Brahmins had fattened upon a steady diet of sacrificed beef " .

The answer lies in the 19th century, when many newly emergent

middle-class

Hindus began to see the cow as an important symbol of a glorious

tradition

defiled by Muslim rule over India. For these Hindus, the cause for

banning

cow-slaughter became a badge of identity, part of their quest for

political

power in post-colonial India. Educated Muslims felt excluded from, even

scorned by, these Hindu notions of the Indian past; and they developed

their

own separatist fantasies.

The newly invented traditions helped create two antagonistic political

elites, defined primarily by religion, and eventually led to the

disastrous

partition of India. The nationalist myths are now incarnated by the two

nuclear-armed nation-states of India and Pakistan.

DN Jha is their most recent victim; but probably no one has suffered

more

from them than the poor holy cow that, bereft of a clear economic or

religious role, slowly dwindles on Indian roads, until the day it is run

over, when it receives the final kindness of being allowed to bleed to

death.

*·* Pankaj Mishra is the author of The Romantics (Picador)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/jul/13/historybooks.highereducation

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1061011/asp/atleisure/story_6853219.asp

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Don’t be cruel

Animal rights activists are upbeat about a recent Calcutta High Court

judgement. But loopholes in the law continue to undermine the cause of

animal welfare, says ** Animal wrongs: A calf being

dragged to be sacrificed to Goddess Durga

When the Calcutta High Court delivered a judgement banning the sacrifice

of

animals in public view at the Kalighat temple last month, animal rights

activists found a reason to celebrate. After all, the judgement came

just

before the World Animal Day on October 4.

“The judgement is a step in the right direction,” says Debashis

Chakrabarti,

managing trustee of Compassionate Crusaders Trust, an animal welfare

organisation based in Calcutta.

Of course, there are several laws in the country to look after the

interests

of animals, the most prominent among them being the Prevention of

Cruelty to

Animals Act, 1960. But activists feel that apart from the fact that this

law

is not implemented effectively, it is also open to abuse. “The PCA Act

is a

good Act but is not being properly implemented,” says Brindha

Nandakumar,

legal consultant to Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA), an animal

welfare organisation based in Bangalore. At the moment, two petitions

are

pending in the Supreme Court of India concerning non-implementation of

the

PCA Act.

The PCA Act also grants some exemptions. Section 14 of the Act states,

“Nothing contained in this Act shall render unlawful the performance of

experiments on animals for the purpose of advancement by new discovery

of

physiological knowledge which will be useful for saving of human life”.

Moreover, Section 28 of the Act says, “Nothing contained in this Act

shall

render it an offence to kill any animal in a manner required by the

religion

of any community.” Activists feel that these two sections are open to

misuse. As Dr Chinny Krishna, director of Blue Cross in Chennai, one of

India’s largest animal welfare organisations, points out, “Sadly, the

biggest offenders in both cases are government institutions and

municipal

bodies.” He also emphasises that apart from the lack of enforcement, the

major failure of the law is the extremely low levels of penalties

prescribed.

Raj Panjwani, a practising advocate at the Supreme Court of India and

author

of the book *Animal Laws of India* stresses that Section 28 of the PCA

Act

is open to interpretation and is not without its concomitant

difficulties.

“How does one define religion and the specific rituals required for

animal

sacrifice,” questions Panjwani.

However, some lawyers do not see these sections as posing a threat to

animal

welfare. Gitanath Ganguly, advocate at the Calcutta High Court and

executive

chairman of Legal Aid Services, West Bengal, explains, “The express

provision of Section 28 of the PCA Act is subject to Article 25 of the

Indian Constitution that prohibits any religious action for the purpose

of

public order, morality and health.”

It is also true that most people are ignorant of this law. “It is sad

that

90 per cent of the lawyers in this country are woefully ignorant of

animal

rights laws,” says Pradeep Kumar Nath, founder of the Vishakhapatnam

Society

for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Nath cites a specific example

where the law is failing animals. “If we catch an overloaded lorry with

cattle (overloading a vehicle with animals is illegal under the PCA

Act),

and file an FIR, seven out of 10 offenders go scot free with a fine of

Rs 50

or Rs 250 per lorry,” he says. Nath suggests that mobile courts should

be

set up to efficiently deal with cases of cruelty to animals.

Some activists feel that the PCA Act should be used along with other

animal

laws to help Indian animals. Dr Sandeep Jain, state coordinator of the

People for Animals (Punjab) and a former member of the Animal Welfare

Board

of India, says that cases of cruelty to animals can be dealt with under

some

sections of the Indian Penal Code. “Sections 279, 289, 428 and 429 of

the

IPC can be used to deal with animal cruelty cases where the animal is

crippled or dead,” he mentions. He also points out that the Prevention

of

Cruelty to Draught and Pack Animals Rules, 1965, and the Performing

Animal

(Registration) Rules of 2001 can be of help here.

Some, though, are of the opinion that for animal laws in India to be

effective, the parameters of cruelty need to be defined clearly. Sanjay

Upadhyay, a Supreme Court lawyer and managing partner of the Enviro

Legal

Defense Firm in Delhi mentions that the PCA Act is liable to be misused

unless specific parameters are laid down to define what constitutes

cruelty.

According to Upadhyay, the exemptions should be treated as exceptions to

the

rule and not as integral norms. “It is important to understand the

different

kinds of cruelty in order to take better legal action and to make the

law

more effective,” he says.

Until that happens, we will continue to see animals being treated with

contempt and cruelty — goats kept in cramped meat shops, cattle pulling

overloaded carts and chickens being slaughtered in public view.

November 23, 2009

Dear Madam,

Thank you for your extensive and erudite reply. It is

well taken.

Please let me state that I acknowledge and admire what you are doing to stop

animal sacrifice in Gadhimai and in South India. However, my notes were

addressed principally to you as a scholar more than an activist although it

is quite evident that you have successfully blended the two.

I reckon the difference is in the approach. The problem I have with

religion is that all religions have intrinsic contradictions and flat out

contradict each other. Therefore it appears to me that quoting only

compassionate passages from religious texts is a selective enterprise.

Religion is the opium of the masses and many people may well accept the

religious principles of compassion but there is always a chink in the armour

because alternative interpretations exist.

Stopping animal sacrifice in 50 villages is no mean feat, it is a massive

achievement. Congratulations. As you know, I am no longer in Bengal so

cannot be present in situ to protest animal sacrifice during religious

ceremonies. But when I was, I did participate in campaigns against animal

sacrifice. The former coalition of People for Animals and Compassionate

Crusaders Trust had a campaign to stop the animal sacrifice in Kalighat. I

was part of it and wrote in favour of it in the Telegraph. They also had an

innovative blood donation exercise to substitute animal sacrifice conducted

at ASHARI, the PfA animal shelter. I have supported this initiative too. And

I have lent my voice in favour of the campaigns by the Science and

Rationalists Asssociation of India to stop animal sacrifice in the villages

of Bengal. It is a strong initiative they have and many well known

historians, lawyers and authors have lauded this move. Since you now ask, I

will enquire where the campaigns are heading to in Bengal from both People

for Animals and the Science and Rationalists Association of India and if any

other groups are also joining in this endeavour.

A major breakthrough has also been achieved in a village called Bamunara

by a local nature club called ‘Aamra Kojon’. I translated the news item and

circulated it and I am sharing it again.

Some views on Kalighat and temples that conduct animal sacrifice. The

sacrifice in Kalighat was condemned by Mahatma Gandhi in his autobiography,

‘The Story of My Experiments with Truth’ where he said that “I should be

unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of a human being. How is

it that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion

tolerates this slaughter?” Like you, I do not allow and have not allowed any

priest of any blood worship ritual apply any flowers or leaves or vermilion

on my head as a blessing for I am of the opinion anything stained with blood

is more of a curse than a blessing. I have also stopped visiting Kamakhya

temple in Guwahati because of this blood worship ritual. PfA Guwahati

protests the slaughter there and may be in a better position to address this

issue.

I appreciate what you say about Swami Vivekananda and it is true that his

messages are full of contradiction not only on animals but on other issues

like widow remarriage and sati. The comment I have shared with you has been

sent to the authorities at Belur Math and Ramkrishna Mission for evaluation

and interpretation by an office colleague who is a devotee of Vivekananda.

And indeed religious beliefs did endorse human sacrifice at one point of

time and we are thankfully rid of that. In literature, one of the most

eloquent comments against animal sacrifice has come from Rabindranath Tagore

who wrote : Je pujar bedi roktey gechhey bheshey, bhango bhango tarey

obosheshey. ( If an altar of worship has been smeared by blood, break it,

break it into smithereens.) Tagore wrote an entire novel on this theme

called ‘Rajorshi’ based on the life of King Gobindomanikyo of Tripura, who

stopped animal sacrifice.

There are many ways to approach moral behaviour in life. Mine may be

different from yours but we are all trying to achieve the same goal. Many

friends and colleagues have asked me if it is not difficult to go through

life without taking refuge in a Supreme Being and the hope of an afterlife

in heaven or paradise based on deeds committed in the here and now.

And in reply I share this quote of Carl Sagan that was made when he was

dying in hospital and was in extreme pain : * " I would love to believe that

when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part

of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the

ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know

of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking...the world is

so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to

deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good

evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death

in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent

opportunity that life provides...Five thousand people prayed for me at an

Easter service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the

largest church in Christendom. A Hindu priest described a large prayer vigil

for me held on banks of the **Ganges**. The Imam of **North America** told

me about his prayers for my recovery. Many Christians and Jews wrote me to

tell about theirs. While I do not think that, if there is a god, his plan

for me will be altered by prayer, I'm more grateful than I can say to those,

including so many whom I've never met, who have pulled for me during my

illness. Many of them have asked me how it is possible to face death without

the certainty of an afterlife. I can only say that it hasn't been a problem.

With reservations about feeble souls, I share the view of a hero of mine,

Albert Einstein: I cannot conceive of a god who rewards and punishes his

creatures or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither

can I, nor would I want to, conceive of an individual that survives his

physical death. Let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egotism, cherish such

thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and a

glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the

devoting striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason

that manifests itself in nature. " *

* I have forwarded your messages to the anti sacrifice groups in Kolkata

and will revert when they respond. I also look forward to reading your book

when it is published. Like you, I live in the hope that animal sacrifice

will join the dustbin of antique abuses that no longer haunt us.*

* Kind regards and best wishes,*

* *

*

Anandabazar Patrika, Bardhaman News, 9th July, 2008

Bamunara Club halts two hundred years' sacrifice tradition

Subrata Sit, Durgapur

Saratchandra's Lalu had to act adroitly to prevent animal sacrifice in

Manohar Chatterjee's residence. But nothing of that sort took place in

Bamunara in Durgapur. A few people resisted in the beginning. But thanks to

the support of the overwhelming majority of the community a resolution to

stall goat sacrifice in the two hundred year old Dharmaraj temple was

passed.

Village elders have informed that in the past, hundreds of goats used to be

sacrificed in the temple. The number had come down to one hundred fifty in

recent times. Mostly during the Dharmaraj gajan festival. Also on the

occasion of special vows throughout the year on Saturdays and Tuesdays. This

year too, thirty two goats were sacrificed in a day. The maddening noise of

the dhak combined with the bellowing of devotees. Goats were sacrificed at

the altar one after another. The animals waiting to be slaughtered shivered

standing on the sidelines. Children cried in fear. Many left the temple in

fear. Many adults cringed in disgust. Many in the village were opposed to

the ritual. But they lacked the courage to speak out.

It was at this point of time that Bamunara's 'Aamra Kojon Nature Club'

entered the fray. Club members became vocal against the practice after this

year's Dharmaraj gajan festival. There was a widespread response. Temple

partners came forward too.

The chief priest of the temple did not hover as well. Sensing a meaningful

reaction, the temple committee called for a meeting. The members of the

temple governing committee were present. Temple priests attended. And the

Nature Club members were present of course. In the meeting, some objected to

the discontinuance of a two hundred years old tradition. But they were

caught in the logic of others.

Club members said, " A public sacrifice with such ostentation leads to

negative influence exerted on children. " A temple partner, Shyamapada Ray

stated, " It is humans who have started the tradition of sacrificing animals

in temples. Therefore there is no reason to not get rid of it. " The chief

priest of the temple, Ganesh Acharya, argued against the practice of animal

sacrifice. He commented, " A lot is changing with the passage of time. We can

consider the issue of stopping animal sacrifice in the temple. " The meeting

endorsed the resolution to discontinue animal sacrifice. The sacrifice altar

was demolished. The decision was conveyed through a notice hung on the

temple wall.

The Bamunara Nature Club is pleased with the success in Bamunara. Now they

have decided to appeal against animal sacrifice in the adjoining Arra

Bhagawati Temple and Banskopa during the nabanna festival. Club secretary

Samir Ray said, " We have succeeded because the residents of Bamunara have

come forward. We hope residents of Arra and Banskopa will also agree with

our stance against animal sacrifice. "