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Nepal’s Gadhimai Mela: World’s Most Massive Pointless Animal Slaughter?
Topics: Lifestyle & Culture | 5 CommentsBy admin | November 23, 2009
No my friends, the United States still has firm grasp on THAT title.
I think PETA’s gonna have to come up with a better marketing strategy than wieners and boobs if they want to do anything to stop the annual slaughter of half a million animals in Nepal November 24th and 25th. I say “slaughter”, but this is apparently a ritual sacrifice to the Hindu deity Gadhimai. I usually restrain myself a bit when offering any opinions on the spiritual beliefs of others, but I think in this case I might make an exception, much like I might in the case of Mormons, Scientologists, and atheists. All I’ll say is that if the animals are being slaughtered in honor of a goddess of power, the devotees might want to find a new goddess of power. The last time I checked, the people of Nepal weren’t popping up on the first few pages of Google search results for “powerful people”. So, does the whole idea of this mass slaughter disturb you? Well get a grip. Granted, 500,000 animals is a lot of animals (if they were all three feet long and you lined them up nose-to-tail, they’d form a line 284 miles long) but before you get your PETA panties in a bunch, ponder the fact that in the US, we slaughter more cows than that every week of the year. In fact, about 90,000 cows or calves per day. Of course, we sacrifice ours to greed, gluttony, and capitalism, so our results seem to be a little more tangible than theirs. But in my opinion, these numbers make this year’s sudden international outrage seem a little silly. C’mon PETA, sort your priorities. I mean, just because Buddha Boy was a no-show, doesn’t mean you have to pick up all the slack. If you’d like to learn more about the “Gadhimai Mela”, see this rather informative HimalMag piece, and if you just want to wallow in the gore of it all, see this France24 piece or this Himalayan Beacon piece.
This gratuitous “guy in a swastika shirt” photo clearly has nothing to do with the article, it just kept coming up in Google image searches for “Gadhimai Mela”. We decided to spare you the gory photos of the animal slaughter, but needed something sensationalistic for news and RSS feeds. Can someone please explain this photo?
Posted by ME on 11.23.09 1:11 pm
It’s an ancient spiritual symbol.
It was used long before the Nazi’s modified
it and claimed it as their own. I would think your research dept. would have done their work…
Posted by admin on 11.23.09 1:26 pm
Thanks ME. We barely have a coffee budget, let alone a research department! What perplexes me is why this swastika shirt is so much in the more contemporary Nazi style, with no ornamentation, a crisp white background, and surrounded by vivid red. Is this version a common representation of the ancient Hindu symbol?
Posted by Richard Stadelmann on 11.24.09 11:06 am
This is the ancient Hindu or Jain symbol. Note: It is in the rolling position representing reincarnation, rather than in the position used by the Hitler movement. For Jains it represents the divine leader Suparsva, the seventh Tirthankara. (Ford finder. One who leads from this world to the next, the escape from the bonds of matter.) Very appropriate at this festival. This version is today a common representation of the ancient Jain symbol.
Richard Stadelmann, Prof. Indian and Oriental Religions
Posted by admin on 11.24.09 2:02 pm
Thanks Richard, for the clarification. Genuinely appreciated!
Posted by Richard Stadelmann on 11.24.09 2:11 pm
Additional Thought
If the young man with the Jain (Hindu) symbol understands Jainism, this shirt is being worn as a protest against the festival, as the Jains teach “ahimsa.” Do not harm any living creature. Of course, many people wear tee shirts with no understnding of their meaning. Buddhists and Hindus sometime use this shirt to represent the wheel of karma. But it would be recognized as a spiritual symbol, not a Nazi symbol, by almost anyone in that part of the world.