Skip to main content

Are we civilised yet?


Sushma Joshi
Kathmandu Post

NOV 28 - In a gathering at my Kathmandu house where we incidentally sat around and ate buffalo momo dumplings, I said, “I wonder what psychological trauma the people around Gadhimai feel through all the pain of the sacrificed animals!” My logic, that somehow the violence inflicted on the animals must reflect on the humans, and that somehow this would lead to more violence, was smartly counteracted by a learned friend (he asked me not to use his name but identify him, tongue-in-cheek, as “learned friend”) who said, “But think about their beliefs. This is a deeply engrained tradition of animal sacrifice that goes back hundreds of years. They believe that the sacrifice brings them good luck, and you can’t beat that.”

The talk then moved to gruesome descriptions of animal sacrifice in Aacham where men make 500 cuts on an animal before slaughtering it, and another event in which people get the bulls drunk before leading them to a blood-soaked death fight in Bhaktapur. “The people are at fault for the violence, not the bulls!” said one listener indignantly, when we were trying to figure out, in our ayla-muddled states, whether the bulls or the humans were more cruel.

For the urban elite in Kathmandu, who get their meat from butcher shops where the slaughtering is safely hidden out of sight, the 15,000 slaughtered buffaloes was cause for an outcry. And so too for the people in Europe and the U.S.A. But as my friend explained to me, the deep workings of human belief may make these sacrifices less of a terrible animal massacre and more of a profound moment of connection with the universe for the participants of this festival.

If the debate is about how civilized we are, then the debate comes down to animal rights versus human rights, said my learned friend. The rights to follow traditional faith-based practice is enshrined in the Constitution. If we are saying that Muslims and Christians should be allowed to follow their own faiths, and so should the indigenous groups, surely the deeply engrained ancient practice of animal sacrifice, which goes back a very long way, should also be respected. People come to make promises to the goddess and use other animals and plants — rats and coconuts — as part of this faith-based practice. This is not just a random slaughter, but a massive show of faith.

In Kathmandu last year, the Newars rioted when the government stopped funding the 108 animals needed for a sacrifice. The government had to give in and fund them to stop the public unrest. Surely, if the state recognizes sacrifice in this matter, it should do so also in this new matter?

And besides, said my learned friend (you see, he should really be writing this op-ed, not me), the Dalit groups, spurred by NGOs, did an andolan at the last sacrifice, in which they said Dalits would no longer pick up the meat associated with the sacrifice since this was demeaning. This year, after a private company had been contracted to pick up the meat at a fee of Rs. 5,100,000 (around US$ 65,000) and had hired 700 workers to get this done, the Dalit groups stopped the company, saying it was their traditional right to collect the meat. Surely, asks my learned friend, this kind of political machination has to stop, and people living in a democratic country must allow private companies to fulfil a business contract.

Besides the local intricacies of what goes on at Gadhimai (frankly I don’t know a whole lot about this event, and would hesitate to write about this issue if it weren’t for the way it is being promoted as the biggest animal slaughter of all times in the international news), there is the international response. I am being asked my opinion on this by French news outlets and Swedish radio stations, and my response is: Ugh… I got a degree in anthropology, and I would have to study this event a bit more in depth before I can make a comment.

Of course, culture doesn’t excuse everything. But for those of us jaded by the hidden stories of slaughterhouses of the U.S.A. and Europe, where animals are stunned with electric stun guns and killed in much larger masses everyday, the Gadhimai sacrifice can appear to be just a tiny blip of self-righteous protest from the Western world. How many Gadhimai-like sacrifices happen every single day on cattle farms across the meat-eating Western world? Nepal, incidentally, has a poor population for whom meat remains a luxury — for many of those doing the sacrifice, this may be the only meat they will eat throughout the entire year. So there is just a tiny bit of hypocrisy associated with those who protest this event — if only because the global footprint of meat consumption is so much more gigantic on the Western world.

Gadhimai brings to surface what happens every single day on cattle farms across the planet. People sacrifice gigantic numbers of animals everyday, especially for those populations that eat meat more than twice a day. The only difference in this is that we see the crudeness with which animals are killed in this event. I, an aspiring vegetarian, almost support sacrifices for this reason — because it provides a crude mirror for the world to see what exactly goes into their plates when they eat some dumplings.



(The author is trying hard to eat less meat)

Comments

Bibek Dhakal said…
We also support your ideas about animal sacrifice prevailing in Nepalese culture. It seems like meaningless rap of the hip-hop guys. Of course it sounds strange in the age of Netizen.
nepaliketi said…
sushma didi,

i suppose your article from 'on saturday' today will only be posted online later on in the week, but i wanted to point you to an interesting blog posted by a friend on food consumption in nepal related to your musings from today: http://mesocosm.blogspot.com/

just like you, she's got a great point!
Anonymous said…
my tradition is beating women. i insist on that. can i continue with it?

Popular posts from this blog

The Bitter Truth: Talat Abbasi's Bitter Gourds

The stories are small, but with a spicy aftertaste that could be from nowhere else but the subcontinent. Talat Abbasi's Bitter Gourd and Other Stories is a collection of nugget sized, delectable tales laid out, in typical desi fashion, amongst the detritus of social stratification, family ennui, economic marginalization and diaspora. Gently dousing her stories with a generous portion of irony and satire, the Karachi born writer brings to the fore the small hypocrisies and the mundane corruptions of everyday life in Pakistan. Whether dealing with a birdman or a poor relation, a rich widow or an immigrant mother, Ms. Abbasi touches the mythic heart that ticks besides all these caricatures. The ghostly narrative influence of Virginia Woolf, with a pinch of Victorian lit thrown in for good measure, is discernable, although most of the voices are centered around the "how kind, how kind" echoes of South Asia. The book starts, appropriately, with a story about a feudal patro

INTERVIEW: TOM ARENS

KHULA MANCH Tom Arens first came to Nepal in 1972 as the South Asian representative of World Neighbors, a small American INGO. He stayed for 28 years. He was one of the founding members of the Federation of NGOs. Arens talked with Sushma Joshi of the Nation Weekly about the changes he has seen in the development scene in Nepal, as well as his thoughts about the direction in which the nation should take in the coming years. What was Nepal like in 1972? When World Neighbors first started, we worked with The Nepal’s Women’s Organization and Paropakar. These were the only two established smaller NGOs. We started with small funds: $50,000-100,000 the first couple of years. The government was ambivalent about smaller non-profits, so we couldn’t get registered until 7 years later, when the Social Service Welfare Council was established. The Queen was the chair. The Council helped to give status to smaller non-profits and to facilitate our work. What was your first program? Our first program w

Milk and rice

Sushma Joshi I am the youngest of seven cousins. When we were little, we used to play lukamari , or hide-and-seek, games in the garden. My eldest cousin sister, taking pity on me, would allow me to be a dudh-bhat (milk and rice) during our games. A dudh-bhat is someone too young to play the game adequately, but the older children allow this young one to tag along and never be “outed” from the game because they might cry if made to leave. So this means you are endlessly in the game, even when in reality you should really be out. Of course, being the youngest means you may always retain the status of a dudh-bhat even when you do grow up. In Nepal, as we know all too well, the hierarchy of age allows the young some privileges, along with the old. It appears to me Madhav Kumar, even though he's lost the game twice in two elections, is being allowed to be the dudh-bhat by his wiser and more tolerant elders. He is allowed to be in the game endlessly even though in reality he should real