In a victory for animal rights activists, Nepal’s Gadhimai Temple Trust, which oversees the world’s biggest animal sacrifice every five years, has announced they will ensure the festival in 2019 is free from bloodshed. Experts say around 500,000 goats, chickens and buffalos were decapitated at Gadhimai Festival in 2009.
“For generations, pilgrims have sacrificed animals to the Goddess Gadhimai, in the hope of a better life.The time has come to transform an old tradition [and] replace killing and violence with peaceful worship and celebration. With your help, we can ensure the festival in 2019 is free from bloodshed. Moreover, we can ensure Gadhimai 2019 is a momentous celebration of life,” Ram Chandra Shah, chairman of the Gadhimai Temple Trust, said in a statement.
The festival, which dates back about 265 years, is based on a dream founder Bhagwan Chowdhary had featuring Gadhimai, the Hindu goddess of power. In the dream, Gadhimai demanded a sacrifice after freeing Chowdhary from prison, promising power and prosperity in return, and protection from evil. Chowdhary prepared an animal offering, establishing a legacy of tradition and blood that would last nearly three centuries.
“We have decided to completely stop the practice of animal sacrifice. I realised that animals are so much like us – they have the same organs as us and feel the same pain we do. It won’t be easy to end a 400-year-old custom but we have four years to convince people that they don’t need to sacrifice animals to please the goddess,” Motilal Prasad, secretary of the Gadhimai Temple Trust, told AFP.
Temple authorities were under pressure from animal-rights activists, who petitioned India’s Supreme Court to ban cross-border transportation of animals for sacrifices in order to put a stop to the practice. The number of sacrifices at the festival dropped significantly after the Supreme Court directed India’s government to ensure no animal was exported to Nepal from India without a license. After the verdict, some 2.5 million worshippers sacrificed an estimated 200,000 animals in November 2014.
“We are extremely happy with the decision, which we hadn’t expected. But a huge part of me is nervous. To actually think that just by this announcement, everything will end would be completely naive. This is a very important development but just the first of many things we must do to make Gadhimai bloodless,” said Nuggehalli Jayasimha, managing director of Humane Society International/India, which, with the Animal Welfare Network Nepal, held lengthy negotiations with temple trustees to end the killing.
The temple’s decision to halt the slaughter was not just based on ethics—money played a big role, according to activists. “Last year, with a 70 percent reduction in animals, it wasn’t economically viable for the temple to continue this type of ceremony. The temple makes money by charging a fee for each animal killed and by selling their meat and leather,” Jayasimha said.
Will the tradition stop anytime soon?
Ram Chandra Shah told the BBC flat out that the ban was not true. “Devout Hindus could be requested not to offer animal sacrifice to the goddess, but they could not be forced not to do so – nor [could] the tradition be banned or stopped completely. [While we have no objections to the campaign against the sacrifices] If people don’t heed, we can’t do anything about it. Nothing will change as far as the tradition of offering animal sacrifice during the festival is concerned. Things will not change no matter what the four [in the delegation] do or say. It’s our age-old tradition,” he said.
HSI spokeswoman Navamita Mukherjee was surprised and confused by Ram Chandra Shah’s comments. The ban was true, she told the BBC. “Why would we organise a press conference on such a large scale to announce such a move if it wasn’t true? “
Tripurari Shah, a member of Nepal’s Gadhimai Temple Trust, told the BBC, “There’s no rift. I think what [Ram Chandra] Shah is trying to say is that we have millions of devotees. We have to reach out to them and make them aware.”
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