Sacrificial goats!!

Have been thinking about starting & finishing this post, but something always stopped me from doing that. Today after having a 2 hrs long discussion with a friend I managed to convince myself on writing this piece. It took me so much of time as the subject matter is not something I want to write about, the only reason behind writing this to get it out of my head. This post revolves around an event which occured in Guwahati, where I had gone with a colleague for an official trip. This was the first visit for my colleague in any of the north-eastern state & even I hadn't explored Guwahati much, so we were both making plans for going around the town before/after work hours. The idea was to see some nice places, but barring temples no other option came from locals. We decided to start off with Kamakhya devi temple by visiting the temple early morning en route to work. Having been twice to temple I wasn't kicked about it, but my colleague had heard a lot about the temple & was excited about finally visiting the temple. It is a different thing altogether that his excitement vaporized as day progressed.

As soon as we reached the temple we were told that there is a special line where post paying 500 bucks you would get to visit the temple fast, given the excitement of my fellow visitor & the work that was pending, we decided to go for the "special darshan". Normally I am not too fond of Tirupati & Siddhi Vinayak for the very same reason of differentiating on account of offering, but here situation demanded the use of "special darshan". Anyhow, after waiting for about an hour, god knows what would have been the waiting time in normal queue, we got a chance to enter the main temple. The temple is spread over a big area & throughout the area one would get to see many goats. They would all be very docile & quiet, while standing near the wall without moving. It was little weird, but knowing that the tradition of sacrifice is still relevant for Guwahati, we could fathom the reason behind this weirdness. We were just discussing about this, when a priest came dragging a baby goat using a rope. It was a depressing scene & I started thinking what I was doing there. Within a few seconds, another goat (slightly bigger & older) came running in midst of all the crowd & commotion, put two of his/her hoof on the baby goat thereby putting its entire weight on the baby. Idea was to stop the man from dragging & taking the baby away, I have never seen anything like this in my life so far. The priest tried pushing the bigger goat, but the bigger goat keep coming back on top of the baby. Kicking was little too much for me and I started shouting on the priest, seeing this another priest joined in & took away the bigger goat nicely. Post this even the baby goat stopped fighting his fate & gave in. We were both completely shaken, different question arising in our heads which we were trying to ignore.

Then the time came for us to enter the temple, having been there in the queue for more than an hour we were slightly happy that now our time in the temple is going to be really short. The line moves really slow, but still we managed to enter the main area. Its really dark inside the main part, barring couple of electric lamps & a few oil lamps there is not much to illuminate the place. After a bit of time we also reached inside the place where both the statues are. As soon as i reached close to the statue, I got a shock of my life. There were severed heads of two young goats, on one side & another head on the other side. Somehow we managed to pay our respect to the goddess & we came out post that. Affect of the scene was strong, knowing that sacrifice as a tradition is part of the temple is something, but seeing the evidence of it is something else.

Thousands  of people visit temple on a daily basis & many, if not most, would be vegetarian. They typically bow in front of the temple, put their hands close to the statue to touch the water & the apply the same water to their forehead, eyes, etc. Not too sure whether people know that the severed heads are kept so damn close to the statue. Many meat eaters also would not take this lightly, I mean killing animals to supposedly please god is as absurd as it gets. The entire episode led me to think about two things, first 'how good/bad our religion system is' & second 'whats the legal standpoint on the entire sacrifice thing'.

Research showed that there are tonnes of temples where sacrifice are a norm. The process of sacrifice at Kamakhya devi temple is simple, a devotee brings a goat for sacrifice. Post beheading the goat, head is kept by the priest who performs the act, rest of the body is cut down to pieces & given back to the devotee who brought it in the first place. Effectively the place act as a butchering house where people can bring their own livestock & get it "Processed" for a small fee. I can understand people eating meat, not much issues there as its an individual choice. But in temples, which I believe is owned & managed by community, the act of killing animals seems wrong. Not too sure if early proponent of the religions got it right when they associated sacrifice with religion. As a country we have been allowing loads of things, many unpleasant & downright wrong, to happen & let people who did them get away with it. This is not to say that religion doesn't have a positive side to it or people do not use religion to do good. I agree those things are also there, but isn't that the first & the foremost objective of following a particular way of living & conforming to a set of beliefs.

As far as law is concerned, 'Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act' does not cover religion based sacrifice & hence is silent as far as such incidents are concerned. Tamil Nadu did pass a law in 1950 'Animal and Bird Sacrifices Prohibition Act', but this act has had many implementation related issues. Since then there are a few states which have taken this act, adapted it to their needs & implemented it, but states like Assam still continue things the way they are. Animal Sacrifice, though reduced over the years, still continue across country on an annual, monthly or even daily basis across many religious institution.

Now to summarize all that I have ranted about, personally I have an issue with people sacrificing animals & birds (people sacrifice pigeons as well in Kamakhya devi temple) in the name of Gods & Goddesses. Ultimately devotee take those meat back home to enjoy it with their near & dear ones. But using a holy place or a religion for the same should be done away with. There was a time when even human sacrifice was allowed in the name of all things holy & religious, but we managed to do away with that. Religion should be used to spread love, happiness, etc & once you see scared animals in a temple you would know that there is something fundamentally wrong with the place.