Traditions - Religious Rituals
Ritual offerings called 'pujas', through which Hindus worship their various gods, too often involve the sacrifice of animals.
Millions of individuals including water buffalo, lambs, goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, crows, fish, pigs, snakes, turtles and grasshoppers lose their lives each year to make a wish, to sanctify weddings, new houses and cars, and at numerous religious festivals.
Ironically, the death of the sacrificed animals is interpreted as a favor to the animals who are released from a life of suffering.
The sacrifices are a massive bloodshed and during the festival of Durga Puja, once a year the soldiers of the center of Kathmandu behead hundreds of water buffalo and goats with one stroke to their head, trying to kill each one only with one blow. During Nepal's largest festival, the festival Dasain in early autumn, up to 10,000 goats and other animals are sacrificed. 100,000 turtles are killed each year in the Kali Puja festival.
Other extremely cruel forms to kill the animals are, for example, ripping apart a live goat under water by several men, burning snakes and fish alive, skinning live pigs or tearing their heart out with their hands. Other rituals involve drinking animal blood, biting the of chickens’ heads, skinning or cutting buffalo or sheep or directly cutting open a pig.
In Nepal, despite these sacrifices are not regulated by law, the government subsidizes some of them and actively participates in others like the festival of Dasain, being even broadcasting on public television.
Overall, in Nepal alone hundreds of thousands of animals are sacrificed each year. If we take into account India and other countries with Hindi population, the number is exorbitant.
In Nepal is possible to visit temples where no animals are sacrificed, like for example Pashupatinath, Swayambhunath (Monkey temple), Boudhnath or any Buddhist monastery.
