Since few days , a small village in Southern plains of Nepal, which was never a big story before is now hitting not only the waves of local and national media but also has drew a lot of attention from the international arena. Gadhimai Temple of Bara district, the place known for its mass sacrifice of buffaloes and goats every five years as a part of sacred religious ritual in Hinduism, drew enough attention from the national as well as international arena. The international media gave a great importance to this happening and hence, undoubtedly the animal lovers around the globe raised voices against this sacrifice. But it was already clear that these happenings which have been undergoing since the time immemorial and have deep attachment with people’s sentiments and religious beliefs, could be hardly stopped . And here comes the result. Tuesday and Wednesday saw the end of thousands buffaloes and goats’ lives..
Despite these facts, in my opinion, many things were achieved in fighting against this merciless mass killings of the animals. We should better look this incident in the way of half glass full rather than half glass empty. This slaughter was never been an issue of such a huge concern as it has been today. It has created much more larger scale of discussions on these killings which could probably show its impact to minimize these types of slaughter again. But everybody should accept the gospel truth that, it’s very hard to abolish the religious beliefs which have deep roots since years. At the same time, forcibly changing any religious customs and beliefs could be much more devastating.
Pertaining the slaughter in Gadhimai Mela, many questions also arise about the people’s poor concern towards the daily killings of animals for different purposes. If we go on counting the animals slaughtered every day for different purposes, no doubt it results the number which is many times fold of one Gadhimai sacrifice of animals. So the question here arises, where have these people gone who are expressing so much concern about the sacrifice in Gadhimai when they are to speak on behalf of the animals which are daily slaughtered ? The critics of animal right defenders often throw harsh comments. A large portion of world population is facing poverty, hunger, insecurity and a large number of people have been killed in name of rebellion, insurgency, blah, blah…so animal right defenders you better focus on defending the human rights. Anyway, in final, a comment from Philosopher Peter Singer would be a slap for these criticisms. I would like to mention Peter’s comment- All the arguments to prove man’s superiority cannot shatter this hard fact, in suffering the animals are equals.