Uttam Dahal, who won the injunction from the Supreme Court of Nepal that provided the legal lever to end the Gadhi Mai sacrifices. (Facebook photo)
HSUS & HSI victory claims omit mention of those who won it
KATHMANDU, Nepal––Under pressure of a Supreme Court of Nepal injunction won on November 24, 2014 by the Nepal Animal Welfare & Research Center, “We have decided to completely stop the practice of animal sacrifice,” Gadhi Mai Temple Trust secretary Motilal Prasad on July 28, 2015 told the Himalayan Times.
Former Nepal King Gyanendra.
The announcement apparently means the end of mass sacrifices held every five years at Bariyarpur, in western Nepal near the Indian border, which have become increasingly controversial since first emerging into media view in 1999.
Boosted by King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Dev during his brief reign, 2001-2006, the sacrifices in honor of the local goddess Gadhi Mai are commonly said to have originated in the 18th century, but there appears to be no unequivocal written documentation of any such event before 1999.
Inflated claims
As many as 2,500 buffalo and hundreds of goats and chickens were killed at the 2004, 2009, and 2014 Gadhi Mai sacrifices, according to analysis of the available photographic documentation. Both the local priests promoting the sacrifices and animal advocacy organizations campaigning against them have exaggerated the verifiable toll of animal lives by as much as a hundredfold.
Investigative work by Beauty Without Cruelty-India indicates that the inflated claims about the numbers of animals sacrificed probably started with priests selling each animal multiple times to absentee sponsors. Activists then swallowed the inflated claims whole, and exaggerated them further to try to drum up global support for protest.
The back story
The decision to halt animal sacrifices in honor of Gadhi Mai was motivated, Prasad told Agence France-Presse, because “I realised that animals are so much like us — they have the same organs as us… and feel the same pain we do.”
The back story, however, is that while the local organization Animal Nepal rallied international opposition to the Gadhi Mai sacrifices, Nepal Animal Welfare & Research Center founder Uttam Dahal quietly took a less flamboyant and more strategic approach.
Supreme Court of Nepal injunction vs. the Gadhi Mai sacrifices.
Realizing that many aspects of the sacrificial slaughter would be in violation of the Nepal Animal Health & Livestock Services Act, the Nepal Animal Slaughterhouse & Meat Inspection Act, and the Nepal Environment Protection Act, Dahal won an order from Justice Govinda Kumar Upadhayay of the Nepal Supreme Court which, if strictly enforced, might have stopped the 2014 Gadhi Mai mass sacrifice entirely.
“Enforce the law”
The official English translation of the order asked “the local bodies, organizations and associations, people, health administration, and police” to manage the Gadhi Mai festival “keeping these laws in mind.”
In other words, the responsible persons were asked to enforce the Nepal Animal Health & Livestock Services Act, the Nepal Animal Slaughterhouse & Meat Inspection Act, and the Nepal Environment Protection Act.
Overview of the 2014 Gadhi Mai sacrificial festival at Bariyarpur, Nepal. This is the Humane Society International drone photo, with enumeration by ANIMALS 24-7 editor Merritt Clifton.
They did not, but ignoring the law increased their vulnerability to prosecution. After witnessing and videographically documenting many violations of the three applicable laws , Dahal began the slow process of seeking further court orders to enforce the November 24, 2014 order.
Court order could stop other sacrifices
If upheld as a precedent, the November 24, 2014 order has potential not only to stop future mass sacrifices at Gadhi Mai festivals, but also to impose a variety of restraints on other sacrificial events, especially those occurring outside of established temples and involving sale or other distribution of meat from sacrificed animals.
Goat sacrifice at Dakchankali Temple near Kathmandu. The heads of chickens sacrificed earlier may be seen at left.
Said Gadhi Mai Temple Trust chair Ram Chandra Shah in a formal statement to media, “The Gadhimai Temple Trust hereby declares our formal decision to end animal sacrifice. With your help, we can ensure Gadhimai 2019 is free from bloodshed. Moreover, we can ensure Gadhimai 2019 is a momentous celebration of life.
“For generations,” Ram Chandra Shah said, “pilgrims have sacrificed animals to the goddess Gadhi Mai, in the hope of a better life. For every life taken, our heart is heavy. The time has come to transform an old tradition. The time has come to replace killing and violence with peaceful worship and celebration.
“Our concern has been this: how do we convince the people, so desperate for the favor of Gadhi Mai, that there is another way? How do we bring them on our journey? Thankfully,” Ram Chandra Shah continued, hinting at the Gadhi Mai sacrifices having perhaps ended in part through the receipt of some sort of material aid, “the dedicated efforts of the Animal Welfare Network Nepal and Humane Society International/India have shown us the path and provided the motivation to make this transformation a reality.”
“True smile emotion”
Responded Uttam Dahal, “Documentation is still to come. But we hope this news will be published with documents soon. In reference to the news, it is true smile emotion.”
The roles of Uttam Dahal, the Nepal Animal Welfare & Research Center, and the Supreme Court of Nepal were neither acknowledged nor even mentioned in declarations of victory from the Humane Society of the U.S. president Wayne Pacelle, Humane Society International vice president Andrew Rowan, and other organizations outside Nepal.
Supreme Court of India
HSUS and HIS, the international arm of HSUS, preferred to credit the influence of an order from a two-justice panel of the Supreme Court of India, issued on October 17, 2014, which reinforced previous injunctions against cattle smuggling from India to Nepal.
Buffalo calf rescued by the Visakha SPCA. (Eileen Weintraub photo)
Wrote Indian Supreme Court Justices Jagdish Singh Khehar and Arun Mishera, “We direct the respondents to ensure that no live cattle and buffalos are exported out of India into Nepal, but under license.”
The licensing requirement exempted the routine slaughter traffic to Kathmandu, which is mostly conducted under license.
The Union of India and the four states bordering Nepal––Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal––were already enjoined to prevent cattle smuggling.
The major significance of the Khehar/Mishera injunction therefore was to hand the government of India and the animal advocacy groups campaigning against the Gadhi Mai sacrifices a face-saving way to declare victory when the festival turned out to be demonstrably magnitudes of order smaller than the previous hyperbolic claims from both the priests promoting it and the activists trying to stop it
Gauri Maulekhi (LinkedIn photo)
Gauri Maulekhi
Said HIS/India consultant and People for Animals trustee Gauri Maulekhi, who obtained the Supreme Court of India order, “We commend the temple committee but acknowledge that a huge task lies ahead of us in educating the public so that they are fully aware. HSI/India will now spend the next three and a half years till the next Gadhi Mai [festival date] educating devotees in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal on the temple trusts’ decision not to sacrifice animals. Animal sacrifice is a highly regressive practice and no nation in the modern world should entertain it.”
Supreme Court of India order
Wayne Pacelle’s statement
Proclaimed HSUS president Pacelle, in a statement echoed by Rowan in at times almost identical language, “Working with Animal Welfare Network Nepal and People for Animals in India, HSI adopted a multi-pronged approach to end the animal sacrifice. Since an estimated 70% of the animals killed at Gadhimai are transported across the border from neighboring India into Nepal, HSI successfully obtained an order from the Supreme Court of India against transporting the animals, and then worked with India’s Ministry of Home Affairs to issue a directive to the Indo-Nepal border forces to stop and confiscate the animals. This resulted in more than 100 arrests and more than 2,500 animals being seized on their way to the festival,” which would have been about 1% of the numbers of animals that HSUS, HIS, and other Gadhi Mai sacrifice opponents had claimed were killed in 2009.
“The Supreme Court also insisted on the establishment of SPCAs in all districts in the three Indian states adjoining Nepal, to tackle animal cruelty,” Pacelle added.
Ram Baran Yadav (Wikipedia)
“The HSI/India team and its partners met with temple officials and the Nepal government,” Pacelle continued, “including Nepalese president Ram Baran Yadav and prime minister Sushil Koirala, and members of [the Nepalese] Parliament.
“All of those efforts have been rewarded with this startlingly great news,” Pacelle said, “and it will inevitably reverberate and bring pressure upon organizers of smaller spectacles involving animal sacrifice. Earlier this year, following the global outrage stemming from the Gadhimai massacre, the temple committee decided not to sacrifice any animals during the harvest festival (Sankranti), either.”
(See also Did the Gadhi Mai Temple Trust renege on deal to quit animal sacrifice?, No karmic bridge links the Nepal earthquake to Gadhi Mai; Beauty Without Cruelty-India exposes Gadhi Mai scam; The toll from Gadhi Mai 2014: 750 buffalo sacrificed, 1,000 devotees in attendance; Ignoring Thanksgiving massacre, HSUS president Wayne Pacelle denounces animal sacrifice in Nepal; Supreme Court of India ruling covers tracks on Gadhi Mai sacrifice; Exposing the truth of the Gadhi Mai sacrificial slaughter; Books shed light on sacrifice in Nepal; and The origin of the Gadhi Mai sacrifice.)
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Did the Gadhi Mai Temple Trust renege on deal to quit animal sacrifice?
Thank you for publicizing the facts inasmuch as they are known, for crediting those who have been instrumental in ending these sacrifices, and in sharing the (hopefully good) news. Sharing to social media, with gratitude. By whatever means necessary, the ending of any number of innocent lives being lost is a good thing, I think we can all agree.
As one wise soul remarked: “Success has many parents; failure is
an orphan”!!
Many years ago, upon hearing reports of a huge once-in-five-years
sacrifice of animals in Nepal, Mr. T. Shantilal Jain, the then Treasurer
of the Blue Cross of India spoke to the Members of the Governing
Body to do something. Two of our members visited Nepal upon the
promise of a prominent Nepal-based Jain businessman to get a
meeting with the then King Birendra. The meeting did not materialize
and, except for a brief report of the matter by Merritt Clifton, then editor of the Animal People newspaper and now editor of ANIMALS 24-7, very few people were aware of it.
Since then, Gadhimai has come into the world’s consciousness and
has been variously described as the “World’s largest ritual slaughter
of animals” and in many other terms.
Concerned people all over the world, including Nepal, have been
trying to do something to stop this bloodshed.
2014 saw frenzied activity in many countries. In September 2014,
HSI – India managed to get the Chief priest of Gadhimai to attend the
FIAPO conference at Jaipur where many of us – especially Manoj Gautam
of Animal Welfare Network Nepal; Maneka Gandhi; Dr. Nanditha Krishna,
Chair of HSI-India; Jayasimha, Managing Director of HSI-India and others
spoke to him of stopping the slaughter. Mrs. Gandhi even offered financial
help to re-build the Gadhimai temple if this was done.
Simultaneously, PfA’s Gauri Maulekhi, who is also consultant to HSI-India,
approached the Supreme Court of India and got directions to the border
security agencies to prevent animals being taken across the porous
Indo-Nepal border. Armed with this order of October 14, 2014 from a
two-member bench of India’s apex court, volunteers from all over India
went to the border areas to raise awareness and to report and document
cases of animals being taken across. Prominent amoug these, was a
team from the Blue Cross of India in Chennai led by Mr Dawn William, a
former Black Cat commando. Once again, many people were involved –
especially Mrs. Maneka Gandhi’s office – in getting train reservations to
ferry the vehicles of the volunteers from Chennai to Patna and back.
Meanwhile, back in Nepal, unknown to many working on the ground,
Uttam Dahal of the Nepal Animal Welfare and Research Centre, obtained
orders from Nepal’s Supreme Court directing all local bodies, organizations,
police, health administrators and individuals to ensure that all laws – Nepal
Animal Health and Livestock Services Act; Nepal Animal Slaughterhouse
and Meat inspection Act; the Environment Protection Act; etc – to ensure
that the Gadhimai event is carried out in consonance with these Acts.
Properly enforced, the directions from the two apex courts of India and
Nepal should have seen virtually no animals butchered in 2014 at Gadhimai.
With extremely lax enforcement of all laws in both countries and with the
rampant corruption that exists, thousands of poor animals were slaughtered.
Much less than expected and magnitudes smaller than forecast and marketed
by the temple authorities, thousands of animals still endured the marching,
being carried, prodded and smuggled from India and parts of Nepal to be killed
in the arena of the Gadhimai temple.
But a tipping point had been reached. With the negative world-wide publicity
of the senseless killing; the lower-than-expected numbers killed (whose skins,
horns and bones had been sold in advance to Chinese firms); the Supreme
Courts’ rulings which have ensured even less animals in 2019, the temple
management finally saw the light. Gadhimai Temple Trust Secretary Motilal
Prasad and Trust Chairman Ram Chandra Shah announced on July 28, 2015
that “We have decided to completely stop the practice of animal sacrifice”.
The Chairman Ram Chandra Shah told Agence France-Presse:”I realised that
animals are so much like us – they have the same organs as us and feel the
same pain we do”. Shah specifically mentioned that the “dedicated work of the
Animal Welfare Network Nepal and Humane Society International – India have
shown us the path and provided the motivation to make this transformation a
reality”.
We are delighted. To the thousands who have worked so hard to reach this
point, my sincere gratitude. No single party can claim to be the cause of victory –
but there is nothing we cannot achieve if we all work together, Gadhimai has
been around for centuries but now, for the first time, in 2019 “Gadhimai will
be a celebration of life” in the words of Chairman Ram Chandra Shah.
The largest ripple effect of the Nepal Supreme Court ruling will be to reduce
and ultimately end the barbaric sacrifice of animals in Nepal. When I visited
Nepal in 1999, every temple I visited had the sacrifice pit reeking of blood and
the spirits of the poor animals killed there over the centuries in the name of God!
All temples that is with the exception of the Pashupathi Nath Temple founded
by Adi Sankara where there have been no sacrifices – ever.
Hi. I am G.P Dahal in formalities and Uttam Dahal on Facebook. The reports published about the end of animal sacrifice at the Gadhi Mai festival were based on the letter and video tape from chairman of Gadhi Mai Temple Management Trust. This was the beginning of a great achievement, but still more challenges are ahead of us to completely ban animal sacrifice.
Please, support us and visit our Facebook page!
Thank you, Merritt, for this strong publication.
I have been delighted to hear about this good news about the ban on future Gadhimai sacrifices in Nepal.
However, I have now seen this link which states that the Gadhimai Trust dismisses this report. I would be interested to hear your view on this new report in this link here.
http://myrepublica.com/feature-article/item/25385-gadhimai-trust-dismisses-reports-on-animal-sacrifice-ban.html
Thank you
Please see Did the Gadhi Mai Temple Trust renege on deal to quit animal sacrifice?