Editor’s note: Jan Salter, a legend in Himalayan humane work, offers a second perspective and further detail about the Nepal earthquake relief effort at “Nepal earthquake update from Jan Salter, founder, KAT Centre,” and Animal Nepal’s post-earthquake report. KATHMANDU––“The Nepal Animal Welfare & Research Center now is critically suffering from the [post-earthquake] financial crisis and can’t operate its […]
Beauty Without Cruelty-India exposes Gadhi Mai scam
Multi-year investigation PUNE, India––Gullible opponents of the Gadhi Mai mass sacrifice in Nepal have inadvertently helped the priests behind it to scam some of the poorest people in the world, a multi-year investigation by Beauty Without Cruelty India has discovered. Held approximately every five years in Bariyarpur, Nepal, 26 kilometers from the border with Bihar […]
Hindu “Festival of the Sun” Makar Sankranti cuts birds out of the skies
As deadly as opening day of bird hunting season MUMBAI, PUNE, AHMEDABAD––Preliminary estimates indicate that fewer birds were killed or injured by kite strings during Makar Sankranti 2015 than a year earlier, but the annual Hindu “Festival of the Sun,” observed on January 14 this year, remains perhaps as deadly to birds over western India […]
Jurist V.R. Krishna Iyer, 100, fought for captive elephants
Vaidyanathapura Rama Krishna Iyer, 100, among India’s most distinguished jurists, advocates for animals, and advocates in particular for improving the lives of temple elephants, died on December 4, 2014 from the combination of renal and cardiac failure. Though of Tamil Brahmin family background, V.R. Krishna Iyer was born and raised in the Malabar region of […]
The toll from Gadhi Mai 2014: 750 buffalo sacrificed, 1,000 devotees in attendance
Drone photo permits body count Debate about the numbers of buffalo sacrificed at the November 27, 2014 Gadhi Mai sacrificial festival at Bariyarpur, Nepal and the numbers of human participants and sacrificial devotees present should be ended by this drone photo of the corrals where the sacrifices were conducted: the toll was significantly lower […]
Ignoring Thanksgiving massacre, HSUS president Wayne Pacelle denounces animal sacrifice in Nepal
Any cruelty to animals is worthy of denunciation. The larger and more conspicuous the cruelty, the more urgent the denunciation is. Denouncing one of the largest animal sacrifices in the world at Thanksgiving 2014 would have been thoroughly appropriate for Humane Society of the U.S. and Humane Society International president Wayne Pacelle––if only he had […]
Supreme Court of India ruling covers tracks on Gadhi Mai sacrifice
Face-saving way to declare victory DELHI––Did a two-justice bench from the Supreme Court of India on October 17, 2014 strike a mighty blow against animal sacrifices at the Gadhi Mai festival, to be held in the village of Bariyarpur, Nepal, on November 28-29, 2014? Or did the Supreme Court justices just hand the government of […]
Exposing the truth of the Gadhi Mai sacrificial slaughter
The Gadhi Mai sacrifice every five years kills a lot of animals, but not nearly as many as are killed at other sacrificial events, chiefly in India KATHMANDU, WASHINGTON D.C.––Even by the frequently hyperbolic standards of activist alerts and fundraising appeals, an alert distributed on October 2, 2014 by Humane Society […]
Books shed light on sacrifice in Nepal
Elephant Polo: the Rise and Fall of a Hotel in Nepal by Cas de Stoppelaar Translated from the original Dutch by Adriaan Verheul Vajra Book Shop, 2007: http://www.elephantpolonovel.com/ 296 pages, paperback & audiobook Religions In Nepal (2013 edition) by Trilok Chandra Majupuria & Rohit Kumar (Majupuria) Modern Printing Press, Kantipath, Kathmandu, Nepal 401 pages, […]
The origin of the Gadhi Mai sacrifice
What was the actual tradition? KATHMANDU––Animal sacrifice clearly has been practiced at Bariyarpur in honor of the local goddess Gadhi Mai for centuries, even if not in anything like the numbers of recent years. But what was the actual tradition? Anil Bhanot, general secretary of the United Kingdom Hindu Council, offered the best-known version of […]