Animal activists campaign against sacrifice
The Nepal Weekly 
December 3, 2024
Gadhimai festival is a Hindu festival held every five years in Nepal at the Gadhimai Temple located in Bariyarpur, Bara District, about 160 kilometres south of the capital Kathmandu, and about 7 kilometres east of the city of Kalaiya, near the Indo-Nepal border.
The event involves large-scale sacrificial slaughter of animals, including water buffalo. pigs, goats, roosters, and pigeons, with the goal of pleasing Gadhimai, the goddess of power who is considered as a form of Kali. Devotees also make other offerings, including coconuts, sweets, and red-coloured clothes.
The festival has been described as the world’s largest animal sacrifice event. Animal sacrifice at the festival attracts people from Nepal and India with belief that offering animal sacrifice to the goddess might bring the wish to truth.
The festival was primarily celebrated by Madhesi people.
The origins of Gadhimai date back around 270 years, when the founder of the Gadhimai Temple, Bhagwan Chowdhary, had a dream that the goddess Gadhimai wanted blood in return for freeing him from prison, protecting him from evil and promising prosperity and power. The goddess asked for a human sacrifice, but Chowdhary managed offering an animal instead, and this has been repeated every five years since.
It is estimated that 250,000 animals were sacrificed during the Gadhimai festival of 2009 including 20,000 buffalos were sacrificed on the first day. In 2009, activists made several attempts to stop the ritual; this included Brigitte Bardot and Maneka Gandhi, who wrote to the Nepalese government, asking it to stop the killings. A government official commented that they would not “interfere in the centuries-old tradition of the Madheshi people”.
In October 2014, Gauri Maulekhi (People for Animals Uttarakhand trustee) and Humane Society International (HSI consultant) filed a petition against the illegal transportation of animals from India to Nepal for sacrifice. After this, the Supreme Court of India passed an interim order directing the Government of India to prevent animals from being illegally transported across the border for sacrifice at Gadhimai. The court also asked animal protection groups and others to devise an action plan to ensure the court order would be implemented NG Jayasimha, HSI India representative, visited Nepal to ensure the ban was being adhered to.The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs directed the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to monitor and make sure no animals got to Nepal for the festival.
In 2015, following rigorous negotiations and campaigning by Animal Welfare Network Nepal and HSI/India, the Gadhimai Temple Trust (the Gadhimai Temple Operation and Development Committee) declared that buffalo sacrifice within the Temple arena would be banned indefinitely at future festivals. However, despite the Temple Priest’s having confirmed the ban in a video statement, the temple reneged on its promise to have a bloodless Gadhimai. The reality is that the idea of animal sacrifice is so ingrained in the minds of the millions of devotees that breaking that tradition even with the support of the temple is extremely challenging.
In September 2019, the Supreme Court of Nepal ruled in favour of ending live animal sacrifice at the festival, directing the relevant agencies to create an action plan. This was followed in November by appeals against animal sacrifice issued by Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology. These appeals followed a series of workshops and meetings between the government bodies and Humane Society International, FAWN, Jane Goodall Institute Nepal and others on the implementation of the Supreme Court ruling.
However, animal sacrifice was continued although some devotees differed offering animals for sacrifice.
For years, and especially in the months leading up to each Gadhimai festival, HSI and animal welfare groups attempt negotiation with the Temple Trust and local officials, as well as work with the Indo-Nepal border force who are positioned at border checkpoints to confiscate animals.
Humane Society International has announced that as in the past, it will be on the ground at the Indo-Nepal border to assist law enforcement in confiscating as many animals as possible. The pressure groups and animal welfare groups are with view that the festival should run without sacrifice of animals.
