Associated Press<\/P>
BHUBANESHWAR, INDIA, October 22, 2004: (HPI does not endorse animal sacrifice in any way, but notes that 35 million animals a year are killed in US slaughter houses, a rate of 96,000\/day — activity which does not generate condemnatory articles from the Associated Press.)
\n
\nHindu devotees have sacrificed a total of 10,000 buffaloes, goats and chickens at the altar of a Hindu Goddess in temples across eastern India over the past two days, an animal rights group said Friday. Amid a crescendo of drum beats, musical instruments and religious chants, Hindu devotees dragged the animals to chopping blocks at nearly 300 temples in Orissa state to propitiate Durga – a widely worshipped warrior-Goddess in the Hindu pantheon. The animal considered most dear to the Goddess is the buffalo, and Hindus believe the sacrifice helps to fulfill their wishes. “At least 10,000 animals were chopped to death on Wednesday and Thursday,” said Jeevan Pradip Das, head of People for Animals, a private group. Friday is the culmination of the Navaratra (nine nights) festivities, observed as occasions of fasting and prayer in honor of the Goddess. Das said his group would launch a campaign six months before the festival next year to persuade people to stop killing the animals. Many Hindu devotees see nothing wrong with the slaughter. “It’s an age-old tradition and nobody can stop it,” said Bhagirathi Panda. Another, Kapil Maharana, said he didn’t believe in sacrificing animals, but added the ritual was unlikely to stop. “I personally feel that this tradition should end. But I know it will not as the majority of people want it to continue,” he said. Orissa Law Minister Harichandan said the state government wants to end the bloody tradition, but feared public anger. “We want to stop the ritual but have failed so far as people are very sentimental about this tradition. We fear revolt by people,” said Harichandan, who uses one name. “We need to explain and persuade the people to end the practice. And we will do it.”
\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Associated PressBHUBANESHWAR, INDIA, October 22, 2004: (HPI does not endorse animal sacrifice in any way, but notes that 35 million,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}