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Ban Animal Sacrifice
(November 1)
We wonder where the entire animal rights workers were during this Durga Puja. Perhaps they have still not recovered from fits of retching after the blood and gore that flowed on the last day of the festival, leaving them with little or no energy to do what have become so habitual for them -- issue routine press releases and organize seminars to declare their solemn vows to defend the right of
animals.
Or perhaps there is no fun, and more important, funds, to be tapped from protests against such institutionalized religious practices, even if these verge on savagery. The sights ought to have made the stomach of even professional butchers turn. It is unimaginable to think this was happening with the full knowledge, if not right before the very eyes of many supposedly pious, vegetarian, orthodox, practicing Hindus who, have made it a point to make everybody know their professed creed is non-violence.
We have nothing to say against non-vegetarianism. Human digestive system is built for such a food habit. Which also implies we have no objections to animal slaughter for food, provided cruelty is prohibited beyond the absolutely necessary. Pain, both psychological and physical must be minimized, if not eliminated altogether during the process of slaughter.
We find it foolhardy and boorish all who seek to ban
slaughter houses and consequently meat eating, but endorse wholeheartedly the demands for making scientific slaughter methods mandatory in all slaughterhouses. Moreover, it must again be made mandatory for slaughters to be conducted away from the sight and hearing of the general public.
This does not of course mean we are against vegetarianism. We see vegetarianism as a renunciation of certain basic human instinct, requiring a certain degree of sacrifice. "We even reserve our admiration for those who choose this dietary practice and also can exercise the will to live up to their convictions. To each his own, as long as all refrains from infringing into another's sphere of independent and dignified living. Understanding and tolerance is the key.
Some religious practices are not just rude assaults on the notion of civilized behavior but downright and horrific relics from the atavistic past. If justifications must be found for these practices, it will have to be against the background of the relevant periods in history where they originated. When the contextual background has altered, as it must with the passage of time, such practices are rendered grotesquely anachronistic.
Animal sacrifices, especially by ritualistic public beheading is not just cruel, but ghastly. There can be no fear greater than death. Even insects know what the threat of death is. We are certain the sacrificial animals which are, dragged to the altar know what they are headed for. The pain and panic is unimaginable and simply cannot be acceptable to civilized minds. There can be no two ways about it.
Animal sacrifice must end. Ban it if it must be. Let not the argument of hurting religious sentiments be used as an excuse to perpetuate such cruelty. For that matter, headhunting, human sacrifices, the practice of sati, cannibalism.... all were ritualistic behaviors that hinged on religions, of different human societies. They have
all been banned and all with unchallengeable secular intents and outcomes.
(Courtesy:
The Imphal Free Press Journal)
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