| Maina |
Posted
on 03-Apr-02 10:43 AM
By Rahul Karmakar
in Guwahati, north-eastern India
Followers of a Hindu cult in India's north-eastern state of Assam have revived the ancient practice of human sacrifice.
A willing human being is difficult to find these days
Temple researcher Dr Pradeep Sharmah
But in the absence of human volunteers, devotees at the Kamakhya Temple near the state capital Guwahati are using six-foot effigies made of flour for the rite.
Steeped in secrecy, human sacrifices to the Mother Goddess Shakti were thought to have died out completely.
The revival of the "Nara bali" practice a few years ago would have remained under wraps had it not been for an academic researching the temple, one of India's holiest pilgrimage sites.
The cult followers had apparently wanted live humans to revive the gory tradition, but opted for an effigy instead fearing a backlash.
Ancient worship
"A willing human being is difficult to find these days," said Dr Pradeep Sharmah, director of the Vivekananda Kendra Institute of Culture (VKIC).
He said priests had already been heavily criticised by animal rights groups for their use of animals in ritual sacrifices, hence their decision to use human effigies instead of the real thing.
Dr Sharmah was inducted into the inner circle of a handful of "Shakta" priests after he won their trust.
"The sacrifice is made at midnight, on the day of Ashtami during the 10-day autumnal Durga Puja," said Dr Sharmah.
But it can also be carried out on any day specified by divine forces.
"The ancient worshippers believed that the person to be sacrificed was sent by god, and as a rule a woman would never be put to the altar," Dr Sharmah said.
The Kamakhya Temple attracts some 10,000 devotees per day, but certain aspects of the temple's ceremonies - including sacrifices - have been kept closely-guarded secrets.
No witnesses
The administrator of the Kamakhya Trust, Bharati Prasad Sarma, said that no outsiders were ever allowed to witness a sacrifice.
Thousands of devotees worship at the temple
"It is believed that if anyone tries to see the act, evil is bestowed upon him by the Mother," he said.
The administrator said the schoolboy son of a temple priest, or panda, fell blind last year when he tried secretly to watch a ceremony.
The pandas say that only a chosen few are eligible to conduct a sacrifice.
Research shows that human sacrifice at Kamakhya was first revived 75 years ago, but was discontinued a few years later.
A 1933 journal of the Assam Research Society says that living people were sacrificed until the reign of King Gaurinath Singha between 1780 and 1796.
Records of earlier periods at the Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies indicate that the practice was widespread in Assam.
|
| Maina |
Posted
on 03-Apr-02 10:47 AM
A Government Plot?
PARIS, April 2, 2002
The Pentagon on 9-11-01, after American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked (AP)
"I believe the American government is lying... No plane crashed into the Pentagon."
Thierry Meyssan
(REUTERS) The French are lapping up a Sept. 11 conspiracy theory which argues the plane that smashed into the Pentagon never existed and that the world has been duped by a murky U.S. government plot.
Thierry Meyssan's book "The Frightening Fraud" is flying off shelves according to booksellers and has topped bestseller lists.
Meyssan, president of Reseau Voltaire, a respected left-wing think tank, reckons the American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, killing 189 on Sept. 11, did not exist and that the whole thing was staged by the government.
"I believe the American government is lying... No plane crashed into the Pentagon," he told France 2 television.
Meyssan did not provide an alternative theory for what may have damaged the Pentagon.
And although French media has scoffed at Meyssan's musings, comparing them to the Roswell alien cover-up theory dramatized in the hit TV show "The X-Files," the public seems intrigued.
"Copies have been flying off shelves," a saleswoman at FNAC bookshop in central Paris told Reuters. It shot to the top of Amazon France's bestseller list and made it to second place in the booksellers' weekly Livres Hebdo's sales list.
Daily newspaper Liberation slammed the book as "a tissue of wild allegations," marveling at its quick rise to fame, from Internet chat rooms, via television chat shows, to bestseller.
Conspiracy theories like the rumors that swirled around the 1963 shooting of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, or the idea that man never actually set foot on the moon, are not uncommon in the United States, but are fairly rare in France.
"This phenomenon is not typical of the French," sociologist Pierre Lagrange told Liberation.
"But the events of Sept. 11 gave us a reality so similar to science fiction, that there has been more of a market for paranoid interpretations."
Meyssan says key evidence shows witness accounts are contradictory, that there are few photographs of the crash and that those that do exist show no debris from the plane.
He also asks why the facade of the Pentagon did not immediately collapse from the shock of the impact and questions the fate of the passengers on the flight.
"What became of the passengers of American Airlines Flight 77? Are they dead?" he asks.
Daily newspaper Le Monde and Liberation both probed Meyssan's theory, tracking down relatives of the victims, and quizzing officials over the crash.
News weekly Le Nouvel Observateur denounced the book as revisionism. "This theory suits everyone - there are no Islamic extremists...everyone is happy. It eliminates reality."
But while Le Monde dismissed Meyssan's theory as flimsy, it admitted that information available did not quite add up.
"There is no official account of the crash...the lack of information is feeding the rumor."
By Rebecca Harrison
© MMII Reuters Limited. All Rights Reserved.
|
