Killing for 'Mother' Kali

Time Asia ^ | JULY 29, 2002 | ALEX PERRY ATAPUR

[aculeus]

It was at most a fringe practice, but a spate of ritual killings in India shows that human sacrifice lives on.

For the magic to work, the killing had to be done just right. If the goddess were to grant Khudu Karmakar the awesome powers he expected from a virgin's death, the victim had to be willing, had to know what was happening, watch the knife, and not stop it. But even tranquilizers couldn't lull 15-year-old Manju Kumari to her fate. In his police confession, Karmakar says his wife, daughter and three accomplices had to gag Manju and pin her down on the earthen floor before the shrine. In ritual order, Karmakar wafted incense over her, tore off her blue skirt and pink T shirt, shaved her, sprinkled her with holy water from the Ganges and rubbed her with cooking fat. Then chanting mantras to the "mother" goddess Kali, he sawed off Manju's hands, breasts and left foot, placing the body parts in front of a photograph of a blood-soaked Kali idol. Police say the arcs of blood on the walls suggest Manju bled to death in minutes.

Human sacrifice has always been an anomaly in India. Even 200 years ago, when a boy was killed every day at a Kali temple in Calcutta, blood cults were at odds with a benign Hindu spiritualism that celebrates abstinence and vegetarianism. But Kali is different. A ferocious slayer of evil in Hindu mythology, the goddess is said to have an insatiable appetite for blood. With the law on killing people more strictly enforced today, ersatz substitutes now stand in for humans when sacrifice is required. Most Kali temples have settled on large pumpkins to represent a human body; other followers slit the throats of two-meter-tall human effigies made of flour, or of animals such as goats.

In secret ceremonies, however, the grizzly practice lives on. Quite simply, say the faithful—known as tantrics—Kali looks after those who look after her, bringing riches to the poor, revenge to the oppressed and newborn joy to the childless. So far this year, police have recorded at least one case of ritual killing a month. In January, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a 24-year-old woman hacked her three-year-old son to death after a tantric sorcerer supposedly promised unlimited earthly riches. In February, two men in the eastern state of Tripura beheaded a woman on the instructions of a deity they said appeared in their dreams promising hidden treasures. Karmakar killed Manju in Atapur village in Jharkhand state in April. The following month, police dug up the remains of two sisters, aged 18 and 13, in Bihar, dismembered with a ceremonial sword and offered to Kali by their father. Last week on the outskirts of Bombay, maize seller Anil Lakshmikant Singh, 33, beheaded his neighbor's nine-year-old son to save his marriage on the advice of a tantric. Said Singh: "He promised that a human sacrifice would end all my miseries."

Far from ancient barbarisms that refuse to die, sacrifice and sorcery are making a comeback. Sociologists explain the millions who now throng the two main Kali centers in eastern India, at Kamakhya and Tarapith, as what happens when the rat race that is India's future meets the superstitions of its past. Sociologist Ashis Nandy says: "You see your neighbor doing well, above his caste and position, and someone tells you to get a child and do a secret ritual and you can catch up." Adds mysticism expert Ipsita Roy Chakaraverti: "It's got nothing to do with real mysticism or with spiritualism. It comes down to pure and simple greed." Tarapith in particular is a giant building site of new hotels, restaurants and stalls selling plastic swords and postcards of Kali's severed feet. Judging by the visitors here, Kali appeals to both rich and poor: the rows of SUVs parked outside four-star hotels belong to the ranks of businessmen and politicians lining up with their goats behind penniless pilgrims. ("The blood never dries at Tarapith," whispers one villager.)

There are no human sacrifices at the temple these days. But the mystique of ritual killing is so powerful that even those who actually don't perform it claim to do so. In their camp in the cremation grounds beside the temple, a throng of tantrics tout for business by competing to be as spooky as possible, lining their mud-walled temples with human skulls and telling tall tales of human sacrifice. "I cut off her head," says 64-year-old Baba Swami Vivekanand of a girl he says he raised from birth. "We buried the body and brought the head back, cooked it and ate it." He pauses to demand a $2 donation. "Good story, no?" While most of this is innocent, some followers, like Karmakar, are inevitably emboldened to take their quest for power to the extreme. Karmakar, like many others, was caught. But in the dust-bowl villages of India, where superstition reigns and blood has a dark authority, the question is how many other "holy men" have found that ultimate power still rests in the murderous magic of a virgin sacrifice.

—With reporting by Faizan Ahmed

[aculeus]

Just another all-cultures-are-equal ping.

[Jimmy Valentine]

'Take up the white mans burden, The savage wars of peace,

Fill full the mouth of famine, And bid the sickness cease,

And when your goal is nearest, Your hope for others sought,

Watch sloth and heathen folly, Bring all your works to nought. (Kipling)

India is sliding backward into darkness. Poojah (worship) Khali is a national holiday there. Some worship her strength, others worship her mastery of Death.

Regards,

[Centurion2000]

It was at most a fringe practice, but a spate of ritual killings in India shows that human sacrifice lives on

It's not a fringe practice in the Middle East and the human sacrifices to the allah demon proceed at almost one per day in the form of suicide bombers.

[Destro]

aristeides, the Thugs were (was?) an organized cult. These seem to be independent isolated cases. Thugs killed strangers to rob them of their purses and killed by strangulation, it was forbidden to draw blood.

By the way (no flames please-and no I'm no Hindu lover) but what is the Christian crucifixion but a human sacrifice and what is the Christian mass but a pantomime of that sacrifice, complete with the drinking of the blood and cannibalism? Substitute the pumpkin for Kali with wine and bread. Even the rule that the victim be a willing one for the Kali-Hindu's has parallels to Christ's willingness to sacrifice himself for our sins.

But Christ came to end such practices. His was the last human blood sacrifice God was willing to accept from humanity.

[Destro]

aristeides, the Thugs were (was?) an organized cult. These seem to be independent isolated cases. Thugs killed strangers to rob them of their purses and killed by strangulation, it was forbidden to draw blood.

By the way (no flames please-and no I'm no Hindu lover) but what is the Christian crucifixion but a human sacrifice and what is the Christian mass but a pantomime of that sacrifice, complete with the drinking of the blood and cannibalism? Substitute the pumpkin for Kali with wine and bread. Even the rule that the victim be a willing one for the Kali-Hindu's has parallels to Christ's willingness to sacrifice himself for our sins.

But Christ came to end such practices. His was the last human blood sacrifice God was willing to accept from humanity.

[Destro]

aristeides, the Thugs were (was?) an organized cult. These seem to be independent isolated cases. Thugs killed strangers to rob them of their purses and killed by strangulation, it was forbidden to draw blood.

By the way (no flames please-and no I'm no Hindu lover) but what is the Christian crucifixion but a human sacrifice and what is the Christian mass but a pantomime of that sacrifice, complete with the drinking of the blood and cannibalism? Substitute the pumpkin for Kali with wine and bread. Even the rule that the victim be a willing one for the Kali-Hindu's has parallels to Christ's willingness to sacrifice himself for our sins.

But Christ came to end such practices. His was the last human blood sacrifice God was willing to accept from humanity.

[Destro]

bump-sorry for the multiple posts

[Restorer]

But Christ came to end such practices. His was the last human blood sacrifice God was willing to accept from humanity.

Actually, God never accepted such practices. He dramaticly rejected them a couple of thousand years earlier when he rejected Abrahams' attempted sacrifice of his son Isaac and replaced it with a ram. The Jews then practiced animal sacrifice for many centuries.

Christians don't believe Jesus was the last valid human sacrifice, they believe he was the final valid sacrifice of any type.

[maro]

No intent to malign Hinduism per se; there are no doubt many fine people who happen to be Hindu. But this Kali cult strikes me, and I gather you as well, as different from typical Hinduism.

[maro]

Posted to the wrong person--see my post # 29.

[Restorer]

different from typical Hinduism

No such animal. A common misconception is that Hinduism is a religion in the same way that Islam and Judaism are.

The fact is that Hinduism is a vast amalgam of thousands of religious practices united in having as almost their only common beliefs the caste system and a mutual tolerance for each other's peculiarities. It cheerfully incorporates everything from the most rank imaginable human sacrifice and sex worship (including sacred child prostitutes) to incredibly esoteric philosophical speculation and ascetism.

Hinduism is closer to the combination of all the ancient pagan beliefs in the Roman Empire around 200 AD than it is to any other belief system found today.

[livius]

"Hinduism is closer to the combination of all the ancient pagan beliefs in the Roman Empire around 200 AD than it is to any other belief system found today."

A very interesting point, Restorer. I'd never thought of it that way.

[AM2000]

But this Kali cult strikes me, and I gather you as well, as different from typical Hinduism.

Just like Restorer said, there's no such thing as typical Hinduism. I, for example, only know of the Hinduism as is practiced in my parents home and the few religious functions they have managed to drag me to over the years (always with the temptation of meeting eligible single professional women). The Hinduism described in this article is as alien to me as.. a whole other religion. Sure, it's called Hinduism, but that doesn't mean anything to me. Yes, I'm familiar with the practices, having read about them and having been educated as a child in the Bengali 'renaissance' in the late 18th and early 19th century where practices like this were banished from the mainstream. But it's not Hinduism to me. The point being - and I apologise for being so damn long winded - that there is no typical Hinduism since it's very different depending on what kind of family you come from and what part of the Subcontinent your roots are in. My family is proud of being 'progressive' (they're closet commies but they'll never admit it *grin*) and I've always been raised to view human or even animal sacrifice with total revulsion. Having said that, my family does celebrate Kali Puja but there's no commonality at all in how they do it and how the people in this article do it.

[Restorer]

No insult intended. Many Hindus, like your family and unlike those in the article, practice their religion in a way that I can fully respect, although I believe them to be in error.

[AM2000]

That's fine. I believe them to be in error as well, as I believe all people of organized religions to be in error. Disagreements are fine as long we don't resort to killing each other over it, right?

[Restorer]

>>Disagreements are fine as long we don't resort to killing each other over it, right?

Works for me, although I'd prefer to not get beat up either.

[AM2000]

Aiight, I'll call ma boyz off.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

...what is the Christian crucifixion but a human sacrifice and what is the Christian mass but a pantomime of that sacrifice, complete with the drinking of the blood and cannibalism?

If I remember my history correctly, crucifixion was a common means of public execution in Roman territories and not a religious sacrificial rite. One of those crucified with Crist was a thief.

Do you mean Catholic Mass? As a protestant, I never went to mass although I am a Christian. I believe the Catholics don't drink blood. I do think wine was a common drink in Chist's times. I think Christ may have metaphorically used the term of taking wine in an oath as drinking his blood meaning that those with him were with God through him or something like that.

Any attempt to equate the practice of human sacrifice with Christianity stretches my experience beyond belief.

[Restorer]

Any attempt to equate the practice of human sacrifice with Christianity stretches my experience beyond belief.

You're obviously not a Catholic, all right.

RC dogma is that the priest literally turns the wine and bread into the blood and flesh of Christ at each Mass. As a Protestant, you should have heard of the doctrine of transubstantiation. Disagreements over its validity got a few million Protestants and Catholics quite dead a few centuries back.

If I'm not mistaken, Lutherans and (High Church) Anglican/Episcopalians believe something quite similar.

Even most Protestants believe that Christ's death was a sacrifice, although it wasn't the Roman intent. Except most Protestants believe that sacrifice occurred once for all time.

[general_re]

In secret ceremonies, however, the grizzly practice lives on.

Time for H.M. Queen Victoria to send in more troops to civilize the natives...