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Are there any Hindus out there who can explain how the cult of Kali can be understood other than as a bloodthirsty worship of death and murder?

The article comes from Time Magazine, after all, so we're not going to be getting a balanced look at any news item with a religious aspect to it. There are millions of Hindus who worship God as Mother Kali, and yet the vast majority do not go around offering human blood to their chosen ideal. (The posted image shows Kali standing upon Shiva, her consort. Kali is the power of God Who creates, preserves, and destroys.)

Are there any Hindus out there who can explain how the cult of Kali can be understood other than as a bloodthirsty worship of death and murder?

Maybe the University of North Carolina will make this required reading for incoming freshman.

actually before christianity spread the jewish taboo against human sacrifice and male and female temple prostitution--this sort of thing was the norm throughout the world.

In homer's story of Illiad -- Agammemnon sacrifices his daughter to the gods of ambition. The fallout from that sacrifice goes on through several generations.

The practice of human sacrifice and male and female temple prostitution were tightly bound to dynastic disentegration. Part of the reason that Moses wandered in the desert for 40 years was to wait for these practices to take their toll on the caananites.

When cortez came to the new world he was appalled not just by human sacrifice practiced by Aztecs but also by the way the Aztec priests would "act up" right in front of he and his men.

They felt a bit of the same righteous wrath in their swords as Joshua and his men.

For the last century or so people have been digging up celtic human sacrifices from the bogs of Europe.

Are there any Hindus out there who can explain how the cult of Kali can be understood other than as a bloodthirsty worship of death and murder?

I'm not a Hindu, but human scarifice has been a part of Hinduism for centuries, at least the part that worships Kali. But human/god sacrifice is at the heart of Christianity as well. The death of Jesus is central to the Christian faith. During the eucharist, Christians reenact the killing of Christ. In communion, they eat his flesh and drink his blood.

All of life is based upon death. It is an unpleasant reality, but try staying alive without eating something that was once alive and then you killed or was killed for you for food. Just because most Americans live in cities now and never have to kill an animal because the supermaket has done the killing for them does not change the reality that life is based upon the violence of killing other life.

Ritualized sacrifice is a way to acknowledge this fact and put limits to it. But it would seem that the Kali cult has taken this reality and gone to extremes. Personally, I prefer the Christian reenactment.

I'm an agnostic from a Hindu family. The answer to your question is, the practices described in this article can't be. I could try to explain the mindset of the sheep (I refuse to call them 'people') who subscribe to this murderous ideology, but I won't bother.

Having said all that, parts of India where Kali worship is rampant aren't as violent as many places where it's not. Calcutta, unless you're a political activist, is a relatively safe city, compared to Bombay. Human sacrifice is the exception - not the norm, in contemporary India.