Gadhimai Mela (Warning: Contains graphic images)

WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES

A head rolls on to the floor. Its skyward eyelid flicks wide open and slowly spasms closed as the eyeball rolls up and back. Its nose tenses and twitches, as does the concertina of skin on the back of the half-neck. The lips part to show the teeth and a mottled-grey tongue protrudes. These last nervous flickers of life seem to depict shocked-surprise, pain, nausea, distaste and, eventually, relief on the face on the animal. Almost a minute after death, the detached body’s legs kick out gently, reminiscent of getting comfortable before sleeping. It is not hard to see how some would equate these movements to the wriggling of a soul out of its body, bound for heaven. 

That’s just one more. It’s almost impossible to begin to estimate the number of buffalos here. Some estimate 12,000, others more than 20,000. Maybe half have fallen already. A quick scan around the corral sees four blades raised in the air on the cusp of beheading. Then the short but unmistakable sound of a fifth, the crunch, the sound of the butcher’s effort, the head and body hitting the ground and, when the head was not cleanly severed, the further hacking at attached sinews. The killing in the name of Gadhimai has been going on for several hours already.

There are apparently 250 men picked to wield the long and heavy kukuris, the knives made famous by the Gurkha soldiers. A few wore ceremonial headgear in the form of a simple but chintzy piece of cloth: red with shiny gold tinsel flecks. The rest wore unremarkable clothes. Some wear simple shirts or Chinese t-shirts with nonsensical text.  A stocky pair of legs protrude from a pair of England football shorts. All wore a small square of red cloth tied on their arms signifying their role as slaughterers.

The Gadhimai Mela takes place every five years on the plains of Nepal just 15 kilometer from the open border with India. It has its origins as late as 350 years ago. The descriptions of the events that have led today’s Mela depend on your storyteller. According to one, a certain Bhagwan Chaudary found himself in jail in Makwanpur fort, the reason is not given. In a dream the Goddess of power, Gadhimai, came to him and suggested she would solve his problems, including that of incarceration, if he would return to his home in Bariyapur, build a temple in her name and make a blood sacrifice to her every year. Somehow in this dream he replied that annually was too much and every 5 years would be manageable.

Over three centuries later the festival organisers are proud to claim the dubious title of world leader in animal sacrifice and the mela has gained its own big-is-better gravity. Its gore has provoked an emotional outcry in the international media. Mela organiser Shiva Chanden Prasad Kuswaha is happy that so many non-local journalists and visitors are helping to make the festival a success. He estimates that over one crore (ten million) will visit the festival in the second half of November, with the majority coming from India across the open border. 

Whiles the festival has become notorious for the mass slaughter it is the temple to which the festival goers flock. To be here is to properly witness devotion (and superstition). Here people’s offerings to Gadhimai ensure that within 5 years the Goddess will fulfil their wishes and they are making sure it they do it well as they can. Some of the freshly arrived pilgrims release the pigeons they’ve carried with them in the direction of the already bird-dense roofs of the two temples in the complex. The rice and sweets that others throw up keep the pigeons busy feeding. Some of these symbols of freedom evidently hadn’t made the journey well. At least one, thrown up over-arm, tumbled back down to the ground and under the feet of the crowd. 
Trees growing in the temple area are stained with tikka, red and orange industrially made powder, from the ground right up to hands-reach. Even a sapling and a piece bamboo poked were similarly treated. Various holy men, babas, plied their trade next to trees, on stone plinths or wandering mobile, giving tikka on the forehead for a small donation. One particularly stereotypical Sadhu gave tikka, bent recipients over and gave a firm slap on the back, men and women alike, the purpose of which was obscure but oddly satisfying.  

In one building sits a small effigy of Gadhimai, made apparently in gold and silver. It draws people in. Everybody wants to deliver their gift personally, and they’ll push, pull, squeeze, elbow, and shove to get in there before you. It’s mild and joyous violence. Under the roof of the temple there’s a small enclosure where Gadhimai sits behind an industrial-weight sliding fence. Here sit 4 pujaris in tracksuits and the same tinselly headdress, managing the offerings. They are being showered in buffalo hair, smashed coconuts and their milk, flowers and sweets.

Behind the enormous effigy of Hanuman, the monkey god, housed in a 3 sided, four-storey brick and concrete structure of extreme ugliness, is the source of the unceasing hullabaloo from the many loud speakers tied to telegraph poles. Rather than being some overzealous radio presenters on Gadhimai FM (the mela has its own radio station), it’s simply the announcing of lost children. Child Protection Nepal (CPN) has set up three stations where parents can come to announce for their lost child or vice versa. Lost little Pawan, aged 3, is offered a biscuit by one of the male volunteers to stop his crying, which he has no intention of doing it seems, and that failing the microphone is pushed against his face in the hope that his mother will recognise the screams. In a few minutes he is reunited. Surendra Thaku, a local CPN officer, tells that hundreds if not thousands of children have been lost and reunited and shows me a neatly organised book full of names. 

The stench of rotting animals is noticeable in the air. A glance through the gate reveals a bizarre landscape of utter carnage. It’s now 24 hours since the slaughter. Whereas yesterday brutality and violence hung in the air, today there is almost a sense of shame or apology here. Hundreds of people crouch around bloated corpses busily but quietly skinning, cutting, cleaning and carrying away carcasses tied on bamboo poles or the best cuts in dirty sacks. Pale piles of intestines glint in the sun. A Muslim man looks to be hunting perhaps for livers among the piles of offal. Festival visitors walk up to the gate to witness what happened behind the walls. They say little, hold their noses or press cloth to their faces, linger for a while and move away. 

This year the organisers had planned to sell each carcass to traders in Kathmandu. In all previous years local Dalits, the caste regarded as ‘untouchable’, had been allowed to take the meat. As they felt this was a tradition that had become their right, they threw stones at the trader’s trucks as they arrived and continued until they turned away defeated. 

While some accuse the organising committee of profiteering by selling the buffalos contributed by the faithful, who are some of the most poor, Kuswaha says the money was to go to future festival organisation and development work in the village and surrounding area, which it badly needs. While the facts and intentions remain murky, through this late change of plan, there is going to be quite some waste. The Dalits, despite their numbers, did not seem to be working fast enough as the bodies around them slowly inflate in the sun. 

Among the dead were a few living buffalos. Heavily dehydrated and hungry, they made a distressing and pathetic picture squashed among the piles of lifeless bodies.  A man leads one of these few still-living calves to the gate blocked by a small crowd. The blockage is caused by a man and wife with their small daughter, lecturing the departing meat-laden folk about the errors of their ways. Given the volume of criticism in the (English language) press before the event, it seemed odd that the only active protest was this ad-hoc two-person show. Nobody seems interested in arguing and, heads down, people gently try to push past.   

It’s undeniable that this ritual slaughter causes suffering to the unfortunate animals involved, as many animal welfare campaigners have pointed out. Other point out a certain amount of hypocrisy, singling out this festival as barbaric when around the world vast amount of meat is consumed every day. 

Critics of the critics say there is brutality everywhere, its just more visible at Gadhimai. They point out that a staggering 40 million turkeys will be culled for tables at Thanksgiving, which was once itself religious in tone, namely “a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.” It puts the scale of the Gadhimai slaughter into some perspective. 

Animal rights activists have their work cut out for them. In 5 years time the temple’s priest will once again say, “the goddess needs blood”. What will happen then? Manoj Gautam of Animal Rights Nepal says, “We are looking at both a legal approach with government as well as a widespread programme of grass-routes education. We know it is a great challenge and we are making plans already. ”

He and his organisation are determined. But how do you educate 10 million rurally- based people that their Goddess has turned vegetarian and smashing a coconut will suffice, as is practiced by the majority of Hindus in India? How do you inform the organising committee now used to earning millions of Rupees that they may have to switch to baking coconut cookies for income? How can you persuade a government to ban sacrifice at a regional festival, in an area already beset by ethnic tensions, when a few years back the government-run national airline slaughtered a goat on the runway to appease the Hindu sky god. 

Dusk is coming. Outside the corral, a mother holds up her young child to peer at the mess inside through the regular holes built into the wall. Other children stand on tip-toes on piles of bricks to see. A carcass tied to a pole is carried by two spindly, happy looking old men. A pretty laughing girl runs to catch up with them carrying a buffalo head by the ear. Near a group of children eating sweet jelabis, another lamb looses its head. It looks likely that 5 years hence the festival will be bigger and bloodier than ever.