More news about India

[DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA]

At 04:08 PM 4/21/98 +0100, you wrote:
>On Sat, 11 Apr 1998, IAOmar wrote:
>
>> Does anyone have any idea about if this is some regular practice or a
>> single incident?
>
>>> Family sacrifices father, eats his flesh at Kali puja In Varanasi, Ram
>>> Sevak Chowhan's family beheaded him, ate his flesh and danced around
>>> with his blood smeared on their body. They also chopped off the tongues
>>> of his two daughters-in-law.
>>> http://www.rediff.com/news/1998/apr/09sacri.htm >
>
>There was a feature article in the Sunday Times of London a few months
>back about child sacrifice in contemporary India.  It was linked to
>"tantric" rites.  Can't recall the ref., I'm afraid.
>
>All the best,
>Dominik
>
>--
>Dr Dominik Wujastyk,                FAX:        +44 171 611 8545
>Wellcome Institute for              URL:        http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/
>  the History of Medicine,          Email:      d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk
>Wellcome Trust, 183 Euston Road,    Trust URL:  http://www.wellcome.ac.uk
>London NW1 2BE, England.
>
>First Rule of History:
>  History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other.
>
>

I do not subscribe to the practice of human sacrifice. India has a free
press. Considering human sacrifice is a sensational item the press will
report such incidents without fail in order to increase circulation, it is
obvious that such incidents are not common or atleast no more than other
types of inhuman practices in the rest of the world. There are sick people
in India just there are such people elsewhere.I thought Lars Mortin Fousse's
well-balanced and level headed posting, will make others to see things in
proper perspective and stop baiting Hindus.

Here is his posting:
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I read some years ago in The Economist (I think) that about a 100 people
were "sacrificed" in India every year. Considering that India has a
population of about 900 million people, I think the right reference here is
not "history of religion" but psychopathology. Compare weird religious acts
in Christian extremist sects, as well as other non-Christian extreme sects
in the West.

Best regards,

Lars Martin Fosse


Dr.art. Lars Martin Fosse
Haugerudvn. 76, Leil. 114,
0674 Oslo