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By Dr. Jagan Karki

The Gadhimai festival, held every five years in southeastern Nepal, has drawn sharp criticism for its mass animal sacrifices, often labeled as “the world’s bloodiest festival.” The Gadhimai festival, held at the Gadhimai Temple in Bariyarpur, Bara District, Nepal, east of Kalaiya and near the Indo-Nepal border, is famous for its extensive animal sacrifices. Devotees present water buffalo, pigs, goats, chickens, and pigeons to honor Gadhimai, the goddess of power. They also offer coconuts, sweets, and red-colored clothes. This festival is regarded as one of the world’s largest animal sacrifice events. While millions from Nepal and India participate in this event, Critics highlight a double standard, noting that similar sacrifices in other religions receive less scrutiny.

However, the festival is undergoing reform, with increased awareness and legal bans in Nepal significantly reducing the number of participants engaging in animal slaughter.

Misrepresentation of Hinduism
The Western media often portrays Gadhimai as a quintessential Hindu festival, a characterisation that does a disservice to the vast majority of Hindus who revere non-violence as a core tenet of their faith. Hinduism and Buddhism are major advocates for peace, humanity, and the sanctity of all living beings. For most Hindus, the idea of animal sacrifice is incompatible with their beliefs. Many abstain from eating meat altogether, dedicating their lives to serving others and protecting animals. Hindus worship animals as divine symbols in various festivals: cows are revered as sacred, snakes are feted during Nag Panchami, and dogs, crows, and mice are also celebrated in different rituals. Reducing this complex and compassionate worldview to the actions of one sect during a single festival unfairly paints the entire religion as being complicit in practices many of its adherents reject.

A Tradition Under Scrutiny
The Gadhimai festival has faced intense scrutiny from activists and conservationists in Nepal and abroad. In 2009, international outcry led to debates over the ethicality and necessity of such a practice in modern times. French actress and
animal rights advocate Brigitte Bardot called the animal killings at the festival “violent, cruel, and inhumane.” Legal challenges have also emerged, with the Supreme Court of India in 2014 restricting the transport of animals for the festival. Similarly, Nepal’s Supreme Court ordered a gradual phasing out of animal sacrifices in 2016, but the ruling has seen limited implementation. Despite assurances from temple caretakers in 2015 that future iterations would be “free from bloodshed,” the 2019 festival witnessed
continued sacrifices, prompting fresh legal battles.

Balancing Tradition and Progress
The persistence of animal sacrifices at Gadhimai highlights the tension between tradition and society’s evolving values. Some sociologists argue that it is more of a cultural practice than a religious one and is not representative of Hinduism. Rooted in ancient traditions that may have aimed to provide protein for warriors and the hungry, the practice evolved into a
misunderstood cultural ritual. The legend associated with the festival also does not align with Hindu ideology. One popular belief is that the festival began when feudal lord Bhagwan Chaudhary had a dream in which he was instructed to offer a blood sacrifice to the goddess Gadhimai in order to secure his release from jail. This practice later evolved into a tradition.
For many devotees, the festival is a deeply spiritual act of faith and gratitude. However, it also raises ethical questions about the treatment of animals and the broader implications for how faith-based practices align with modern understandings of compassion and non-violence. Critics argue that the government’s reluctance to enforce the apex Court’s ruling reflects a failure to balance religious sentiment with the moral imperative to prevent cruelty. While respecting cultural traditions is important, it is equally essential to engage in dialogue about how those traditions can evolve in a way that honors both faith and ethical progress.

Moving Forward
The Gadhimai festival serves as a stark reminder of the diversity within Hindu practices and the challenges of reconciling ancient rituals with contemporary values. It is crucial to differentiate between the actions of one sect and the broader philosophy of Hinduism, which, at its heart, preaches peace, non-violence, and the interconnectedness of all life. As the debate over Gadhimai continues, it is an opportunity for reflection—not just for practitioners of the festival but for society at large. How can we preserve cultural heritage while embracing a more compassionate and humane future? The answer lies in open dialogue, education, and a commitment to honoring the essence of faith without compromising the well-being of living beings.

 Komali Kantamaneni, University of Central Lancashire, Sigamani Panneer, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Delhi’s air pollution is so bad that it’s sometimes hard to discern anything more than a few metres in front of you. And it is affecting people’s health. Breathing is uncomfortable, and one of us (Komali) developed rashes and red eyes on a recent trip to the city.

Our experiences are not unusual. Delhi – officially the National Capital Territory of Delhi – is the world’s second most populated urban area, and is among its most polluted. Air pollution recently went 26 times over the healthy limit prescribed by the World Health Organization.

The air quality index, or AQI, is a measure of how polluted the air is on a scale of 0 (clean) to 500 (maximum pollution). On November 19, Delhi’s average was 485. Many of its air pollution sensors maxed out at 500, so the true figure would be even higher.

Things peak every winter when many people suffer from respiratory problems and hospital visits increase. An extraordinary 11.5% of all deaths in the city can be attributed to air pollution, a loss of around 12,000 lives every year.

A human-made calamity

This is a human-made calamity with many causes. Some factors are common to many large and fast-growing cities, especially in emerging economies. Delhi has many coal power plants, for instance, and its streets are choked with heavy traffic. Decades of dust, often from the construction industry, have accumulated in and around the city. Waste is often simply burned.

But some factors are more specific and it is these that push Delhi from “regular pollution” into catastrophe. Every year, farmers across northern India especially the breadbasket states of Punjab and Haryana burn off unwanted straw left behind in fields, sending huge clouds of smoke downwind towards Delhi. Fireworks during Diwali (held on October 31 this year) also cause a small but noticeable increase in air pollution.

All this is exacerbated when winter begins and colder and more polluted air becomes trapped over the city by a layer of warmer air above it – a process known as temperature inversion.

A conscious effort

The risk of pollution is increasing. Central and state authorities blame each other and there is a lack of political will to address the problem. Individual people seem unwilling to take responsibility and stop polluting.

A conscious effort is needed. Fortunately, certain policies could make a difference. Materials should be covered at construction and demolition sites, for instance, to stop so much dust from being blown into the air. This may require Delhi to strengthen its legal enforcement system.

The city should plant more pavement trees and create new parks. Trees are good at combating air pollution. Waste burning should be restricted. Eventually, coal power will need to be replaced by wind and especially solar. When pollution is at its worst, the city can impose strict restrictions on large diesel-powered freight vehicles transporting non-essential items.

Farmers, for their part, must stop burning plant material left behind (known as stubble) after food is harvested. This is easier said than done. The areas upwind of Delhi tend to have two growing seasons, and many farmers burn off their rice stubble in November before planting wheat in the same field. The system has persisted for a long time and is effectively locked in, with most powerful actors not having enough incentive to change things.

There are some alternatives. Farmers could be encouraged to diversify their crops, perhaps through conditions attached to loans. Some of that stubble could instead be used as cattle feed, in compost, as a roof material, or burned in bioenergy plants to produce electricity.

Evidence-based strategies and best practices are crucial. The goal must be to reduce the air quality index to the “good” category of 0–50 and ultimately to eliminate toxic air in Delhi and the surrounding region. ( From : The Conversation)

 Jodi-Ann Jue Xuan Wang, University of Oxford

After a fortnight of bitter struggle, nearly 200 countries agreed a new goal to raise money to tackle the climate crisis at Cop29, the 29th annual UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Rich countries agreed to take the lead in paying US$300 billion a year to the poorest nations by 2035 from a variety of financial sources (public, private, between countries, and across multilateral sources like development banks). This is less than a quarter of what developing countries asked for, and not in the form of the no-strings-attached grants money that they need.

There is no consensus on how to define “climate finance” within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN process for negotiating an agreement to limit global warming. Developed countries prefer a mélange of public and private funding sources, including loans and “debt swaps” (reducing or forgiving a country’s debt in exchange for that country investing money into projects that protect the environment or fight climate change). Their preference is reflected in the final Cop29 decision.

These same developed countries are responsible for most of the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating Earth to dangerous levels. Developing countries have demanded a share of their immense wealth to help them cut emissions, adapt to the impacts of a warming climate and address the consequences of existing disasters (what is generally referred to as loss and damage). The UNFCCC estimates that developing countries need US$5 trillion to US$6.9 trillion to implement their national climate plans by 2030.

The original climate finance target was set in 2010 and is due to expire in 2025. This encouraged rich nations to funnel US$100 billion to the developing world annually, but it was only met for the first time in 2022.

Negotiators from poor nations are right to be frustrated. While the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report suggests that there is enough money in the global economy to properly fund a green transition, the financial system is systemically skewed against developing countries.

Debt and inequality

The World Bank and other international monetary institutions were conceived at the end of the second world war, before many of the countries they affect had gained independence, calling into question the legitimacy of a global regime conceived in the colonial era. 

In 2022, 58 of the world’s poorest and most climate-vulnerable countries spent US$59 billion repaying debtscompared to the US$28 billion they received in climate finance, over half of which were loans. 

The cost of borrowing money can be up to seven times higher for developing countries than the US and Europe. This is because lenders see poorer countries as riskier places to invest, given their perceptions of political instability or low credit ratings. This arrangement entrenches inequality. 

Poor countries like Bangladesh that are increasingly exposed to extreme weather need more and more money to adapt. When this money is provided in the form of loans, the interest traps them in a downward spiral of mounting debt.

‘You owe us’

Countries that bear the least responsibility for climate change suffer its harshest consequences. It is estimated that between 2000 and 2019, 55 of the countries most vulnerable to climate change lost US$525 billion to impacts like sea-level rise and storms despite accounting for 4% of global emissions.

The UNFCCC acknowledges that countries have different abilities but also a common responsibility to mitigate climate change. While the UN process affirms the inequality of resources, power, and historical contributions among countries, it does not provide recourse to address these imbalances. 

In fact, vulnerable countries are already owed a great deal for paying the price of a crisis they did not produce. Purely in terms of emissions, this “climate debt” has been calculated at US$5 trillion annually, or US$192 trillion by 2050.

Even without climate change, research has found that developed countries owe developing countries US$10 trillion a year for the land, labour and resources the former extracts from the latter for its economic growth and development.

Let the market fix it

Whether solutions to climate change are “cost-effective” has motivated official efforts to tackle climate change since the inception of the UNFCCC in 1992.

The 1997 Kyoto protocol allowed rich countries to invest in emission-reducing projects in developing countries to meet their own targets. This was called the clean development mechanism. 

In a similar vein, prior to the signing of the 2015 Paris agreement, negotiators of rich nations considered government funding insufficient for transitioning societies to net zero carbon emissions. The objective was to “shift the trillions” from the private sector by creating incentives for investment.

This put governments in a facilitating role, letting private funders take the lead in developing solar farms and restoring wetlands. This does not mean that governments disappear from the scene, however. 

Instead, governments create a less risky, more attractive investment environment for the private sector by using subsidies or guarantees that the state will take on the debt if a private company cannot pay. Effectively, this process makes the public responsible for the risks of climate finance while private companies get to keep all of the financial gains.

Using loans and private finance costs rich governments the least, and financing with strings attached gives them more control over how money is spent. For developing countries, however, grant-based finance provides tangible support for addressing a climate crisis they did not create. 

In such an unequal system, the first recourse has not been to cancel debt, as many developing countries have called for. Instead, companies, civil society groups and even private financiers are being asked to fill the moral gap left by rich governments. ( From: the conversation)