Goats, Bulls, Pigs, Other Sacrificial Animals and Human Beings

Religion, Politics, and All the State Chicanery

Above: The Sacrifice by Leonardo Bistolfi (Image: Nancy Cantwell/Unsplash)

An Introduction to Conventional Sacrifice

We usually refer to holocaust to mean only the WWII tragedy. All of us picture the Nazi brutality and Jews screaming and running helter-skelter, and dying, when we hear this word. However, particularly in the Greek and Jewish cultures of yore, it refers to a ritual sacrifice. Perhaps, the Nazis were impudent, and they started using the term, which is literally a burnt offering among the Jews. We can save the story about the genocide for some other time and now, we can go back to the world of religious sacrifice. Closer home, for us from a Hindu background, animal sacrifice is followed during the Durga Puja festival. For more Hindu families and the lack of goats, people also use ash gourds for the sacrifice. 

In Islam, people also observe aqeeqah, in which an animal is sacrificed on the occasion of a child’s birth. Usually, one goat is killed for a female child and two for a male child, albeit it depends on an individual to offer more animal sacrifices if they so choose. It is performed on the seventh day following a child's birth and in exceptional case, it is also observed on the 14th or 21st day, or sometimes even later. There are also other forms of sacrifices such as Bakar Id and Reraya Qurben that are mostly celebrated in Indian subcontinent and Indonesia respectively.

In a nutshell, the practice of animal sacrifice is present transcending every faith and belief systems including Abrahamic (comprising Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), Dharmic (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism), and East Asian religions (Confucianism, Taoism and Shinto).   

The Context

Animal sacrifice is frequently considered as a means of gaining the favour or blessing of gods or spirits by appeasing or praising them. The sacrificer shows their commitment and willingness to part with something valuable in order to obtain heavenly favour by surrendering their life. One technique to create or preserve a positive relationship with the supernatural entities thought to have an impact on people’s life is through this act of surrender.

The ritual sacrifice is often associated with acts of appeasement and communion with the divine. Its significance varies depending on the particular tradition and beliefs, but some common themes emerge.

Offering an animal as a sacrifice, many people believe that it might help one atone for their sins and misdeeds. It is seen as a means of divine contact. It is also linked by certain cultures to the preservation of cosmic order and fertility. With the animal’s death and resurrection, the cyclical aspect of sacrifice can be understood as a mirror of the seasons and crop growth, two other examples of nature’s cyclical rhythms. The animal used for sacrifice frequently has symbolic meaning within the specific culture. For example, in certain cultures, the goat is a sign of sin and purification, whereas the ox is a symbol of power and fertility. 

The Circumstances

We can dive into the point now. Just as religion is, according to Marx, an opium of the masses, politics is one way that the so-called political class use the citizens as a sacrificial animal. This might sound contradictory because they swear by the expression that they exist for serving the people. Sometimes, we cannot ignore how so cute all of them are. However, in the last few centuries, ever since the Westphalian era, they have reincarnated as the ruler of the people under the ethos of We, the People. This will be clearer if we see some of the cases cutting across all kinds of nations and their politics.

If they cannot stop a crisis, the public is responsible for the problem in the first place. For whatever reasons why they are clueless, they can always find a sacrificial group of people. If you refer to the ongoing conflict in Manipur, in the hinterlands of India, this will become obvious. Several of them are directly involved in poppy plantation and heroin production (per available records in public domain), while the people who are dying in the skirmish are only the citizens. For many career politicians, it is their expertise to use the anxieties, biases, or fears of the populace to further their own ideological goals. What works better than divisive rhetoric against specific groups?! Offering sacrificial lambs apparently help atone the leaders for their obvious sins. When it is the valley people, it is a sign of sin and purification; and hill people, that of power and fertility. 

In the larger Indian context, politicians would privatise public services or reduce social welfare programmes in order to put corporate interests ahead of the interests of the general public. This has the potential to worsen social inequality and disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. Even the names rhyme: Modi, Ambani and Adani. Further, in order to stay in power and avoid taking responsibility, politicians also utilise their power to stifle dissenting opinions or restrict the flow of information. Many people might blame only Modi and his crony capitalist friends, but as we can see, it is just not them. It is a ritual of the entire political class.

Politicians are effectively using the public as a means to an end in each of these situations, putting their own interests and well-being at risk in order to further their own political agendas or personal goals. This is a textbook example of power abuse and exploitation that could have a significant impact on society. It is imperative that citizens can make informed decisions by understanding these strategies and hold their representatives responsible for their deeds.

The Conclusion

To summarise, politicians use the people as sacrificial lambs by playing on people’s fears, putting corporate profits ahead of the general good, starting needless wars, and stifling dissent. In religion, people have faith and the rituals. But for us, these strategies are based on not only the sheer self-interest of the representatives but the potential also to damage democracy. And if it is a real and ideal democracy, the idea of We, The People cannot be based on this charade.

Beyond the blog:

How Science Is Helping Us Understand Human Sacrifice

The Wall Street Journal: Human sapiens in nearly every part of the world has practiced human sacrifice at some point over at five millennia, often killing females in fertility rites or for burial alongside powerful males.