Animal Sacrifice to appease the goddess Bimala in Puri Jagannath Temple

Blame it on the laggard attitude of the state government or the so-called superstition, the much hyped campaign against animal sacrifice has reached a deadlock here at Lord Jagannath’s own abode, Puri. Six lambs were slaughtered inside the 12th century Jagannath temple on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. The incident also took place despite the Orissa High Court’s directive not to butcher animals in shrines.

According to sources, the six lambs were brought into the shrine through the western gate late on those three nights and butchered to appease the goddess Bimala. The Bimala temple priests collected the animals’ blood in earthen pots and offered the same to the goddess amid chanting of slokas that continued till 3 am, sources said. After the puja was culminated, the dead lambs were fetched outside the temple and their meat was shared between the priests. Around five priests solemnized the puja, which was performed in a ‘secret manner’.

"The sacrifice was done after the door of the presiding sibling Deities was shut. Similarly, no devotees were present during that time. The lambs were sacrificed only after the temple precinct was deserted,” said Gangadhar Mohapatra, a priest of Bimala temple. “Even though there has been much hue and cry against the sacrifice system, no one has dared to stop it. It has been a never-end tradition since many years,” Mohapatra said.

The Jagannath Temple strictly follows a vegetarian menu for Lord Jagannatha, Baladev and Subhadra. Every day a number of vegetarian delicacies are cooked at the temple’s kitchen for nearly 20,000 people. “But for these three days during Dussehra, non-vegetarian prasad is cooked inside the temple premises and offered to goddess Bimala only. This is a tradition and we do not want to raise voice against the practice,” said another priest.

“Even the attempts of the former chief minister Harekrushna Mahatab and ex-Assembly Speaker Yudhistira das to stop the practice here in the past had cut no ice,” he said.

Law minister Biswabhusan Harichandan in the recent past had asked district collectors to ensure that no animal is butchered in shrines. Jagannath Temple’s administrator (ritual), Vinod Behari Mohanty, said that animal sacrifice inside the Jagannath Temple is a necessity. “We are just following the age-old tradition of butchering lambs near Goddess Bimala. It is a necessity. Unlike the open-air animal sacrifice, we perform the sacrifice ritual here in a secret manner,” Mohanty said.

“We admit that animal sacrifice is rampant in many shrines across the Orissa state. We also know that the government has banned the animal sacrifice in shrines. But it will take time to see the results,” said a senior district official.