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The Aghori: A Hindu Cannibal Sect

M

Mighty_Emperor

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I'm sure I've seen them in part of a documentary on cannibalism:

Indian documentary explores religious cannibals

Ramola Talwar Badam
Associated Press Writer
Oct. 28, 2005 12:00 AM

BOMBAY, India (AP) - A new Indian documentary seeks to shed light on a secretive sect of Hindu ascetics who eat corpses in the belief that ingesting dead flesh will make them ageless and give them supernatural powers.

"Feeding on the Dead," a 10-minute documentary, delves into the closed, little-known world of the 1,000-year-old Aghori sect, whose sadhus, or holy men, pluck dead bodies from the Ganges river.

While the sect has been written about, they've rarely been filmed performing rituals. Director Sandeep Singh, who shut down his transport business to pursue filmmaking, said it took him more than three months to gain the trust of an Aghori sadhu and convince him to be filmed while performing a cannibalistic ritual.

There are about 70 Aghori sadhus at a given time, and they remain with the sect for 12 years before returning to their families. Unlike other Hindu holy men, most of whom are vegetarian teetotalers, the Aghoris consume alcohol and meat.

But it is their consumption of human flesh - a practice whose origins remain a mystery - which has earned them the condemnation of other Hindus and relegated most Aghori sadhus to living around crematoriums in the hills of northern India around the holy city of Varanasi, where the documentary was filmed.

Singh and three cameramen waited with an Aghori sadhu - whose name is not mentioned in the film - for 10 days in June before finding a floating corpse. Hindus generally cremate the dead, but bodies are sometimes ceremonially disposed of in the Ganges.

"The body was decomposed and bluish in color, but the sadhu was not afraid about falling sick," Singh told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday. "He sat on the corpse, prayed to a goddess of crematoriums and offered some flesh to the goddess before eating it."

Singh said the sadhu ate part of the corpse's elbow, believing the flesh would stop him from aging and give him special powers, like the ability to levitate or control the weather.

Singh did not see any of those powers on display.
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www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/articles/1 ... s1028.html
 
Priests arrested for cannibalism

From: Agence France-Presse
From correspondents in Lucknow

April 10, 2006


TWO Hindu priests were arrested on charges of eating vital organs from the corpse of a child in the belief they would gain supernatural powers, Indian police said today.

"Our investigations revealed the pair exhumed the body on Friday and after lopping off its head they devoured its heart, liver and other soft organs, thinking the act would give them with immense powers," Jaunpur police chief Abhay Kumar Prasad said.

"We have also found the half-eaten headless corpse after interrogating these two men," Mr Prasad said.

Villagers alerted police yesterday after finding the head of an 18-month-old infant they had buried three days previously.

Brijvasi Mishra, aged 53, and his student Vishal Misra, 23, were caught in northern Uttar Pradesh state's Jaunpur district.

The priests follow an ancient Hindu cult which once permitted cannibalism and the use of human corpses in various rituals. It was first banned in the 18th century when India was a British colony.
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www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18779041- ... l?from=rss

Wikipedia entry on them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aghori

See also Tim Boucher's discussion of the previous story:

www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/10/28/d ... cannibals/
 
Bet they don't live long.
As well as eating human flesh, they eat faeces and drink urine.
Mmm. Bon appetit.
 
Looking at how yellow this Aghori guy's are, there's no doubt he's a fan of alcohol

varanasi-cannibal-_3216966k.jpg
 
Liver problems. Hepatitis? Causing jaundice?

Edit: If I'm not mistaken, that is Captain Jack Sparrow.
 
James_H said:
Gary Stevenson is a US citizen who ran off to become an Aghori and claims he has killed before.
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I wonder if the documentary that the author is said to be working ever came to fruition. It's been five years but I don't remember anything.

And I've just realised that it isn't an icecream sundae in front of him!
 
Those dudes are craaaaaazy dark.


But I think it's probably the case that, whilst still pretty odd to us, 99% of them stay away from the extreme stuff.

But the extreme ones (or perhaps more importantly- those that claim to be extreme) get all the attention from Western media. I think a lot of the stories are grossly exagerated....for the reason Mythopeika raises - spend your life eating rotting flesh, eating poo and and degrading your physical body in any way you can think of...pretty soon you're gonna get deaded. I think a lot of the stories are there to create a horrifying illusion.
 
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Frideswide said:
I wonder if the documentary that the author is said to be working ever came to fruition. It's been five years but I don't remember anything.

And I've just realised that it isn't an icecream sundae in front of him!
Click to expand...

Monkey Brain Dessert? Like in Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom.
 
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