The 'Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice, other Inhuman and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013' is a piece of Indian legislation aimed at tackling the problem of religious human sacrifice and other similar activities 👇🧵
The specific clauses of the act cover a range of magical and religious acts that could lead to harm, death or manipulation - eg coercive sex or theft of money. The list is so specific you have to imagine each of these things has been reported before.
The origins of the bill go back to 2003 and every step of the legislative process has faced fierce opposition. One of its greatest advocates, Dr Narendra Dabholkar, was shot dead in 2013 by Hindu nationalists.
Despite the bill being passed in Maharashtra, India has a huge problem with human sacrifice and religiously motivated murder and mutilation.
To take a few examples from just the last few years - in Sept 2024 a seven year old boy in Uttar Pradesh was ritually killed, in order to bring greater fortunes to his school.
In 2023 five men were arrested on suspicion of murdering a woman in a temple in Guwahati, they allegedly used machetes to behead her as part of a religious rite to mark the anniversary of one of the killers' brother’s death.
In 2022 two women were lured into a house in Kerala and tortured, before being killed and dismembered. The perpetrators were said to be occultists attempting to receive divine fortune through the ritual murders.
In Oct 2024 a man killed his grandmother with a trident and offered up her blood at a nearby temple, before attempting suicide himself.
There are too many of these examples to list out individually...
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Implementation of the bill continues to slowly roll on from state to state, but how effective it will be remains to be seen.
It is difficult to get a handle on exact numbers for these types of crimes, but it looks like the Maharashtra Act has been useful for law enforcement and the crime figures have increased in that state, reflecting better reporting and sentencing.
It's worth pointing out that this Indian legislative initiative had a direct impact in Uganda, who have modelled their own 'anti human sacrifice' bill based on the Maharashtra example
A thread on the Pacific Dwarf mythology that accompanied the Austronesian expansion - the Primordial Little People Type-Tale
The dominant hypothesis as to why many Austronesian-Polynesian cultures have a foundational little-people story, is that when the proto-Austronesians arrived in Taiwan they found a short statured Palaeolithic people already living there.
This theory was recently strengthened by the discovery of 'negrito-like' human remains in Taiwan, dating back around 6000 years. The skull shows many similarities to other Negrito and African San peoples.
In 2016 the British Dental Journal identified a new child protection issue - the sub Saharan practice of gouging out the healthy tooth buds of children, euphemistically called 'Infant Oral Mutilation' (IOM) 🧵
IOM is the practice of removing erupting infant teeth in order to prevent ill physical and spiritual health - the buds are believed to be tooth worms or bad spirits which cause diarrhea and fevers. The cure is to remove the primary teeth.
The teeth are extracted in an extremely crude and painful manner, using bike spokes, penknives, hot nails, fingernails, razor blades etc, without anaesthetic and with the high risk of blood loss and subsequent infection, including passing on HIV or hepatitis B.
Thread of pictures from Australia, taken from the book Peoples Of All Nations (1922) Vol I.
The British authors survey both the European and Aboriginal inhabitants, considering the former to be a "sub-type of the British race... far more assertive, self-confident, ruthless"
"The Sturdy Stock They Raise On Australian Farms" - the authors mention the low birth rate in the cities, but praise the outdoor Australian lifestyle, as well as pointing to new technologies replacing older rural livelihoods.
Next up from the Peoples Of All Nations Vol I (1922), we have Annam.
Described as a 'long stretch of tropic seaboard, inland mountains and jungles' with a 'medley of races' - the Mongolian Annamese, Chinese traders, Malay Chams and jungle 'Moi savages'.
I have acquired a copy of volume I of the anthropological classic Peoples Of All Nations (1922), so I will post some threads of the different peoples covered with photos and images you can't easily find elsewhere.
First up is Afghanistan, described as a race of fighters in the hills, with their blood feuds and adaptations to Islam.
A Hazara sepoy and his son, a "fine Mongolian race of the little-known northern hills"
It goes unremarked, but Britain still has something like 8,000 magazine titles in circulation. These range from well known media publications to tiny niche hobby groups.
I think it reveals an important part of the Anglo/WEIRD mindset about how group associations are formed.
The richness of the smaller hobby sector includes everything from model railways, insects, arts and crafts, astronomy, botany, gardening, cooking, choirs and organs, horse care, military aircraft, medieval architecture and the like.
These types of voluntary organisations are historically much more important than traditional forms of association like clan, tribe, caste or even extended family.