Sacrificed to Kali
I’ll never forget the night I first watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – particularly the horror and disgust as I watched Mola Ram, standing in front of a grotesque statue of the Hindu goddess Kali, plunge his hand into the poor sacrifice victim’s chest and pull his still-beating heart out, before lowering the man into a pit of lava – upon which the heart, still in Mola Ram’s hand, burst into flames. It’s the one scene in the movie I look away from (well, that and the dinner scene). I was both surprised and disturbed to discover that the Thuggee from the movie were in fact a real Indian crime cult exterminated by the British in the late 1800s, and that they apparently really did commit human sacrifice (although the movie considerably exaggerates them, thank God). While the Thuggee (from which we get the word thug) have long since been exterminated, the fact remains that human sacrifice continues in parts of India, often to Kali – worshiped by the historica...