Shambo's Last Stand

By Jerome Taylor

Published: The Independent, 27 July 2007

To members of his Hindu community, he is touched by the divine. To Defra, he is a health threat - and last night, he was heading for the slaughterhouse.

The veterinary inspector first came for Shambo at 8.50am yesterday, 50 minutes late. After three months of legal wrangling and contradictory court rulings that seemed to swing between saving the six-year-old Friesian bull's life and condemning it to death, the Government had finally arrived take to the animal to the slaughterhouse.
As promised, the monks and nuns of Skanda Vale, a small predominantly Hindu community nestled deep in the heart of rural Carmarthenshire where Shambo has lived since his birth, were waiting for them.
When the veterinary inspector, Wyn Buick, acting on behalf of the Welsh Assembly, asked the monks to hand over the beloved bull they had sworn to protect, they refused. The inspector and entourage retreated. But late yesterday afternoon they returned, armed with a fresh warrant and backed up by more than 30 officers.
Shambo's temple was surrounded by those who had gathered to worship, but any earlier hesitation that the police might have shown disappeared as they began removing the pilgrims one by one as carefully and as sensitively as possible. True to their Gandhian principles, the devotees put up no resistance and let themselves be removed.
After the cage had been sliced through, Shambo was brought out at 7.30pm and taken away in a silver trailer. There was no confirmation from the Welsh Assembly when he would be slaughtered.
Ever since Shambo first tested positive for exposure to bovine tuberculosis on 27 April, a battle has raged between the Welsh Assembly-whose policy it is to slaughter cattle that test positive for TB - and the temple community who believe Shambo to be an embodiment of the divine. The bull, say the monks, should only have met his end when God, and not a vet, decided so.
For the authorities and police, simply getting close to Shambo was always going to be problematic. The 20 monks and five nuns who preside over the temple cer-emonies, known as poojas, vowed to do everything they could to stop the authorities getting near Sham-bo, who had been isolated from the rest of the herd in the entrance to the main temple since his test.
When the community heard of the government's intention to slaughter the bull after their last appeal was rejected by the High Court on Monday, they called on Hindus and fellow supporters to come to Skanda Vale and vowed non-violently to obstruct the authorities from getting their hands on the bull. The method they had chosen was to hold a sacred vigil directly outside Shambo's enclosure, which they said would continue for as long as it took. Any attempt to seize the bull, they said, would desecrate a holy ceremony.
By Tuesday night, a small but dedicated group of pilgrims had already found its way to the isolated 115-acre farm where the temple is built.
As dawn broke yesterday over the thickly forested vale many more devotees, supporters and curious visitors had arrived. By 5am the first of the day's devotional sanskrit chants were echoing through the heavily incensed air. Brother Michael, a slim bespectacled monk who leads the temple, stood up to address the congregation for one final morale-rousing speech.
"We have fought for many months to save Shambo's life,'' he said. "Our lives are about worshipping and serving God, not about killing. We cannot allow the Government to desecrate this temple and take a sacred life."
After finishing the first pooja of the day inside the main temple building, more than 100 devotees moved their ceremonies outside to Shambo's cage. Shambo stood munching on bales of hay, oblivious to his impending fate and the furore surrounding his existence. Supporters said yesterday that the timing of the operation to slaughter Shambo was particularly insensitive because it coincided with the temple's largest annual festival, a two-week devotion to the main presiding deity, Subramanium.
Also more commonly known as Lord Muragan and the Son of Shiva, Hindus believe he is the destroyer of negativity, a weapon against the forces of violence and destruction which the devotees have come to refer to as the Welsh Assembly.
Brother Francis, 38, who became a monk 15 years ago, said: "It's bad enough that they've come to take Shambo but to come during the middle of our most important festival is horrendously insensitive. Despite what the Government says, when it comes to Shambo there was simply no other way that we could have acted. The sanctity of life is absolute.''
Those who wanted to protect Shambo from the abattoir yesterday rejected any criticism that the temple authorities were unreasonable in their dealing with the assembly's concerns over public health.
Brother Michael said: "We tried to explore every avenue to resolve the Government's concern and instead we came up against bureaucratic intransigence at its worst. The test they use to identify TB is not conclusive. It doesn't show whether Shambo has actually been infected, it just shows he's been exposed to the TB bacteria. We suggested further blood tests - we even offered to pay the £30 it costs - but they simply kept saying, 'It's not our policy'."
Throughout its dispute with the temple, the assembly had argued that Shambo could infect other animals if he continued to live. The temple, meanwhile, insisted that since the young bull was isolated and had only tested positive to exposure to TB bacteria he posed no risk.
Even though Skanda Vale finally lost its legal battle in court, the judge nonetheless ordered the Welsh Assembly to pay the temple's legal costs. The final bill-including the costs of killing Shambo-which ultimately will be footed by the taxpayer, looks set to run into the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Sister Carol, one of five women to have taken the Franciscan vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience that makes a Skanda Vale devotee a monk or nun, was critical of the money she believed had been wasted by the government fighting over Shambo. "They never wanted to negotiate from the beginning,'' she said. "But what exactly have they managed to achieve? Ultimately it's cost them almost a quarter of a million pounds to kill a bull.''
The loss of Shambo is the second significant blow to the Skanda Vale community this year. Earlier this month, as the fight over Shambo first went to court, the temple's founder, a man known to his followers as Guru Sri Subramanium, died. He had been ill for some time and had been staying in the hospice the temple provides for followers and locals. Brother Francis said: "To lose our guru at such a key time was a big blow. But we still feel his presence.''
Born in 1920 to a wealthy Sri Lankan family, Guru Subramanium moved to Europe shortly after the Second World War. His followers say he was so horrified by the violence unleashed in the name of religion and ideology he decided to create a temple somewhere in Europe that would unify the Western world's faiths with those further east.
Ten years of doing menial jobs in London including - according to his "official'' biography - stints as a flower seller, nightclub singer and a job on the shop floor of Selfridges, Guru Subramanium had finally collected enough cash to found his first temple, which he did so in London. It was free to everyone and open to all faiths.
In 1973 his group bought a small, rundown farmhouse in Carmarthenshire with 115 acres and began building the Skanda Vale temple. For more than 30 years, deep in the heart of Western Wales, a small but dedicated group of largely Western-born men and women have chosen to forego their societies' material-ism in favour of a life of poverty, chastity and worship. Despite Skanda Vale's isolated location-it lies four miles up a potholed track and mobile phone reception is non-existent-more than 60,000 pilgrims make their way to the temple each year.
Although the gods worshipped there and the form that worship takes is noticeably Hindu, like the first temple in London Skanda Vale is non-denominational.
It is one of the few places in the world where the priests administering pooja are predominantly white. Yesterday's crowd were a typically eclectic collection of believers. Swiss Hindu converts sat next to Asian Hindus from London, who sat singing next to local Christians.
Delyth Howells, who described herself as a Christian but one that had "learned more about Christ in Skanda Vale than from anything taught in church", said she had been visiting the temple for more than 20 years. "The Government have handled this with total disregard for the way things are done here,'' she said. "I know what's right and wrong and this is wrong. A life is a life.''
Linda Salzmann, a Swiss national who arrived two days ago with her husband and five-year-old daughter Celina, was one of the few devotees to express any sympathy for the authorities.
"I can understand the Government's position," she said. "They can't go back. But it must be a difficult decision for them."
Shortly before the police arrived, Brother Michael read out an email from a cow sanctuary in Maharashtra: "A number of cow sanctuaries in India have said they were willing to take Shambo and shipping had been arranged,'' he said. "But the Welsh Assembly refused the plan."
Although Skanda Vale has received some messages of support from the rural community - many of whom have watched their cattle be slaughtered because of TB - farmers unions have been critical of the way the temple refused to let Shambo be slaughtered. If the policy was that their cows were slaughtered because of TB, they argued, Shambo should be no different.
As night fell on Skanda Vale a few diehards were still chanting Vedic mantras but most hung outside the empty cage. Many were in tears. "It really saddens me that animal life is so worthless here," said one Buddhist devotee who did not want to be named. "But sometimes having faith and conviction can be hard. God moves in mysterious ways.'' Three other members of the temple's herd of cattle are showing signs of exposure to the TB bacteria. Whether the Welsh Assembly will have the stomach for another fight like yesterday's remains to be seen.

news.independent.co.uk/health/article2809195.ece

Unveiled: The Pakistani tribe that dares to defy the fundamentalists

(PHOTO: Jerome Taylor)

Published, The Independent: 18 July 2007

In the North West Frontier Province, the mullahs' word is law and the veil is worn. But one ancient tribe refuses to cover up. Jerome Taylor reports from the Rumbur Valley

In Pakistan's deeply conservative North West Frontier Province, the veil is simply a way of life. Whether in the bazaars of the capital Peshawar or high up in the myriad of Himalayan villages bordering Afghanistan, women wishing to leave their houses do so under the cover of a niqab or a billowing burqa. So important is the Islamic concept of purdah that the fort-like houses in the tribal areas usually contain separate living quarters for women and men.
Give or take the occasional advertising hoarding or glitzy film from Lahore, most men are unlikely to see an adult female face outside of their immediate family until they marry.
But in the remote Chitral region nestled high in the Hindu Kush mountain range are the last remnants of a tribe where the women walk unveiled in bright red and black dresses. Lavishly decorated with orange bead necklaces and colourful hats made from cowrie shells, they dance in public and are often free to marry and take lovers. They are the Kalasha, one of Pakistan's only remaining indigenous non-Muslim communities and a remarkable living throwback to a pre-Islamic era.
Yet according to the Kalasha themselves, their unique way of life is under attack like never before. Thanks to rising extremism among a small minority of Pakistanis and the growing appeal of populist orthodox mullahs who espouse sharia law and Taliban-like austerity, the Kalasha are increasingly in the firing line.
"We've always been called kafirs (infidels) but most people simply left us alone," says Azam Kalash, one of the few members of his 3,500-strong community who managed to go to university and now campaigns for his tribe's welfare. "Now we are deemed enemy number one. Particularly after September 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the missionaries and mullahs are determined to see us wiped out."
Isolated from the outside world by the remoteness of their valleys and the heavy Himalayan snows that block the mountain passes in winter, the Kalash somehow managed to survive successive waves of Muslim invaders and missionaries that pushed back the pre-Islamic Hindu, Buddhist and pagan tribes who once filled the fertile plains of the Indus valley.
Until last century, very few outsiders had ever made it as far as the three valleys of Rumbur, Bumboret and Birir where the Kalasha now live. Even today the valleys are only accessible by 4x4 along a tortuous road perilously carved into the shifting mountain side. But 20 years ago, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the rise of the religious mujahedin, things began to change.
"For a long time the Kalasha lived in total isolation," says Cecil Chaudhury, General Secretary of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance. "I remember going there in the 1950s with a mountaineering expedition and they were blissfully happy living in their own distinct social system. But with the mujahedin came the missionaries and the Kalasha were always going to be an easy group to target. Now the extremists are back."
Although the fighters have largely disappeared from the Chitral region, the Kalasha are now outnumbered in their own villages by converts and outsiders. During the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the notoriously brutal Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar used the valley as his hideout and many believe he has returned to the region to continue his fight against Nato forces and the Afghan government.
After a 10-year lull, the missionaries are returning and many fear that if orthodox preachers, such as those who, until recently, ran Islamabad's Red Mosque, continue to increase their appeal, the country's last non-Muslim tribe may sink into oblivion.
No Kalasha would mean no Zonor Bibi. The mother of five sits on the front porch of her mud-walled house perched high above the swollen glacial river that roars through the heart of her village. It is harvest time and apricots lie drying in the summer sun eyed by her eight-year-old daughter Walena.
Zonor's husband has just set off on the daily three-hour walk to the grazing meadows that lie high above the village but that does not stop Zonor from welcoming outsiders with open arms, an act that would be unthinkable to her Muslim neighbours.
Deeply proud of her culture, she bursts into laughter when asked how long it takes to make the iconic cowrie shell hats that all Kalasha women wear.
"They take us months," she says. "It is important to continue our traditions so not to anger our spirits and god."
Kalasha believe that failure to practice their ancient traditions has profound religious implications and can bring disaster on the village which may explain why their dress and distinct practices have managed to survive against such odds.
The role of women in Kalash society is perhaps the most obvious aspect that separates their culture from their Muslim neighbours. Where Muslim women in the region generally remain indoors or hidden from public view, their Kalash counterparts are conspicuous in the fields working alongside their men. During the festivals that celebrate the various summer harvests and preparations for winter, it is not unusual to find Kalasha women drinking apricot wine and dancing in public with males that are neither their husband nor family. Although some marriages are arranged by families, it is perfectly acceptable for Kalasha women to choose their husbands. If they are treated unkindly during the marriage the women are expected to leave the house and take a lover.
Such comparative sexual and social freedom has led to the false but commonly held perception among many lowland Pakistanis that the tribe's women are sexually promiscuous. But while Kalasha men do seem to extend a greater level of physical and social freedom to their other halves, the lives of their women-folk are still strictly regimented.
To the Kalash the world is divided into two states, onjesta (pure, sacred) and pragata (impure, profane). Women are considered pragata, particularly during menstruation and childbirth where they are exiled to special huts away from the village. Only once they have purified themselves can they return to the tribe. Certain fields and shrines considered pure and sacred to the community are also out of bounds for the tribe's women.
Such peculiarly distinct customs have fascinated anthropologists, linguists and travellers alike for centuries, not just because the survival of the Kalasha in a sea of Islam is so unusual but because no one is sure exactly where they came from.
Their tongue, like many of the dialects spoken in the Hindu Kush range, is closest to the Dardic branch of the Indo-European languages of Central Asia. But Kalash oral history tells a different story, that they are descended from Shalak Shah, one of Alexander the Great's generals whose armies conquered as far as the Indus river before turning back towards Europe. Although blond hair and blue eyes are common amongst the Kalash, recent genetic testing has suggested that they may be an aboriginal group that are, in fact, indigenous to the area.
But how did the Kalasha manage to cling on to their distinct polytheistic pagan traditions in an area renowned for its particularly orthodox brand of Islam?
"I think they were just lucky," says Siraj Ul Mulk, a direct descendant of the Sunni Muslim royal family that once ruled the Chitral region until they ceded to Pakistan in the 1960s.
"Despite their orthodox appearance, Chitralis have always been very relaxed about the Kalasha and other minorities. The missionaries always tend to come from outside." Walking through the dusty fort that his father, the Mehtar of Chitral, once used as his summer palace, Mr Ul Mulk also offers another explanation for why the Kalasha of Pakistan remained unharmed: India's partition. "Under British partition we were lucky enough to be placed on the Pakistani side," he says. "If we'd ended up in Afghanistan I doubt the Kalasha would have survived."
Two hundred years ago Afghanistan was also home to numerous Kalasha tribes, known locally as the Red Kafirs, but they were annihilated at the end of the 19th century. After receiving a bloody nose in two disastrous conflicts with the Afghans, the British simply stood by as the founding father of modern Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan, systematically forced the non-Muslim tribes in the east of the country to convert at the point of a sword. A small number of Afghan Kalasha managed to flee towards Chitral and can still be seen in the upper valleys wearing their distinctive red dresses but all Kalasha are fully aware of the threat that extremist beliefs pose to their very survival.
That the Kalash are frightened of the current climate in Pakistan is testament to how seriously they take the current threats. They survived the marauding armies of Tamerlaine, the religious zeal of Abdur Rahman and even the anti-Soviet mujahedin. But now, like many of Pakistan's religious and ethnic minorities, they once again feel unprotected and vulnerable.
"We've survived so much over the years and we're not about to give up now," says Azam Kalash. "For centuries we have lived happily alongside our Muslim neighbours but thanks to extremism our numbers are dwindling. Whether we'll survive this century I simply don't know."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2779426.ece