Cut-Mandu

A 23-year-old Nepali man cut off his right hand using a kukhuri (a curved Nepalese knife) after morning prayers and offered it to Kali, the Hindu goddess of power, the Annapurna Post first reported today (and reported further here).

Rajesh Taipuriya asked the priest to bring him the knife, traditionally used in animal sacrifice, and in one swift motion the stony faced devotee cut off his hand then offered it at the altar of the multi-armed goddess. A crowd gathered to see the unusual offering lying on the Kali temple floor in Bardesha, while its owner left in a taxi. Tajpuria, who runs a drug store in the southeastern town of Rangeli, survived the amputation and is undergoing treatment at a hospital.

According to Ramesh Kallidai, Secretary General of the Hindu Forum of Britain, Kali was created to vanquish evil and is often depicted as a ferocious deity. This led people, when worshiping in the mode of "ignorance", to undertake acts of "self-mutilation" as a sacrifice to her but this was not at all "recommended". More than 80 percent of Nepal's 26 million people are Hindus who frequently sacrifice animals such as goats, buffaloes and roosters in temples.