Kali is offered fish and meat in Bengal: report

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra's statement about Goddess Kali as a meat-eating, alcohol-receiving deity set tongues wagging.

Kali continues to be for ages an obsessions of West Bengal where until communists were in power Karl Marx also obsessively occupied the collective psyche.

Now that the communists have disappeared from the scene Kaali takes whole of the Bengali psyche.

The legend of Kali occupies a good part of Bengal's cultural existence, India Today reported.

To most Bengalis, Kali is at once a maternal figure and a fierce slayer of demons or a family member on whom they can rely for comfort.

Among the state's hundreds of Kali temples, at least a few including Kalighat, Tarapith or Dakshineswar stand out with some common practices, according to the India Today TV.

At the 200-year-old Kalighat, animal sacrifice takes place every day alongside devotees who bring in meat offerings to the goddess which is then cooked and served to the devotees as prasad.

However, the deity is given a vegetarian spread while her seraphs: Dakini and Yogini partake of non-veg from the sacrifice.

According to the priests at Tarapith, Birbhum, fish and meat are offered to the Goddess as bhog on the prescription of Tantric practices—alcohol or "Karan Sudha" also goes with it. It is not wholly non-veg as there is a separate vegetarian spread too.

At Sri Ramakrishna's Dakshineswar temple, the Goddess is offered fish every day as bhog - however, no animals are sacrificed here, the report said.

The 300-year-old Thanthania Kali temple in north Kolkata, the divine offers would not be complete without fish, alongside animals that are sacrificed and offered on every full moon.

Devotees also offer meat here as part of their pledges, which they would later take home as offerings given away by the temple where sacrificial meat is not cooked.

Scholar Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri told India Today TV that in tantra sadhana,  alcohol and meat is part of practice. Only those indulging in such practices, according to him, can answer why such practices happen.