Indian rights activists blast baby-dropping ritual

[Coventina]

Source: Associated Press

NEW DELHI — Rights activists lashed out Friday at local officials who allowed hundreds of infants to be dropped from the roof of a mosque in western India in the belief that the fall — which ends when the babies are caught in a bedsheet — would ensure good health and prosperity for their families.

The ritual at the Baba Umer Durga, a Muslim shrine, is believed to have been followed for nearly 700 years, and each year hundreds of people, both Hindus and Muslims, take part in the ritual.

Local officials told television news stations there had been no reports of injuries.

The infants, mostly under two years old, were dangled Thursday from the roof of the shrine near Sholapur, about 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of Mumbai, before being dropped about 50 feet (15 meters) onto a bedsheet held aloft by parents and other believers.

Television channels showed the babies screaming as they were shaken in the air before being dropped.



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jaYMYmbAOYSfLtFaqMoyukeuDCzwD99PD5M83

[thunder rising]

1. Health insurance (in this case ensurance) is a world wide struggle.

[redqueen]

2. How strange...

I wonder how the custom got started.

[brendan120678]

3. Some kind of superstitious religious belief. (nt)

[earcandle]

4. That will imprint them for life. Sheeps for cheaps.

[BOG PERSON]

5. The only reason "rights" activists"

are seizing on this is because it's happening too close to Bombay for their comfort. If the baby-droppers can take their baby-dropping business farther and farther away, these "rights" "activists" will feel better and better

[Deja Q]

6. Do you have proof of your claim?

I think that's a fair question to ask.

[BOG PERSON]

8. Proof that the kind of people in Bombay who take to this kind of "rights" "activism"

are relatively affluent and isolated from the rest of the country? No, not unless you count personal experience (you shouldn't do that).

[David__77]

7. This should be illegal.

And those who engage in it should be subject to education. But India lacks the infrastructure to implement such a plan. Much of the country is a feudal morass.

[damntexdem]

9. "No reports of injuries." No one has reported "I just injured (or killed) a baby."

How very astonishing that there are no such reports. ;-)

[yellowcanine]

10. "no injuries"????? How about scaring the kids shitless? That should count for something.