An Aghori holy man sits vigil on a hill overlooking the Ganges River.  A disciple of a reclusive Hindu sect known for consuming human flesh, he waits patiently for a corpse to appear in the river.  Like all members of this pious, mystical order, he believes that consuming the remains of the dead will guarantee him immortality—liberation (moksha) from the material world.  He believes it is a direct pathway to God.

After centuries in virtual seclusion, only occasionally glimpsed wandering naked through the Indian countryside, members of the highly secretive Aghori spiritual sect are being seen with greater frequency in sacred cities like Varanasi. Though long considered pariah for such common behaviors as eating meat and drinking liquor, which most traditional Hindus denounce, it is their continued practice of eating human flesh that has earned them the status among modern Hindus of less-than-human—nothing more than primitive scavengers to be loathed.  And though they trace their beliefs to a thousand-year-old cult known as the Gorakpunt Fakirs, the Aghori are not even accepted as true Hindus.

From the Western perspective, Hinduism is best understood as a family of related beliefs forming a common system of principles and practices. Like many belief systems around the world, these beliefs focus largely on death and the afterlife.  But unlike many, Hindus believe that life is simply a transition among previous, present and future existences, and that after the physical body expires the soul can take a number of different pathways, all dependent on the practice of certain rituals, honorable acts, prayer and meditation over many lifetimes. The Aghori, however, believe that eating the dead allows them to skip the tediousness of repeated lifetimes of ritual acts and responsibilities— perhaps because in doing so they take advantage of someone else’s having done so—and jump right on a direct pathway to God in a single lifetime.

Increased Sightings

In early 2005, Indian and British news agencies began reporting an increase in Aghori sightings in major cities along the Ganges. Their unprecedented appearance within mainstream Indian society prompted documentary filmmaker Sandeep Singh to attempt contact with the sect, hoping to persuade them to be interviewed and filmed. After three months of rejection, Singh finally convinced an Aghori sadhu to allow him and three cameramen to share vigil as he waited for an available corpse to float into view. Ten days later, a body was spotted floating in the Ganges and promptly retrieved. The cannibalistic ritual that followed resulted in an extraordinary 10-minute ethnographic documentary titled Feeding on the Dead.

Singh described the scene: “The body was decomposed and bluish in color, but the sadhu was not afraid of falling sick. He sat on the corpse, prayed to a goddess of crematoriums, and offered flesh to the goddess before eating it. [He] explained that eating the flesh would stop him from aging and give him supernatural powers, like the ability to levitate and control the weather.  [He] then explained that each ritual takes him one step closer to oneness with The Brahma (God).”

Anthropologists believe cannibalism has been part of human behavior since long before recorded history. Oral traditions and world literature are rife with fascinating accounts of headhunting cannibals of the African jungles, heart-devouring tribes of the Amazonian rainforest, and flesh-eating witches of the U. S. Southwest. Even in our ostensibly civilized society, eating of “the body” survives in the Christian church, in the form of communion wafers and wine that are said to be transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ through the Eucharist ceremony. Cannibalism is, in fact, deeply embedded in the romantic lore of mankind’s “culture“—tied to mythology, religion, ritual, magic, vampirism and even heroism.

Some suggest that cannibalism ritualizes the innate human desire to gain control over death—to get the better of it—and ultimately, triumph over it. Others say it’s a viable strategy to acquire the dead individual’s charisma,  mana or life energy. But no matter the reason or cultural setting, man has long equated the dead with the realm of the supernatural—the realm of the gods.

While the “civilizing” of the world has resulted in many cultures abandoning timeless principles and practices (including cannibalism), present-day Hindu society reflects a blend of both ancient and modern ideals—mystical as well as practical. And like most religious systems practiced today, Hindu doctrinal adherence varies from the moderately devout to the dramatically zealous. Hindu ascetics see themselves as followers of the one and only true path to God—adherents of a worldview ascribed to timeless tradition; while the Aghori see themselves as spiritual icons in juxtaposition to encroaching modernity—the ageless societal threat to spiritual purity. Modern sensibilities may deem cannibalism far removed from a spiritual life, but who really knows whether or not the Aghori practice achieves exactly what they claim—a mystical path directly to God?

Photo courtesy of Christopher Michel

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