A centuries-old festival where rival Indian village residents throw stones at each other — often leaving people dead or injured — has been banned:
The annual Gotmar festival in an impoverished central region of the country involved teams competing to capture a tree placed in a river running between two villages as crowds pelted rocks and pebbles across the divide.
The origin of the custom is unclear, but many locals in Madhya Pradesh state believe it developed from the tale of two young lovers who lived on either side of the river and wanted to elope together.
As they tried to escape, residents of the two villages started throwing stones at each other and killed the couple, according to folklore.
In last year’s clash between Saargaon and Pandhurhna, one person was reported killed and more than 400 injured.
District civil servant Nikunj Srivastava said the event, scheduled to be held tomorrow, had been banned after the state authority Madhya Pradesh Human Rights Commission described it as “inhuman and criminal”.
The kicker: “Attempts to replace the stones with rubber balls in 2001 and 2002 failed as villagers refused to use them.”
(The man in the picture is not one of the villagers, but it looks like he’d be happy to join them.)
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48 Comments
If everyone participates in the event consensually, I’m not seeing the problem with the rocks.
Me neither.
Far from me to stop natural selection… ;p
“…some people juggle baby geese. Goslings! They were juggled…”
+1 internetz for nope.
Yay! I won another internetz!
“If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!”
That always made me wonder what you call Scottish poop.
“It comes in three sizes, wee, not so wee, and FRIKKIN HUGE!”
Note to self: Do all washing at the river the day before.
2nd Note to self: Do Extra loads of washing at river 3 days after. The blood will be gone and there will be plenty of rocks.
I’m speechless.
It’s cruel to keep people from throwing rocks at each other. Everybody should have complete freedom to do whatever they want. What is this, the Middle Ages?
I see in a later story ( http://www.news.com.au/story/0,,25964940-401,00.html ) that the “festival” went on as usual except for a slight delay while the celebrants chased the police away with stones. I really don’t see how this is any different than all the other dangerous activities people participate in. Think running of the bulls in Pamplona, any of the “extreme” sports we can see on TV anytime, NASCAR, football.
I guess everyone in the village drew a slip with the black spot.
(five points to whoever catches the reference)
Wasn’t this from The Lottery by Shirley somebody.
I’ll dissent from the group. I’m okay with this being banned. I guess then what about the running of the bulls as people die there too. It just seems so incredibly stupid.
It is, but if stupidity was illegal, the world would be a lot emptier…
Then again, if people can tie a bull’s balls and ride it for money, why not throw stones at each other?
I’m just worried that next they’ll be telling us we can’t shoot each other anymore.
Ohnoes, not the shooting :o
Keep your bullets out of my body!
Extremist!
Just because you’d rather someone not do something of their own free will doesn’t give you the right to force them not to do it.
That is so “Old Testament”
Maybe the same reason we outlawed ‘dueling’…
The intent on the part of both participants in dueling is to kill someone. That’s a big difference.
And for what it’s worth, I’m not so sure it was the best move ever to outlaw dueling, either.
Slight amendment: usually duels required not the death of the participants but the “satisfaction of honor”, which could be death or very much less, depending on the slight that led to the duel. Still, in a very practical sense, the participants are intentionally attempting to injure and sometimes kill each other with lethal weapons.
I would be fine with a society that allowed dueling, but kept very strict rules on how and when such duels could be fought.
At the very least, it might encourage greater politeness.
“Glove slap, baby glove slap!”
And discourage free discourse, and encourage social bullying.
It’s foolish to think that if dueling, or brawling, were ‘legal’ that only those who really wanted to do so would be dragged into it. It would simply give bullies and gangsters another excuse and more leverage over the people that fear them. In theory it makes sense, in practice it does not because it’s very difficult to enforce. That’s why it’s just to arrest anyone involved in a fray or brawl, because the risk of an unfair fight, or one entered into under duress or intoxication, is simply too great. Not to mention the extra strain on the medical and dental systems.
Most dueling societies allowed for the use of ‘champions’ to avoid exactly this sort of misuse.
But seriously, we all know it won’t happen, and most are fine with that.
But if you think threats of violence are the only form of social bullying, then you need to get out more.
If YOU think threats of violence are the only form of social bullying, I’m going to deny you membership to my chess club and refuse to invite you to my birthday party!
As if we would want to go to your birthday part Daniel no mates!
Social bullying goes down when the marginal cost of underestimating a victim’s strength goes up.
It’s foolish to think that if dueling, or brawling, were ‘legal’ that only those who really wanted to do so would be dragged into it.
Hence regulation of the sort Ty was talking about. Dueling, even in the early days, required the consent of both parties, and usually a waiting period between the challenge and the event (during which people could, conceivably, decide to chill out). Intoxication is a stickier issue, but no more difficult to regulate than, say, drunk driving.
Ahh, how quaint.
As long as people have the right to leave I don’t see how it violates their human rights. It’s not like people are being chased down and stoned, are they?
On the other hand I would not be surprised if some people at least were being coerced into this. That is what needs to be targeted if it is happening. In any case, trying to outright ban it is the least intelligent way to go about stopping the practice.
Let’s say that instead of throwing rocks at each other across the stream, their tradition was that they threw spears. Would that be ok?
What if it was bows? Or guns?
Is the issue the potential lethality of the thrown object? A rock is less likely to kill you than a spear, I guess. At what degree of lethality does the government have the obligation to protect its citizens from themselves?
I draw the line at armed grenades. That would just be wrong.
I had a friend who used to say that they should have legal televised flamethrower fights.
His idea was that anyone so desperate to get on TV (reality TV contestants, we’re looking at you) that they would get in a flamethrower fight deserves to be set on fire. It’s a group self selected for stupidity, and no one would miss them. Also, it would be the only reality TV worth watching.
Perhaps this rock throwing thing meets a similar need.
mmm…you could paid a lot of money to the survivor and some to the family of the death one… i can see the money flowing guys! It would work!
Are you asking me? I don’t think anyone has an obligation to protect anyone else from themselves (excepting of course the parent/child relationship, which is an obligation taken up by the parents). The issue for me is the nature of the interaction and not the degree of lethality.
However, I do think that the longevity of the tradition is inversely proportional to its lethality. In which case throwing flamethrowers would be a long-lived and totally non-objectionable tradition, except in that it might waste good flamthrowers.
“I don’t think anyone has an obligation to protect anyone else from themselves ”
Most governments would disagree with you on that.
Unfortunately, governments never went to kindergarten and thus do not know, understand, or respect the “agree to disagree” rule.
Most governments in the history of humankind have also disagreed with me on the topics of slavery and war. This has no bearing on which stance is correct.
I wouldn’t say it has *no* bearing, but I agree that it is in no way conclusive.
It has bearing on whether or not they will actually stop you from doing stuff.
Which in this case they did.
I’m seeing a lot of discussion of the event, but nothing of the origin…
in NZ, we have the story of Hinemoa and Tutanekai, who fell in love despite being from different tribes, one on an island in the middle of a lake, and the other on the shore of the lake. Every night Tutanekai would play his flute, and Hinemoa would go to the shore to listen. She wanted to cross to join him, but all the canoes were too heavy and too far up the shore for her to launch one, so she emptied a pile of gourds, stopped them so water couldn’t get in, and tied them together to float herself across the lake to him. They have a lot of descendants today, so obviously a happy ending.
I like coming from a place where even in pre-modern times, young lovers could run away to be with each other and survive.
Neither of them could swim?
http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?q=lake+rotorua&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF8&split=0&gl=nz&ei=LmOeSrOLAobYsQPDnewr&ll=-38.088364,176.286621&spn=0.130244,0.258522&z=12
As you can see, at the closest point it’s a swim of two miles, and I think Hinemoa’s tribe lived on the southern edge of the lake…
Don’t stone me bro’