Anatomy riots

 

I was tempted to call this blog post "This is the world atheists want" or some even less kind title. Scott Carney is an investigative reporter most known for his rocky relationship with Wim Hof and his successors. He has been involved in other projects, too, however. 

When blogging about the Aghori (the bizarre Tantric sect in Varanasi, India), one question always haunted me: where on earth do these guys get hold of human skulls, ribs and other mortuary paraphernalia? Their contacts with the untouchable caste which cremate dead bodies gave part of the answer. But surely you can´t just walk into a shop in India and buy fresh craniums?

Well, actually...you can. 

I never read Carney´s book on this and related topics, "The Red Market". The YouTube clip above would therefore have to do for now. It features Carney interviewing an Indian-American scholar on this rather morbid topic. It turns out that there is an *enormous* international trade in human body parts, teeth and skeletal remains (or whole skeletons). Some of it is legal, much else less so. Carney has lived in India, which presumably explains his concentration on that particular nation. Of course, India´s enormous population and the fact that poverty is still relatively widespread makes it a "natural" provider for a market in dead people. There is never a shortage of corpses. 

Carney does mention the Aghori, and also tells a story of smugglers at the Indian-Bhutanese border, who were providing Tibetan Buddhists in Bhutan with literal truck-loads of skulls and tibia, used in Tantric rituals. But the main culprit in this story is not religion, but science. Centuries ago, medical schools in the Western world were employing grave-diggers to obtain fresh corpses for dissection and study. "Anatomy riots" followed, as ordinary people attacked and burned down the medical schools. Oh, those superstitious plebs, with no understanding of scientific progress! I´m being ironic. Don´t show this to the local Skeptic club (TM)!  

When Britain turned India into a colony, the market in corpses and skeletons expanded considerably. Indian corpses, to be exact. The periodic famines (which Carney and his Indian guest believes were caused by the British) were good for business. After independence, this Indian market *became even larger*?!

In India, a corpse must apparently be claimed within 48 hours. That leaves a lot of unclaimed corpses, and that creates business opportunities. Medical schools in both India and the United States still use real human body parts, hopefully obtained through informed consent procedures, but very often, probably not really. Carney did walk into a certain store in Calcutta and procured a skeleton of a 50-year old woman within minutes. He also learned that if you bribe a low-caste cremetion worker with 25 dollars, he will readily obtain a nice human cranium within a day or so. The store acts as middle-man. 

"The Red Market" must have created quite a splash in India, since the Indian authorities did change the law on one point: foreign tourists are no longer allowed to leave the country with human body parts in their possession. There is even a huge sign to this effect at the international airport in New Delhi! 

Well, always good to hear...

But what about the Aghori? Apparently, the sect often performs for tourists, so in that sense, morbid Western interest in seeing the sadhus "touch" skeletal remains fuels the local demand for precisely such remains. In the same ways, Western interest in shrunken heads makes tribals in other parts of the world go on head-hunts. However, I think it´s rather obvious that the evil White Man isn´t the only culprit here. 

It´s almost as if the Aghori are right: the entire world is a gigantic charnel ground, at which Kali is dancing...