Hindus want bullfighting ban in France

NEVADA - Hindus have urged France to ban bullfighting.

Eminent Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, asked France to follow Catalonia (Spain) example and outlaw this barbaric, inhumane, horrendous, unacceptable and cruel practice of bullfighting.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, also urged other countries of the world to ban bullfighting practice. European Union should impose a Europe-wide ban on all blood-sports. People, whose jobs were thus affected, should be rehabilitated in other jobs with related training.

Rajan Zed stresses that non-violence is a greatest virtue. We have long been out of the caves. Let us get rid of these outdated traditions. World will be a better place without these blood-sports.

Zed argued that France; the most visited fabled land of Descartes, Pascal, Rousseau, Voltaire, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Sartre, Camus, Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Braque, best-loved wines, royal chateaux, over 500 cheese varieties, creator of cinema, Eiffel Tower; could easily find other ways to entertain its citizens and the visitors.

According to reports, bullfighting is popular mostly in southern France for about 150 years, where it is organized in over 70 cities, ending in death of about 1000 bulls annually. About a million visitors attend the five-day festival in Nimes.

Besides Spain and France, bullfighting is also practiced in Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Colombia, and Venezuela. A typical bullfight usually is of 20 minutes in which a bull is stabbed several times before the final blow with a sword pushed between its shoulder blades. Nobel Prize winner author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was reportedly a fan of bullfighting and mentioned this tradition in his work “Death in the Afternoon”.

According to Utrecht (The Netherlands) based CAS International: Every year, more than 250,000 bulls and cows are tortured and killed worldwide during bullfights and similar events. (ANI)