Crocodile enters temple in Gujarat, India, devotees gather delaying rescue efforts
Devotees at the Khodiyar Mata temple in the Indian state of Gujarat had a surprise visitor yesterday, a crocodile. This was a miracle for the many worshippers of the temple’s deity, ‘Khodiya Mata’ or goddess Khodiyar whose mode of transport is believed to be a crocodile.
The crocodile attracted a large number of devotees after it strayed onto the premises of the temple in Gujarat’s Mahisagar district during the late hours of Sunday.
A video that went viral on social media showed the crocodile crawl into the sanctum sanctorum and sat there till the forest department came in to rescue the reptile.
Gujarat: Forest Department officials yesterday rescued a crocodile that strayed into Khodiyar Mata temple in Mahisagar district; the rescue was allegedly delayed due to the villagers who gathered at the temple to offer prayers to the crocodile. pic.twitter.com/Y5ILxgKTe0
— ANI (@ANI) June 24, 2019
Delay in rescue
The devotees allegedly caused a delay in the operation as they didn’t allow forest officials to rescue the crocodile. According to a report by Asian News International (ANI), Mahisagar’s Deputy Conservator of Forests R M Parmar said the people assembled at the temple delayed rescue operations by around two hours. “When our personnel reached there to rescue the crocodile, people opposed it. We waited for two hours as we did not want to hurt religious sentiments. However, later, we managed to get the reptile to a nearby pond,” Parmar added.
R V Patel, Range Forest Officer of the Mahisagar forest department said: “The crocodile is a giant one, it weighs 17kgs and is 6 feet long. We had a hard time rescuing it as a large number of devotees started worshipping the crocodile. Another problem that we faced while rescuing the crocodile was that the sanctum sanctorum was small in comparison to the crocodile. We have now released him into a nearby pond.”
Social media reacts
The video went viral and Indian news media outlets shared the story. Twitter users jumped in to react. While some said the crowd frenzy was unacceptable and the reptile should be rescued soon, others continued to call it a miracle.
@saurabh_singh27 tweeted: “What are they feeding the crocodile? Care should be taken for its rehabilitation and not let it die in crowd frenzy.”
Meanwhile, @kdramafanin questioned: “Are they serious? What if it harmed someone?”
Crocodile worship
Khodiyar Mata, the deity of the Patel community in the state, is often depicted in religious literature as riding on a crocodile.
Villagers gathered at the temple to pray for the crocodile, delaying the rescue operation by two hours. https://t.co/KCxVsNZLyR
— Twitter Moments India (@MomentsIndia) June 24, 2019
According to R V Patel: “A large number of people who had assembled at the Khodiyar Temple... offered prayers, conducted prayer rituals and showered vermillion on the 6-foot reptile as it lay near the goddess’ idol.”
Many Hindu castes, especially the Leva Patels worship the Khodiyar Maa as the ‘Kuldevi’ or family deity. But crocodile worship is not unique to them. Crocodiles are worshipped in a number of different cultures.
Other instances in India
In January an entire village in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, mourned the death of a crocodile, whom they used to worship as their protector. For residents of the Bawa Mohtara village in Bemetara district, the around 130-year-old crocodile, whom they had fondly named as ‘Gangaram’, was extremely sacred.
After the reptile died in a village pond, grief-stricken residents took out its funeral procession and did not cook food that day.
In Kerala, a crocodile named Babiya guards the famous Ananthapura Lake Temple. According to an article on the Indian news website Indiatimes.com: “Legend has it that Babiya is a local guardian of the temple. Babiya only eats the temple prasad, which is made of rice and jaggery and does not harm anyone, including the fish in the lake. The crocodile is believed to be vegetarian and has been guarding the temple for more than 60 years.”
In Goa, a village worships crocodiles for bountiful crop yields. Annually, residents of Adulshem celebrate a peculiar agrarian cultural expression dedicated to crocodile worship. They make a dummy crocodile out of silt extracted from the land as villagers chant prayers for a better crop and fish yield.
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