For centuries we have done nothing else except fight, except kill. Our only profession seems to be war. Sometimes we fight, and sometimes we prepare for a future fight. But all the time we are engaged in a single profession, that of murderers, because we have been taught a stupid idea: responsibility towards your nation, responsibility towards your religion. All the religions have been teaching that your life is not more valuable than your religion. It is such a strange idea. All these things should be for man, not vice versa. A religion exists to help man, not to destroy man. But all religions have been destroying man, none has been helping.

They say, “It is your responsibility, if your religion is in trouble or if your religion is trying to conquer bigger territories, to acquire more people, it is your responsibility to sacrifice.” It reminds me of the primitive religions, because it is a relic of those days. In the ancient book of the Hindus, Rig Veda, they sacrificed to a fictitious God. Nobody has seen him, nobody has any idea what you mean by the very word. There exists no proof, no evidence, no witness. But for that unreal, fictitious God, which is just a hypothesis, even men were sacrificed before a stone statue – a statue that you have made.

There is mention in Rig Veda of narmedh yagna. Sacrificing man to God was the greatest ritual. And the man who was ready to be sacrificed was thought to be a saint. Those who could not do such a thing were thought to be cowards, not fulfilling their responsibility. Dying for God – what can be more valuable than that?

After man, they started sacrificing animals. Today all the Hindus of this country continuously try to stop cow slaughter. But they are not aware that their forefathers in the Rig Veda were themselves killing cows as a sacrifice to God. And they were eating the meat of the cows, because stone statues don’t eat. You can offer and then you can take it back as a divine gift. Everything is yours: you are killing the cow, you are offering to a stone god who cannot eat and then you are taking it back and distributing it to all the worshippers. And these people are continuously trying to stop cow slaughter. They were killing horses, they were killing all kinds of animals. They are still killing.

In Calcutta, at one of the most famous temples of the mother goddess Kali they still kill every day a few goats and then the goats’ meat is distributed as prasad, as God’s gift to the worshippers. And this is a vegetarian country. A strange kind of vegetarianism! But in the name of God, everything is allowed. When they stopped sacrificing man – because it became more and more hammered in by people like Gautam Buddha and Vardhaman Mahavira that this is absolutely ugly and uncivilized, it is just a strategy to hide your cannibalistic tendencies, in the name of religion you are eating man – because it was criticized so much, finally they dropped killing man.