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10th April 2023
11:53am BST
After the popularity of series such as Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story the topic of cannibalism seems to spark a weird fascination in some people.
But it’s not the first time that it’s been the focus of a television production.
Back in 2017, CNN televised a series called Believers, and it featured some pretty shocking moments.
In one episode, show host Reza Aslan visited a cannibalistic Hindu sect and was offered what was billed as a piece of human brain.
In the program, Aslan encounters a group of Aghori nomads outside the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. The obscure Aghori sect are a fringe group who number only a few thousand of the world’s estimated one billion Hindus.
During the episode, they smear Aslan's face in cremated human ashes and persuade him to drink alcohol from a skull.
An Aghori ascetic, who at one point also threatens to decapitate Aslan for “talking so much”, also places a crown of human teeth on the journalist's head, and feeds him what he claims is a piece of human brain.
You can see a clip of the exchange below.
Ahead of the episode airing, Aslan wrote on Facebook: “Want to know what a dead guy’s brain tastes like? Charcoal. It was burnt to a crisp!”
The presenter makes clear in the episode that the Aghori are a fringe group, but he faced a significant backlash after the episode was shown.
Some Indians and American Hindu groups say the episode was “Hinduphobic” and sensationalised aspects of the world’s third largest-religion.
Writing in the Huffington Post, Vamsee Juluri, a media studies professor at the University of San Francisco, said: “It is unbelievably callous and reckless of CNN to be pushing sensational and grotesque images of bearded brown men and their morbid and deathly religion at a time when the United States is living through a period of unprecedented concern and fear.”
Elsewhere, the US-India Political Action Committee said in a statement: “With multiple reports of hate-fuelled attacks against people of Indian origin from across the US, the show characterises Hinduism as cannibalistic, which is a bizarre way of looking at the third largest religion in the world.”
The organisation went on: “In a charged environment, a show like this can create a perception about Indian Americans which could make them more vulnerable to further attacks.”
Tulsi Gabbard, who was the first Hindu to be elected to the US congress, tweeted: “CNN is using its power and influence to increase people’s misunderstanding and fear of Hinduism.”
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