‘donald trump‘Became a viral sensation overnight. Crowds gathered from far and wide to be amazed by his darshan. They could hardly understand that someone like him walked the earth. They were amazed by her golden hair and fair skin. They were surprised by his weight. And when they learned that he might soon be sacrificed, they were in a state of shock. But destiny had other plans and when he survived, the whole world heaved a sigh of relief.Now, while this leadership may read as if one is describing the leader of the free world, one is simply describing Yudhishthira here: Donald Trumpo jeevati iti, neta va mahisho va.For those who have forgotten their Mahabharata or Sanskrit, Donald is not the US President, especially does not eat from the McDonald’s menu, and has never bombed Iran or damaged the global economy. He is a buffalo in Bangladesh who became an overnight sensation due to his resemblance to Trump and is seven times heavier than his namesake.What started as routine Eid shopping soon became a global viral sensation. Farm owner Ziauddin Mridha said the majestic animal caused him 1.5 million taka, or about $12,300, in damage, and now that he has been compensated, the Bangladesh government has decided to send Donald to Dhaka’s National Zoo instead of letting him end up on someone’s plate.We live in the age of viral animals, from Larry the Cat, who lives permanently in 10 Downing Street, to Moo Deng, the lovable pygmy hippo in Thailand, and Punch, the lonely monkey whose inability to make friends took the world by surprise. Donald Trump the buffoon may be the latest addition to this god band. But long before algorithms turned animals into celebrities, humans were already turning them into gods, omens, and pardoned prisoners.This is where the rabbit hole begins.
man, animal and god
To understand why the sudden killing of a buffalo going viral might be so meaningful, one has to go back to the beginning, when animals were not content but cosmological. Long before the advent of Twitter, animals helped us understand the world. We were the original monkey, see, do monkeys, although, to be fair to our simian cousins, they never did anything as awesome as inventing LinkedIn. The earliest cave paintings are not self-indulgent selfies or breakfast photos but sketches of animals: horses, bison, aurochs, deer, lions and wild boars.
One of the oldest known figurative paintings, depicting an unidentified bovine, was discovered in the Lubang Jeriji Saleh Cave and dated to be over 40,000 (perhaps as old as 52,000) years old.
Animals were our first guides and textbooks, teaching us how to hunt, when the weather was changing, and why communism wouldn’t work.Animals inspired us and, in turn, revealed our first gods. The lion can symbolize courage, the snake can symbolize danger, the bull can symbolize force, and the cow can symbolize abundance. Once animals became symbols, gods were never far behind.One of the most iconic images of the Indus Valley Civilization is the Pashupati seal, which many historians interpret as Shiva, the lord of animals. The horned, seated figure is surrounded by an elephant, tiger, rhinoceros, buffalo and other creatures, which suggests that one of our earliest ideas about divinity was one who could command a wild animal like Komaram Bheem in RRR.In the ancient world, gods rarely traveled alone. Sometimes animals were their vehicles, sometimes their symbols, sometimes their bodies, and sometimes a complete warning label attached to their power. In Hinduism, the entire divine vocabulary centers around animals: gods ride them as vehicles, possess their bodies as avatars, and often turn them into sacred symbols.This was hardly unique to ancient India. Egyptian gods often looked as if they were assembled in some divine costume department: Horus had the head of a falcon, Anubis had the head of a jackal, Bastet had that of a cat, Sobek had that of a crocodile, Hathor had the horns of a cow, Khnum had the head of a ram, Taweret had the body of a hippopotamus, and Apis had the body of a complete bull.The Greeks, as they are wont to do, made things more scandalous, and Zeus treated the animal kingdom like a divine disguise kit, becoming a bull, swan or eagle whenever the plot required moral degradation. Rome, being Rome, turns animals into monarchs. The eagle became the soul of the army, while the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus gave the empire an origin story with milk, murder, and excellent branding.China, too, mapped the cosmic order through animals: the dragon stood for royal authority and rain, the phoenix for renewal, the tiger for martial courage, and the tortoise for endurance. The four symbols made the animals themselves guardians of direction, as clearly space also required wildlife management. And later, a fifth, a noodle-loving panda, was added to tarnish the Middle Kingdom’s image around the world.And in Norse mythology, Jörmungandr, the Midgard or World Serpent, encircles the Earth. In Ragnarok, Thor kills the serpent but dies from its venom, unlike the MCU Thor, who is condemned to appear in sequels until Chris Hemsworth shrugs off his mortal coil. And given that animals and gods were interconnected, it was only a matter of time before humans began sacrificing animals to the gods.
to give up and sorry
The English word sacrifice comes from the Latin sacer and facere, meaning “to make sacred,” which sounds much better than killing something and hoping the universe listens. The animal was the envelope and God was the addressee.Sacrifices were transactions of various kinds: food for the gods, blood for crime, life for favor, smoke for prayer. In Mesopotamia, offerings were made to gods such as Enlil, Enki, Inanna-Ishtar, Shamash, and Marduk, as gods were conceived not as distant abstractions but as forces to be honored, fed, satisfied, and largely kept aside.In Egypt, offerings to gods such as Amun-Ra, Osiris, Isis, Hathor, and Ptah were part of maintaining Maat, the cosmic order that kept the world from slipping back into chaos.In Greece, sacrifices were made to Zeus for power and protection, to Athena for wisdom and victory, to Artemis for hunting and childbirth, to Apollo for prophecy and healing, to Demeter for harvest, and to Dionysus for fertility, ecstasy, and whatever ancient civilization called a more respectable version of the long weekend.
Ancient India also had its own rituals, like Ashvamedha, where a horse was allowed to roam around for a year under the protection of the king, and if the horse returned without being challenged, the king could claim universal sovereignty, which sounds a lot less messy than frequent UN Security Council meetings.As paganism evolved into Abrahamic beliefs, the ritual of sacrifice changed and did not change.In Judaism, animals were offered to Yahweh as burnt offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, trespass offerings, and, according to one hypothesis, as offerings to renew Seinfeld. The most enduring image was the Yom Kippur scapegoat described in Leviticus: one goat was sacrificed, while the other was burdened with the community’s sins and sent into the wilderness. Long before modern politics discovered the utility of blaming immigrants, minorities, internees, previous governments, or algorithms, humanity had already put collective guilt on a goat and told it to leave town.One can imagine that the gods were happy as Seinfeld kept getting renewed, while the Jews were responsible for everything that came out of Western civilization. In fact, it was a Jewish gentleman who also promoted Christianity, although Christianity was a religious transformation of sacrifice.Jesus became the “Lamb of God”, the innocent victim whose death replaced the repeated blood transfusions on the old altar, the one who died for all sins, leading to the terrible joke that if no one sins, Jesus died for nothing.Instead the animals became metaphors, with the lamb as survival of innocence, the shepherd as divine care, and the sacrificial victim as salvation. Christianity moved sacrifice from ritual slaughter to theology, which is why the language of blood, redemption, and offering persisted long after most Christians stopped bringing livestock to the priests.Meanwhile, in the third Abrahamic faith, sacrifice remained necessary, which brings us Eid al-Adha. The festival commemorates Abraham’s desire to obey God, but an animal takes his place instead. The meat is traditionally shared among friends and family, making it an act of remembrance and obedience.In all three Abrahamic traditions, the animal either dies, becomes plagued with guilt, or becomes a memory of a sacrifice that has been postponed.But while sacrifice is understood, how did forgiveness become the norm?While there are many versions of it around the world, the modern version can be linked to the Thanksgiving pardoning of the turkey, although when one knows the entire history, one wonders if Thanksgiving is the right word to describe the event.
Jennie Augusta Brownscomb’s 1914 portrait, the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, is now on display at Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The story goes that in 1621, the English settlers in Plymouth were barely getting by – just as members of the Delhi Gymkhana were forced to attend the Press Club – when the Wampanoag tribe, led by Osemquin, decided to help them. The tribe was also weakened by disease and rivalry, and the first “Thanksgiving” was not a Norman Rockwell painting with gravy boats, but a strange political system, like the one we see in coalition governments over breakfast.While history suggests it was likely poultry, including turkeys, ducks or geese, and even deer, the turkey became the food mascot because it was native, large, practical and could feed several people at the same time.What began as a harvest meal turned into a national myth, especially in the 19th century, when Thanksgiving was promoted as a unifying American ritual. Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving in 1863 during the Civil War, and the familiar menu, including turkey, became part of the holiday’s emotional machinery.Legend has it that Abe’s son Tad pleaded to spare a Christmas turkey named Jack. JFK saw a man wearing a sign in 1963 that read, “Good food, Mr. President”, and decided it should see another birthday.
From viral sensation to zoo resident: Bangladesh’s ‘Trump’ buffalo saved from Eid sacrifice
Later, when reporters asked about those involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, Reagan scoffed at the pardon.George HW Bush formally announced the pardoning of the turkey in 1989, and it soon became part of the national skyline. And like most American things, like Ozempic and diabetes, Thanksgiving, turkey and forgiveness became part of the world’s spectacle.Thanks largely to the algorithm and the spectacle that followed, not unlike the chaotic sequence of events that saw its namesake become leader of the free world, it will live to see another day. But their survival shows us that humanity never outgrows its old ways: On some days, we sacrifice animals to appease the gods, and on other days, we sacrifice animals to feel a little more human.
