RATS RULE THE TEMPLE!

Yes, the title says it very clear. You are not losing your mind; rats really do rule somewhere in India.

Rats are medium-sized, long-tailed rodents. We usually blame rats for damaging our food supplies, and for spreading diseases like plague, typhus, leptospirosis, and eosinophilic meningitis. But some people treat these pests as sacred.


In Northern India, you’ll find people worshipping rats which are considered repulsive by the most of the people in the world. This may sound a bit weird to some but in the city of Deshnoke, they worship rats in Bikaner Rat Temple, Rajasthan. The local people treat rats as sacred because they believe that after death, they return to the Earth as rats. Unlike the city rats which we consider pests, the rats in northern Indian are fed, protected and worshipped.


This Hindu temple was built in the early 1900s as a tribute to the rat goddess, Karni Mata. This temple is made of marble, which line the entrance and the floor, silver and gold decorations throughout the entire room. One of its most priceless assets is the solid silver carved door illustrating Karni Mata and Ganesh. Its inner sanctum is a two-foot silver image of Karni Mata. It is the only place where non-Hindus are not allowed to come in, and where the food for the rats is placed.


The marble panels or the gold and silver decorations are not the main aspects in the temple. The most interesting and intriguing aspect inside the temple is the living snarl of surging fur floor. There are about 20,000 (not the exact number) rats that call the temple their home.


The odd thing in this culture is that, there are about 160,000,000 Hindu Dalits are treated as “untouchables”. The Dalits are not allowed to go inside the temples because they are poor and they bring karma with them. These “untouchables” are deprived of their rights but they allow rats to live in a temple with marble floors and silver and gold ornaments. How odd!