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| A screen grab from the video - Eating the dead for peace - Confessions of an Aghori Baba |
Staff correspondent, September 17, 2015
Aghoris are a dark Shaivaite sect whose rituals and practices are opposed by many Hindus.
Living in grave yards, they smear cremation ashes on their bodies, and use human bones and skulls as jewelry.
Most controversially they are said to eat dead bodies.
In a video by Sorted, an Aghori baba explains some of the rituals of the sect.
For Aghoris, sky is the father and earth, the mother. They recognise no other relationship and can tear into and eat even their dead brothers and sisters, he says.
They go to the graveyard at midnight with incense sticks and other pooja materials and eat the corpses.
"We use pans to cook them, when cooked human meat looks like potatoes," he says.
Aghoris smoke weed, which he describes as akin to a devotional song.
Why do Aghoris live the way they do? He says he has found peace and happiness, which cannot be found in anybody else.
So far so good. The video shifts from Aghori's banter to his rituals at Varanasi, which is their Mecca.
It's night, the Aghori is making sacrifices to the blazing fire. He takes a chicken, beheads it with his fingers and pours blood on the fire. Then he bites into it...
Going by the comments on YouTube, the video does not seem to have gone down well with everyone who has seen it.