Oh, have faith; they DO have a fundamentalist in charge. I'm just waiting for him to work up the balls enough to declare the banning of both the caste system and suttee as being an anti-Hindu move by white supremacists forcing their wicked culture on real humans, and then relegalizing both with a vengeance. In the name of Hindu pride.

And no, they don't "honour" non-humans. Remember, if you get reincarnated as anything but a human, you failed, and you deserve to be treated badly (which is why you NEVER go to an East Indian veterinarian!) and killing you just gives you a chance to "try again" to be a human. If you tell them their granny is now a cat, they get ANGRY that you just accused their granny of being a piece of shit. This is why they had no problem seeing Prince Charles and friends wipe out the tiger on their behalf (meanwhile, the large cats would be Man's natural enemies, so a tiger eating a human is doing nothing wrong according to its nature. But Hindus are just as human-supremacist as the Christian. And National parks and wildlife preservation/conservation are white ideas, even so.