I’ve often thought that farming was a job for the poor or uneducated. No one ever told me about all the naked dancing though, so perhaps I need to reevaluate.

Farmers in an eastern Indian state have asked their unmarried daughters to plow parched fields naked in a bid to embarrass the weather gods to bring some badly needed monsoon rain, officials said on Thursday.

Witnesses said the naked girls in Bihar state plowed the fields and chanted ancient hymns after sunset to invoke the gods. They said elderly village women helped the girls drag the plows.

“They (villagers) believe their acts would get the weather gods badly embarrassed, who in turn would ensure bumper crops by sending rains,” Upendra Kumar, a village council official, said from Bihar’s remote Banke Bazaar town.

“This is the most trusted social custom in the area and the villagers have vowed to continue this practice until it rains very heavily.”

Due to my unflinching xenophobia, I tend to write off many of these customs as being the equivalent of throwing a sandwich in the air and hoping it somehow kills Hitler; sure there’s a chance it could happen, but odds are your sandwich getting thrown didn’t make it happen. But I didn’t know there was nudity involved. Incestuous nudity, yeah, probably not preferable, but hey, we have to start somewhere.

If I were a weather god, I probably wouldn’t be embarrassed. In fact, it might rain, but the raindrops may take on a bleachy, sticky quality. Will that help the plants? Who cares baby, I’m refracting up in my Weather God Townhouse.

[via]