In India, kids celebrate the winter solstice, called Makar Sankranti, by flying kites. Sounds like a fun, harmless tradition, right? The trouble is that, as anybody who has seen The Kite Runner knows, kite-flying in the East can be extremely competitive—cutthroat, if you will. Many kite-flyers use glass-coated string called manja to sever their competitors' kite strings. But the string has severed lots of other things, too, including birds' wings and breasts and even human throats. So PETA India held an eye-catching protest during Makar Sankranti to urge kids to use cotton string instead: 

Every year, bird sanctuaries are called to assist thousands of pigeons, crows, owls, hawks, and other birds who have been badly maimed. Thousands are killed after becoming helplessly entangled in razor-sharp manja. Pedestrians and people riding by kite competitions on bicycles or scooters have also been injured and even killed. Five people, including two children, were killed and nearly 250 people injured in one state alone during a previous Makar Sankranti.

PETA India is lobbying to get manja outlawed throughout India. 

Actor and PETA India supporter Sonam Kapoor is making Indian schoolchildren's spirits soar by giving them colorful new kites with which to paint the sky. Kapoor is giving birds something to sing about, too, because the kites have bird-safe cotton strings.

In India, competitive kite flyers often use glass-coated "manja," a type of string that is used to cut other kite flyers' lines. But birds and children can be seriously injured—and even killed—when they are struck by or become entangled in the razor-sharp lines. PETA India is working hard to get manja banned so that the skies can once again be friendly for everyone.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Earlier this year, I was driving along the crowded streets of Hyderabad in India, near one of the Mahatma Gandhi shrines, when I saw something I'd never seen before that almost flipped my lid. I was there to launch the Indian version of PETA's kids' book, 50 Awesome Things Kids Can Do to Save Animals, and I knew instantly that kids had to get involved in the atrocity that was unfolding right before my eyes.

It was a few days into the annual kite-flying contest, which Hyderabad is known for, and kitemakers were squatting at every curb, spinning colored kite string. However, the string was being coated in spun glass, much as you would coat a stick with cotton candy. This makes the string razor-sharp and able to rip through an opponent's kite in a millisecond.

Errant kites, set free to entangle in phone poles and trees, rip birds to shreds. So I set off with Jayasimha, one of the great movers and shakers in PETA India, to a bird sanctuary where we watched the volunteers gearing up for the coming horror: a grueling three-day festival in which hundreds of vultures, parrots, crows, and other birds were going to be wounded, many of them fatally.

PETA India started a petition asking kids never to buy glass-coated string, called "Manja." And here is the first demonstration against it in Hyderabad:

Written by Ingrid E. Newkirk