In the West, humans talk a lot about animal welfare, but there are very few free animals. Stray dogs and cattle do not appear to have a right to life. Europe, in particular, is a complete triumph of the Biblical man. All animals are subordinate to humans, and those who cannot be subjugated have long been terminated, whole dangerous majestic species wiped out to make the world a safer place for humans.
MANU JOSEPH: I can see it on their smug faces. Across Gurugram, cows sense a bright future. They stand on various roads looking in one direction, like before, but there are more of them than ever and they are left like this for hours by their minders because nobody now dares to evict cows; it’s not like they are mere slum dwellers. So they amble about, blocking traffic, occasionally nudging a biker and sending him rolling. Stray dogs, too, are enjoying a good life, especially after a high court clarified that they have “a right to be fed in their territory”.
For animals, India is like an advanced nation. In the West, humans talk a lot about animal welfare, but there are very few free animals. Stray dogs and cattle do not appear to have a right to life. Europe, in particular, is a complete triumph of the Biblical man. All animals are subordinate to humans, and those who cannot be subjugated have long been terminated, whole dangerous majestic species wiped out to make the world a safer place for humans…
The West talks a lot about the welfare of animals; in fact, all talk about animal welfare in India by posh people is derived from Western sermons, but it is a post-apocalypse time in the West for the animal world. In India, a lone human may not last a day in a jungle. The animal habitat is an unambiguous space. But the human habitat is an ambiguous space that is shared by humans and animals. The law and its practice in this regard are ambiguous too. In a city, is my right of way superior to the right of a stray cow or dog? I do not know. I only know that lovers and hawkers can be removed from the streets.
Animals in India appear to have extraordinary human rights… The reason animals thrive in India is a combination of administrative incompetence, allergy to order, the familiarity of informality and the success of secular Western evangelism of animal rights that has influenced us to adopt animal welfare laws that are the world’s most sophisticated. The interaction between Indians and animals is usually unsophisticated. It has a quality of antiquity. The antiquity is in the absence of over-articulation of what animals mean to us.
The average Indian does not think much about the place of animals. He has not formalized what animals mean to him; he has barely formalized what a road lane or traffic signal means. Some animals are sacred and useful, some are dangerous and rare, some tasty; and many are underdogs, and hence endearing. We have no particular interest in the welfare of animals, even if some of them are sacred. Sacred beings are not assured of a good life in India. Let us not forget that women are worshipped too…
Many of India’s troubles arise from the fact that it imports foreign solutions for unique problems. Influenced by societies that have not seen a leopard in centuries, or probably ever, we assume that a leopard belongs in a forest… Forest officials have been “rescuing” leopards and banishing them to the forest. And these cats have been finding their way back. There are leopards in the sugarcane districts of Maharashtra that have probably never seen a forest. They like it here, so what can we do?…
Animal welfare in India is also shaped by something very Indian. At a fundamental level, we are not as morally certain as Christian dominated civilizations that humans are more equal than animals. As you can see, on the question of how to keep Indians safe from animals, this column itself is ambiguous. SOURCE…
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