Who’s the beast here?

Anuj Pant

In the Chauvet Caves of France, scholars discovered primitive paintings of grazing animals believed to have been created 32,000 years ago. These paintings did not interest scholars as much as a set of small footprints they found in the same cave, belonging to a child and the paw prints of a wolf or a large dog that walked by the child’s side. These footprints have become a heart-warming testimonial of the bond that man and animal share.

So thousands of years later, when an MLA filled with rage angrily charges toward a police horse with a lathi, and (allegedly) wounds the horse to the point of amputation, any rational person would, in hindsight, ask this question: “Where have we gone wrong?”

To attempt to answer this question, let’s temporarily forget about the MLA and Shaktiman, the horse. One can see the staggering number of animal abuse cases in the country and how anyone can simply get away with it, including not just careless urban municipal authorities but also unsurprisingly, ordinary people.

Upper and middle class Indians love their clichéd, pristine vision for society: children running around, the elderly taking walks in the park, security guards saluting sahib’s arrival from work. These images are taken so seriously, in fact, that God forbid a dirty stray dog enter their communities and interfere with their made-up utopias.

One such incident happened some time back in Chandigarh when some residents tied a stray dog, who had wandered into their society, to a tree and beat him to an inch of his life and then dropped him in the outskirts of the city.

Abuse pervades through the attitudes of everyday people. “People tend to carry their pent up anger and release it on animals,” says Malvika Lobo, a therapist, who has treated differently abled children and adults using dogs and other animals have a healing effect on the human psyche. 

“When people treat animals like articles, some of the worst forms of abuse start,” contends Tanaya Shah, a practicing lawyer and animal enthusiast. “A pet is not a child’s toy. Parents often think like this and buy their children a pet. When the child grows tired of the pet, it is abandoned. These cases are manifold, but never discussed.” 

Another heinous incident of extreme animal cruelty occurred in the Krishnanagar area of Bangalore. Ponnamma, a resident of this area, bashed eight newborn stray puppies against a boulder to teach their mother, a four-year-old stray, Ammu, “a lesson”. 

Horrified at this incident, the area residents buried the puppies and immediately registered a complaint against Ponnamma, and the police are taking action against her. As is with cases of extreme animal cruelty under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, Ponnamma could face up to five years in prison.

But there can be no justice for the mother Ammu now, even as she dug up the puppies’ bodies to feed them and roams around the site where her puppies died a cruel death.

The general attitude of an average Indian is that humans haven’t solved their own problems, so why have time for animals? This attitude becomes institutionalised and internalised in all forms of animal abuse. So people who genuinely value life and voice concern for animals often get laughed or mocked at for doing so.

And what about the rights of animal aficionados? According to a set of guidelines issued by the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI), a statutory body created to advise the government on animal welfare laws, no Resident Welfare Association (RWA) can legally obstruct any individual or family from having a pet.

“People like to brush everything under their carpets,” says Himanshu Malhotra, environmentalist and filmmaker. Complexities increase when stray animals are taken out from the area they grow up in. “There is a reason why food chains exist. Since there are less stray dogs and cats now, the rodent population has gone up,” he adds, “Compounding the rodent problem is the fact that authorities have resorted to cementing drains, leading to further infestation.”

The solution cannot be removing strays from their habitats as can be seen from the carelessness and indifference shown by the Ahmedabad Municipality. Under the Animal Birth Control Rules (Dogs), 2001 [ABC Rules], every civic body has the responsibility of taking strays, neutering them and most importantly, putting the strays back to where they came from. But Ahmedabad MC had no plans for sterilisation till as late as 2011. “The municipal authorities would catch strays and without sterilising them, dump them at the Pirana landfill. The hazardous environment in a landfill is no place for any living being to stay. Also since dogs survive in packs, any new entrants would immediately be outcast and hurt very badly by existing packs,” explains Shah.

“According to ABC rules, local bodies are supposed to announce that they’re catching strays for sterilisation and keep records of the number of strays being taken from the communities. None of this used to take place earlier,” she says. It was only when a din was raised by the local media that the Ahmedabad municipalities started conducting the sterilisation programme seriously. However, there is still no record of the number of dogs that have suffered as a result of dumping in Pirana landfills.

Incidents like this occur, along with institutionalised abuse like locking up pets in cages or leaving them tied up all their lives. When such abuse becomes institutionalised, there is always a victim like Shaktiman.

Sabeena Gadihoke, associate professor at the AJ Kidwai Mass Communication Research Centre, says, “The police ought to realise that having horses in situations like this serves no purpose. It should be obvious that animals can become vulnerable in such situations.”

When discussing animal rights and abuse, it becomes easy to look away from real achievements and breakthroughs in enforcing animal rights. Perhaps, the best example is that the organisation Wildlife SOS had with dancing bears in Bannerghatta, Karnataka. These bears had ropes tied through their noses and were forced to dance for long hours to the tune of the people from the economically backward Kalandar community. They suffered from dental problems, tuberculosis and other diseases. Wildlife SOS cared enough to emancipate these bears and rehabilitate everyone from the community to more humane trades in 2014.

In 2013, India became the first South Asian country to ban the testing of cosmetic ingredients on animals. The AWBI more than does its bit in enforcing animal rights by banning snake charming and promoting safe sterilisation programmes, stretching the meagre resources it gets for its annual budget from the government.

However, such incidents are like diamonds in the rough, few and far in between. It will take a long time for animal rights to be taken seriously in India.

It is said that German philosopher Nietzsche, responsible for influencing generations of philosophers and artists alike, had a mental breakdown when he saw a man flogging a horse in the city of Turin. Perhaps if he saw the condition of animals in India, he would have had an aneurysm.