Death of Compassion

LAST WEEK WAS a terrible time for India’s humaneness, our humanity, and the way we have always been treating animals. What we heard from the Supreme Court was a travesty of justice.

It is no one’s argument that our streets need to be safe, our children need to be protected, our senior citizens, or any citizen for that matter, must be safe from any attacks whatsoever. But herein lies the paradox.

For some strange reason, the narrative that was being played out was that dog lovers are on one side and human being lovers (if one can call them that) are on the other, and nothing can be further from the truth.

Embedded in all human beings is humanity. Embedded in them is care for society, and society is not made up only of human beings. It includes the entire ecosystem—the way we venerate holy cows, monkeys and birds, the way we look after parrots and cats at home. It is a sum of everything. Many of the gods we worship have had a lovely relationship with animals—and this is across religions.

The moment you mention this, the argument that will be presented is that this is about strays. But how did the population of strays increase? Because of inept government bodies.

To then suddenly have the Supreme Court order the immediate removal of stray dogs from our cities to shelters where none exists was something that smacked of either ignorance or a lack of empathy. And the reason I say this is because we have seen how administrations in India work. They never have a strategy in mind.

I’m surprised that the Supreme Court did not take into account the fact that every year a large sum of money is apportioned for dogs to be sterilised and neutered.

The court did not take into account that there are many communities, including resident welfare associations, which are currently looking after dogs that inhabit their communities. The court did not take into account the fact that most of these dogs have been adopted by locals.

Yes, there are strays who have no home, but then these could be well looked after if one had made an announcement, as I would have imagined the Supreme Court should have, where it would have issued the following:

.A timeline. Let’s imagine the Supreme Court said, “Within three months from the date of that order, all strays either need to be adopted or moved to shelters which are managed and audited by dog experts so that their condition is validated and ratified.”

.If the Supreme Court had then asked for a committee of experts, rather than just mentioning NGOs and activists and ruling them out from even the courtroom: if they had asked these experts to suggest an alternate way of creating a safer environment.

.And the Supreme Court, to my mind, should have then decided what the best avenue would be.

There are enough examples of cities being stray dog-free. Goa is a brilliant example of the sterilisation drive that the state government took way back in 2021, and therefore has a smaller population of strays today than it did before.

Add to that the enormous confusion that you create because no municipal body in India today has that expertise, and it is unfair to expect the municipal bodies also, or the politicians who administer or rule them to be able to come up with a solution, because some of these politicians have no clue either.

And one last thing: you can love strays and love human beings at the same time; so to make this exclusively mutual in a trite argument is as petty as you can get.

animal loverscompassionIndian societymenacestray dogsStreet dogsSupreme Court