We need to love animals first

There are news reports that go beyond the blood-curdling tingle they send down the spine, offering a window into the devilish manifestations of human rage.

Last week’s incident near Sahar International Airport where two youth allegedly decapitated 35 pigeons owned by a rival bird seller and splattered the road with blood exhibited human envy making victims of mute and helpless animals. It also pointed towards the heartlessness that coexists alongside kindness in Mumbai that prides itself on tolerance.  

Unsettling is the fact that an incident of much lesser proportion would have been dubbed a massacre and made for national upheaval. This, in contrast, was muted, with only a police case and some eyebrows being raised, and then, curtains. Why?

Merely because the pigeons guillotined were defenceless? Is this the tenderness of heart that we proclaim to possess?

Just as the incident evoked an eerie similitude to a ghastly sequence from Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather, it raises a greater concern: the intolerance of aam Mumbaikars towards animals and birds.  
I remember animal activist M Frida Hartley’s words: “From beasts we scorn as soulless/In forest, field and den/The cry goes up to witness/The soullessness of men.” It’s this “soullessness” that perturbs me. Are we losing our respect for life?

The occurrences are confounding. When a stray dog, Sheru, was hit in the 26/11 terrorists’ gunfire near CST, a photographer rushed the dog to an animal hospital in Parel. But again, a man was not allowed to take his sick pet dog in the lift at a posh housing society in Navi Mumbai because no one else could go when the dog travelled on the lift.

People in multi-storied buildings want to use lifts even for the first floor but they want the dogs with broken bones to walk up seven floors. If the fire brigade saves a kitten in distress, there are people who behead docile pigeons. Such aberration of behaviour hint at deteriorating tolerance levels in Mumbai, which is disturbing. 

Actually, cruelty to animals finds free expression as there are no laws to deter them. In the UK, for instance, cruelty to animals is a criminal offence for which one may be jailed for up to 51 weeks and may be fined up to £20,000. In India, and indeed in Mumbai, no one is bothered. Why should anyone be? They do not serve our rulers’ purpose. As American radio broadcaster Paul Harvey said, “Animals don’t vote.”

The IPC sections 428 and 429 which address the killing or maiming of an animal fall flat in the face of serious intent. A handful of animal rights activists and organisations keep the flicker of hope alive, but they are far from adequate.  

The spotlight is obviously on us. Making a law and using it are completely different. If you see an abused dog on the road, what difference does a law make if you don’t do anything about it? I am not an activist. All I am emphasising is we must learn to respect animal life just as we do human life; because, to maintain nature’s balance, both lives must coexist peacefully. The basis of which should be dictated by the golden rule: Treat them as we would wish them to treat us.