Animals and us

P Lankesh Series

Animals and Us

Even a tender emotion like love loses life when institutionalized. So does sympathy.

The so called animal lovers’ society can be an example for this. Newspapers have carried young children carrying dogs, cats and rabbits to the pet show. We all saw pictures of cute children and cuter pets.

But these societies getting to the street to save street dogs or old cows is a different story. It sounds ridiculous.

We have to realize that professional hunters turning relentless animal welfare activists is among the biggest ironies in the world. Legendary hunters have saved thousands of tigers, lions, deers and other wild animals by their activism. These were the people who went round jungles, looking for prey. They hunted down wild life, or fought hard to save themselves after being attacked by them. Such romantic adventures taught them lessons for life. They fell in love with the animals and became their biggest protectors. One such hunter was an American. He had spent a long time hunting. Some politicians ridiculed him over a hunter being a animal lover. He responded by telling riveting tales of hunting and his relations with animals.

Associations of people who love animals or those who are afraid of them can never be protectors of animals as they don’t have any organic relationship with any such creatures.

Equally weird are the stories of those who gave up non vegetarian food. A family that I knew well, kept a lamb. The young boy and girl of the house loved it. Like an infant, the cute lamb jumped all over the house, entertaining them. It slept on their lap and they played with it. Love made him grow up to be a fat, fluffy sheep. The parents were in a fix. They felt that it would become difficult to sell it if its relation with the children went on like this. They tried to separate the children from it. Smelling this, the children kept clinging to the animal even more.

The parents sold it when the children were asleep. The daughter collapsed when she realized what had happened. She kept sobbing for a week. Even the boy felt the same. Rarely he ate meet. But the girl gave up meat altogether. On days when meat was cooked, she would stay away from the kitchen, depressed.

I have several similar stories. Shantaveri Gopala Gowda, senior socialist leader, had a reason for giving up chicken. In his childhood one day, he went to the kitchen where his mother was planning for a chicken dish. The bird was shrieking furiously, in anticipation of his fate. Ignoring the bird’s pleas, his mother slit his throat. While the head fell on the floor, gasping for breath, the torso ricocheted around the kitchen, splashing blood all over. Gopala Gowda was struck with fear and sympathy for the bird and scarred for life. He never ate meat. But he never told other meat eaters not to do so. But once he told this story of the chicken in the kitchen.

Insulting those who eat things that we don’t, or looking down on non vegetarians is in bad taste. I feel it is rude and barbaric.

The world’s 90 per cent population is non vegetarian. Eating meat is routine for a lot of them, while for some others it is occasional. Meat is a huge industry the world over. Cow, pigs, fish, and chicken are grown only for their meat. New varieties have been developed for this.

But then, red meat has been proven to be unhealthy for humans. Except fish and chicken, most meat is red. The share of fat and nutrients in that is very high. Meat eaters are likely to suffer from high cholesterol content. It is well known that N. T Rama Rao, (former Chief Minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh) was a voracious white meat eater- he ate a whole chicken every morning. He ended up having a by pass surgery. 

The psychological and economic face of meat is weird. Killing is easy for those who are habituated to killing animals that you have reared or those who have grown up with you. People who have made killing and eating meat a part of their life tend to be oblivious to the difference between violence and non violence.

All these are my personal opinions. But look at its economic side. You need 40 kilograms of grain to prepare one kilogram of a cow or a pig meat. But meat is not 40 times more nutrient than grain. So, grain is wasted in the making of meat. It is estimated that we can feed ten times the world population if all the food were to be non- meat. Vegetarian food has to gain popularity if we are to feed the increasing population. If India has to be free of hunger- even in the next 50 years, - the only solution seems to be vegetarianism. Vegetarianism is good for health too.

Gandhiji himself said that it is better to cull cows than feed the old, non reproductive ones. The same can be said about street dogs. As I said earlier in this column, Bhutan has as many dogs as there are people. Street dogs, sick dogs and mad dogs roam the streets and highways there. Guess why- the Buddhists there are votaries of non –violence !

-        Mareyuva Munna (Before we forget) Series

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