Dogs’ own country

Had the simian known that Maneka was going to be an honourable minister -- not once but twice --, it would have probably behaved with greater grace than violently scratching her. But in fits of rage, humans and simians are prone to do such things that defy the protocols of reason.

Wondering, who the simian in question is? Well, s/he was the one about whom you read in the gossip column of a famous English weekly many years back. As per the tidbit, s/he was an occupant in the private zoo of a rich Indian businessman who once had the honour of receiving Maneka at his home. As it happens during celebrity visits, she was taken on a tour around the swanky precincts of the house. When the yet to be minister’s honourable eyes lit upon the incarcerated creature, she was justifiably annoyed. How could a global champion of animal rights ever turn a blind eye towards the plight of a caged animal to whose ancestors we all trace our descent? She vented her fury at the owner of the house; marched straight to the cage; fiddled with the door-bolts and was just about to secure the release of the venerable monkey. But the simian chose to ignore her noble overtures and gave her nasty scratch. Poor Varun’s poor mom!!

The animal lovers who descended on Trivandrum, even from outside the state, to express solidarity with Kerala’s ever-expanding dog population were wise enough not to pluck a leaf out of Maneka’s diary. Had they chosen to befriend any of the stray dogs that litter capital’s dirty streets, and taken them to their protest venue before the secretariat, it would have been more than an aesthetic gesture. But you should not suspect their earnestness. One of the protesters who has trained herself to mellowly bark with a convent accent told the press corps how she had tried to locate and get hold of one, but had to eventually settle for a dummy (Remember, it is in a country where the annual count of dog bite victims is more than two hundred crores and the canine population is more than three crores that she couldn’t get hold of a real dog). Certainly there is no prize for trying to guess why the canines must have fled the capital that doggy day.

Indeed many of those eager champions of the canine right to live may not have read the daily press reports chronicling the traumatic experiences of dog-bite victims; or probably in their eagerness to uphold animal rights they must have chosen to ignore such issues of mere human interest. Otherwise, the mangled faces of those young victims should have melted the hearts of any metallic animal lovers. Because unlike the ultra-orthodox fringe that constitutes the other end of our zoophilic spectrum the people who assembled in Trivandrum were not dog lovers out of any religious compulsion. For them, it was only something to be flaunted like their custom-made cars and designer kids.

If it were the other fringe, they would have been as difficult to control as any rabid pack. We can thank God that this fringe has now turned quite bovine in everything except matters related to cows and bulls and have little time for dogs. Earlier, they had even championed the cause of rodents claiming them to be nothing less than the imperial vehicles (Rodent Royces) of the deity Ganesha. Such was their passion that when Gujarat was struck by a potential plague- something that probably presaged what was in store for the state- in mid 1990s this group simply refused to comply with official instructions to eliminate them. Their bovine sympathies were similarly on display when the British authorities ordered a massive culling of the cattle there following BSE. One of the gentle souls of the ultra-orthodox fringe then wanted India to step in and send freighters to ship those stricken beasts to our blessed shores.

Unlike these innocent folks our dog-lovers’ credo is less inspired by religiosity than vanity. The society would have tolerated this vanity, were it not accompanied by a proportionate contempt and superciliousness towards the common folk. They think that the common people whom they see through their car screens have less right to live peacefully in their midst than stray dogs. The irony is that though they clamour for street dogs, these mangy creatures are hardly welcome in their own premises, some of them guarded by sentries. Yes, many of them do keep dogs, but it is hardly the street variety, nor even any of the desi species. They are the exotic and expensive types handpicked from places equally exotic like Alsace or Hanoi. If only these wonderful souls could spare half the love and attention that they lavish on such VIDs from abroad, our dog population would not have been so badly off (Though late, the authorities should now swing themselves into action to make it mandatory for every dog lover of this country to adopt at least one dog each from of our teeming canine population).

But as JM Coetzee portrays it in his novel, Elizabeth Costello, fanatic animal lovers are largely immune to reason. Costello, the eponymous heroine of the novel, who divided her time between continents speechifying about the rights of animals, was once confronted by a member of the audience. The guy was visibly riled by the speaker’s analogy comparing slaughter houses to the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz. He asked her if taking any/every form of life were a crime, what had she to say about killing rats, mosquitoes, cockroaches, disease causing germs and other micro-organisms. Poor Costello- she was floored by this question. Our dog lovers, however, would have managed to outbark such objections; their policy is simple: let the dogs bite poor men and their kids: our caravan (read BMWs) will go ahead...

(Dr. Umer O Thasneem is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, University of Calicut. The views expressed here are personal. He can be contacted at uotasnm@yahoo.com)