The innate savagery of humans far exceeds that of animals. The fact is that, of all living species, animals are far nobler and more compassionate toward the weak than humans have been
A recent report in The Pioneer about the “menace” stray dogs allegedly pose at Government hospitals in Delhi, quotes a doctor as saying, “They are a complete nuisance and especially when the area is a little empty. They crowd around ambulances and bark endlessly. This causes delay in the [sic] treatment as we are not able to take the patient inside immediately.” The report further quotes “a few attendants” staying in lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan Hospital at night, as saying that the dogs go rogue at night. “Patients who are waiting to get a room or get admitted are prone to infection as well because these dogs keep sniffing around. Even if we are lying on the floor, they disturb us.”
The report also quotes a security guard at lNJP Hospital’s gate as saying, “The number of dogs here is just increasing by the day. They don’t harm anyone but they are all over the place. At any given hour, you’ll find at least 20-30 dogs around tea stalls outside the hospital. Some even get into waiting lounges or the OPD because it is cooler. We scare them away but sometimes they go [and] hide in corners.”
Stray dogs are at a disadvantage here as they, unable to speak any human language, cannot narrate their side of the story. One wishes they could, given the lies, exaggerations and prejudice of which they are frequent victims. One also wishes one could have their version given the marked discrepancy between the version of the lNJP doctor who describes the dogs as “a complete nuisance” and that of attendants saying that they “go rogue” at night, on the one hand, and that of the lNJP security guard who said that the dogs “don’t harm anyone but they are all over the place”, on the other. Clearly, there are two views in the hospitals on the matter, which underlines the great and contentious global divide between dog-lovers and dog-haters.
The statement that the dogs go rogue at night typifies the ignorance and prejudices that dog-haters display. According to the Oxford Paperback Dictionary, the word “rogue” connotes “a wild animal driven away from the herd or living apart from it; a rogue elephant”. Surely, only an utterly ignorant person would use the word to describe dog behaviour, particularly since stray dogs are not considered wild animals. Besides, stray dogs live in packs, and alone only when they are in some way attached to a human family which it considers to be its pack. The report itself quotes GB Pant Hospital’s staff as saying earlier in the same paragraph that the stray dogs come in packs during the night. How can a dog in a pack be rogue, a loner by definitionIJ
The argument that the term “rogue” was used here in the same sense in which it is used in respect of humans, will also not wash. According to the Oxford Paperback Dictionary, “rogue” means, in the context of humans, “1. A dishonest or unprincipled person. 2. A mischievous person.” A dog can be mischievous but “dishonest” and “unprincipled”IJ loose and ignorant use of words is of a piece with the ignorance of stray dog haters in other areas as well and their (deliberateIJ) avoidance of some critical questions thrown up by the report.
According to the report, breaches in the compound walls facilitate the entry of stray dogs into the hospitals. Has deliberate destruction or flimsy construction and the use of substandard material, caused the breachesIJ Why are these not repaired immediatelyIJ Is it because they help clandestine entry and exitIJ Second, Guidelines for Dog Population Management, released by the World Health Organisation and the World Society for the Protection of Animals in 1990, which states that the animal birth control (ABC) programme for canines in the only effective method of controlling stray dog populations, also makes it clear that the ABC programmes needed to be backed by effective garbage disposal as stray dogs thrive on waste material. Does inadequate garbage disposal not attract stray dogs to hospitalIJ Are stray dogs being used to divert attention from the corruption, inefficiency, indiscipline and insanitary conditions prevailing at the hospitalsIJ
Ignorance is also reflected in the undertone of disapproval discernible in the reported statement that stray dogs taken away by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation are vaccinated and brought back after a few days. The fact is that under the Animal Birth Control (Dog) Rules, which, proclaimed under the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960, constitute the law of the land, stray dogs can be removed only for neutering and vaccination against rabies. Both done, they have to be brought back from where they had been lifted. Neutered dogs do not breed; vaccinated dogs would not infect anyone they bite with rabies. More important, dogs, which live in packs and are territorial, prevent dogs from outside — which can be unneutered and not immunised against rabies — from moving in. Their presence ensures that the thousands of people visiting hospitals daily, are unlikely to contract rabies even if bitten by dogs.
If anything, the hospital authorities should be grateful for the return of the dogs. That they are not, and are not even aware of why dogs are brought back, is in a great measure a result of their prejudice, against not only stray dogs but all animals. The fact is that animals are far nobler and more compassionate toward the weak of all living species, than humans. Referring to the conduct of animals in jungles, Jim Corbett writes in My India, “Had the Creator made the same law for men as He had made for the jungle folk, there would be no wars, for the strong in man would have the same consideration for the weak as is the established law of the jungle.” Eric Fromm, the path-breaking social psychologist writes in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, “If human aggression were more or less at the same level as that of other mammals — particularly that of our closest relative, the chimpanzee — human society would be rather peaceful and non-violent. But this is not so. Man’s history is a record of extraordinary destructiveness and cruelty, and human aggression, it seems, far surpasses that of man’s animal ancestors, and man is in contrast to most animals, a ‘killer’.”
Truer words have rarely been written.