Southern and Central Tamil Nadu, especially the districts of Madurai, Tiruchirappali, Puthukottai, Thanjavur, Tirunelveli and Tiruvarur are raging with anger over the ban on Jallikkattu, the centuries old sport of bull taming. The Supreme Court banned the sport in 2014 following complaints from animal welfare activists who claimed that the ritual was a cruelty perpetrated on the animals.
The Supreme Court order banning the Jallikkatu was delivered following the affidavits submitted by the then UPA Government led by Manmohan Singh. Though the Narendra Modi Government which took office in May 2014 tried to circumvent the Supreme Court ban by a special ordinance, the apex court shot it down and the ban is continuing.
Seeing the public resentment against the ban on Jallikkattu, the DMK and the Congress launched a massive agitation on Tuesday at Alanganallur in Madurai, considered as the hub of the bull taming. Thousands of people participated in the event as Stalin, who is expected to be elevated as the working president of the DMK on January 4, declared that had the DMK been ruling Tamil Nadu, Jallikkattu would have been held with fervour. Stalin and leaders of the Congress blamed the BJP Government at the Centre for the ban on Jallikkattu.
But H Raja, the national secretary of the BJP pointed out that the entire blame for the ban on Jallikkaatu lie at the doorsteps of the DMK and the Congress. “It was the UPA Government in which the DMK was a major alliance partner which submitted a report to the Supreme Court demanding a ban on Jallikkaatu. Had they not included the bulls in the list of animals which they described as endangered species, the court would not have banned the sporting event,” said Raja, himself a Jallikkatu fan.
leaders of the farming community in Tamil Nadu suspect that the ban on Jallikkattu is a fallout of the deep rooted conspiracy by international agencies who are out to finish off some of the rare native bull breeds. “Each Jallikkaatu bull is like a member of the family. No cruelty is perpetrated on them during the taming as alleged by the animal lovers. In fact the possession of a pair of Jallikkattu bulls is a status symbol in the villages,” said RV Giri, president, Consortium of Indian Farmers Association (CIFA).
Kattumannarkoil Kannan, general secretary, Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association, said the ban on Jallikkaattu was the biggest cruelty perpetrated on the animals. “There is no record of any bulls getting wounded or killed during Jalikkattu. It is the tamers who get injured or at times get killed during the sport. There is a wrong notion that the Jallikkattu is similar to the Spanish bull fight,” said Kannan.
But the findings of Vedic Science Research Centre based in Chennai are startling. “The main players in the conspiracy to get jallikkattu banned are Animal Welfare Board of India and PETA. These are the same organisations which went to the court and got orders to wind up the native dog breeding centre at Chennai which has led to the native Indian breeds like Kanni, Kombai and Chippipparai becoming almost extinct. But these organisations are silent over the dog shows featuring imported breeds. They also approached the court to get a ban on elephants in temples. Their motives are suspect and malicious,” said Gautam Ramakrishnan, director, VSRC.