The Supreme Court's judgement on Jallikattu has extended the frontiers of animal welfare jurisprudence. It is a landmark verdict
On May 7, Justices KS Radhakrishnan and Pinaki Chandra Ghose of the Supreme Court delivered a judgement which will go down as a landmark in the history of animal welfare jurisprudence. Its operative part consists of the banning of the sadistic and perverse events that go under the name of Jallikattu, the pronouncement of the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act, 2009, as being constitutionally void, the annulment of the Tamil Nadu High Court's order of March 9, 2007, on Jallikattu, upholding the Bombay High Court's order of March 12, 2012, upholding the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest's order of July 11, 2011, specifically including bulls among animals whose exhibition or training as performing animals was banned, and the Maharashtra Government's corrigendum of August 24, 2011, prohibiting all bullock-cart races, games and exhibitions involving bulls and their training for these.
Jallikattu, which is supposed to be a sport in which men exhibit their valour and masculinity by grappling with and subduing bulls, is actually a celebration of savagery worse than bull-fighting in Spain. The latter, in which a single, sword-wielding matador is pitted against a single bull, is cruel in itself and encourages cruelty. In Jallikattu, bulls suffer the utmost cruelty as they are kept herded together for hours without adequate food and water and beaten and tormented in various ways — chilli powder put in the eyes, liquor forced down their throats, for example — to provoke fear which turns into aggression, and, finally, are chased by mobs of hundreds, hitting and stabbing them and twisting their tails and jeering loudly, as they run in terror. All bulls involved suffer the most horrific stress and mental agony. Many are seriously injured; some die.
Jallikattu is an exercise in sadism that not only causes intense suffering and trauma to the bulls but dehumanises the participants by habituating them to the infliction of pain, and desensitises the spectators to cruelty. Similar process are involved in bullock-cart racing and its several variants in Maharashtra. The Supreme Court of India has earned the profound gratitude of sensitive and compassionate persons all over the world by banning Jallikattu and upholding the prohibition of bullock-cart racing and associated activities.
What makes it very special, and of a rare kind, is the approach it brings to the issue of animal rights. This is manifest in its very second paragraph where it states, “We are, in these cases, concerned with an issue of seminal importance with regard to the Rights of Animals under our Constitution, laws, culture, tradition, religion and ethology, which we have to examine, in connection with the conduct of Jallikattu, bullock-cart races etc in the States of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.”
While the expression “of seminal importance” is itself a measure of the court's awareness of the importance of being sensitive to the suffering of all sentient beings, the judgement extends the frontiers of the global discourse on the place of all living beings on earth and whether and to what extent the rights of humans can override those of non-humans. In the process, it displays rare acquaintance with the underlying moral/philosophical concepts including that of “speciesism” first outlined by Jack Ryder in his 1970 pamphlet of the same name. In it, the author has strongly criticised the contemporary moral position excluding all non-human beings from the morality-based protection granted to human beings and implied that the membership of the category Homo sapiens is the critical criterion entitling humans to protection depriving animals of it.
This is just one example. The judgement's enormous scope and significance cannot be elaborated in one article — or perhaps in several. It has to be read and re-read, not just by animal lovers but all individuals who care.