BLOOD ON OUR HANDS

January 14 to 31st is celebrated as Animal Welfare Fortnight ever year. Two weeks in the year in which animal rescue workers and animal welfare organisations try to awaken within the public conscience all the many known and unknown ways in which we inflict abuse and cruelty upon innocent animals.

Most acts of obvious cruelty against animals can be argued away as having a noble human benefit as the outcome. Take meat eating for example. Slaughter is a plainly cruel act, but the end objective is noble - food. It's the manner of slaughter that really differentiates the beast with the axe from the beast under it.

Animal husbandry laws require the final act of slaughter to be made as painless to the animal as possible, both physically and emotionally. Prior stunning, not killing one animal within sight of another, considerate rather than considerable restraint - but who really cares about all these? We dig in to that delicious tangdi kabab, and the succulent leitao, eyes and ears shut to the inhuman (and often unnecessarily cruel) treatment meted out to the creature not just at its killing, but also in the way it is transported to its death. Trussed up upside down on cycle handles, or tossed carelessly over a motorbike pillion with feet tied up much too tight. Thirsty and unfed, beaten and pushed and made to walk miles after miles in the sun, chilli powder in the eyes, tails pulled and broken in order to be goaded into walking slogged and flogged to their death- almost all the beef or mutton we eat has been some poor creature's arduous journey from Jerusalem to Calvary. Take away the cross, and we worship one but feast on the other. Jesus' suffering had a purpose and a meaning - the poor animal's has neither, and worse, it has no power or voice to protest either.

Using animals in medical experiments and for developing vaccines is another example. Again, the end objective is noble - aiding the discovery or manufacture of life saving substances. Here too, laws exist to ensure the least amount of trauma to the animal. These cover proper housing and feeding, using only as many animals, and as often, as absolutely necessary, replacing a live animal with a dead one or any other feasible alternative wherever possible. Indeed, India has better laws in this area than most countries. But that didn't stop a renowned institute like Haffkines from bleeding pregnant mares for the anti venom to the point of comatose.

Large research laboratories connected with the pharmaceutical companies usually comply with the law, they have too much at stake if they don't. The miscreants are our everyday college kids in science and medical institutes. The pressure to submit a thesis here and a paper there, on meager budgets, with improper supervision, and careless professorial guidance - who can blame them if they cut up a few thousand mice now and a hundred monkeys then to present a theory without a past, present or future? Especially if the system actively encourages this laziness of thought and suspension of conscience.

A debatably less noble reason to exploit animals is in the name of entertainment - sometimes for education. As children, who can argue against the fact that it was the annual trip to the circus or the zoo, and films like "Born Free", "King Elephant" and the original "Dr Doolittle" that brought the fascinating world of animals to us in a larger than life way? We did not know anything about the behind-the-scenes truth, the unnaturalness of the entire experience for the creatures that we went home to fantasise about. Though activists now fight hard to keep wild animals out of the circus, improve the living conditions in zoos, and enforce cruelty prevention laws when animals are used in movies and commercials, there is still a long way to go. Take a short detour the next time you visit the Borivili National Park, to the area at the back where they keep about twenty very old blind and toothless lions rescued from circuses. A heartbreaking sight, and a very far cry from Elsa.

Do you think all of this is a big fuss over nothing? Just some animal activists raising uncomfortable issues too close to home, when there are so many more important things to be concerned about - look, there's a terrorist lurking in the corner!

May be you're right, but then for you I have this little story.

"Hitlers soldiers came and they took away all the Jews and I did nothing. They then came and took away the gypsies and I did nothing. The homosexuals went next and still I did nothing. The soldiers then took away all the intelligensia and still I did nothing. They then came for the crippled and the infirm and still I did nothing. Finally, the soldiers came for me and there was no one left to do anything for me."