The Sunday
Times
Cruelty to animals
is rampant in India and the Subcontinent - the land that has for
thousands of years preached respect and compassion for all living
things, writes Stephen Prins
CRUELTY to animals – on the
Subcontinent, of all places – was highlighted recently in this
newspaper. Two stories with photographs demonstrated that Ahimsa,
which calls for compassion and respect for all living things, is
dead in the land of its origin. Dead, at least, with respect to the
communities referred to in the two news accounts.
The reports made hard reading.
One was about the deliberate and calculated suffering inflicted on
a goat by a crowd of religious zealots, who took turns savaging the
animal until they had drowned it. A couple of hundred men inflamed
with wild mob impulses pitting themselves against one animal – an
animal that gives life-supporting milk and finally its flesh for
consumption to the very men who made it suffer and who then killed
it.
The other was about the mass ritual
slaughter of thousands of buffalo.
Both atrocities conducted in the name of religion, in Nepal,
birthplace of Gautama Buddha.
Cruelty of this kind boggles the imagination.
Animal blood spilled by the gallon and left to soak into the
earth.
What makes the appalling cruelties still more unbelievable,
unacceptable and barbarous is that they take place on the very
ground that gave rise to great religions that condemn and abhor
cruelty to living things.
Ahimsa the concept took root in India a couple of thousand years
ago; it appears to have been uprooted and left by the wayside to
wither and crumble to dust.
What is Ahimsa?
It is an ancient religious-ethical concept that advocates
“non-violence.” The word is a Sanskrit-Pali term that means
“non-injury” or “compassion”: Sanskrit “hims” means “to strike,”
and “hims-a” means to cause injury. “A-himsa” is the opposite of
“hims-a” – non-violence.
Ahimsa is compassion in deed, word and
thought.
Barbarous thought, word and deed produced the appalling cruelties
perpetrated in Nepal.
Ahimsa is about causing no harm or injury to living beings, animals
included. It began with Jainism and was continued in Hinduism and
Buddhism.
There is a fine and comprehensive online
essay on AHIMSA, in Wikipedia, that covers the history and
evolution of Ahimsa and its multiple implications and applications.
“All living beings have the spark of divine spiritual energy;
therefore, to hurt another being is to hurt oneself,” the writer
says.
In modern times, Mahatma Gandhi was one
of the great advocates of Ahimsa. The concept was at the heart of
his “satyagraha” philosophy of non-violence as a way to bring about
change – change for the good.
Albert Schweitzer, the theologian, musician and medical missionary,
received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 for his philosophy of
“reverence for life”, based on the Jain principle of Ahimsa. “The
laying down of the commandment to not kill and to not damage is one
of the greatest events in the spiritual history of mankind,”
Schweitzer wrote.
The writer of this article grew up
Christian but learnt his Ahimsa from the Buddhist and Hindu people
he mixed with. The domestic helpers (“servants”, we used to call
them) taught him to respect life in its minutest forms.
Don’t tread on ants. Don’t squish caterpillars and millipedes.
Never strike a butterfly. You don’t have to kill centipedes, let
them go. Likewise with spiders. Look at the amazing webs they
weave. Avoid swatting flies. They have a purpose in life.
Cockroaches? They too have their purpose. And so it went, and so we
learnt to let living things live. We learnt to not inflict
ourselves on the natural living world.
Ahimsa practice, and a failure to
observe Ahimsa, is demonstrated in the daily life of this country.
Step into the street and look around you. You will see many acts of
kindness, such as the feeding of street dogs, but you will also see
lapses, which may be due to a lack of awareness, of education, of
sensitivity to our surroundings.
Ahimsa is leaving a bowl of water out
for street dogs that cannot say, “We are thirsty.”
Ahimsa is attending to a dog or a cat that cannot attend to itself.
Street dogs, like any pampered indoors pooch, also need medical
attention. They need anti-rabies shots and anti-mange treatment.
Their body sores need to be healed.
Ahimsa is not tying a dog on a leash so short the animal has hardly
room to turn to scratch its sides.
Ahimsa is ensuring that cattle marked
for slaughter suffer minimum trauma and pain when being led to
execution. Go look into the face of a cow or bull and gaze into the
liquid depths of its beautiful big, soulful eyes. Then carry out
the execution – if you really must. Ahimsa is allowing birds the
freedom of the air to which they were born; ahimsa is opening the
door of the birdcage and letting the bird or birds out.
Ahimsa is not confining our biggest and
most majestic animal, the elephant. Ahimsa is allowing elephants
the freedom to roam jungles among other elephants and wildlife and
live and enjoy a natural life. Ahimsa is not taking a baby
elephant from its mother and imprisoning it. Ahimsa is allowing the
animal to remain with its mother until it is old enough to move on.
Ahimsa is allowing young elephants the freedom to play with other
baby jumbos its age, letting them have fun, just as our 10-year-old
sons and daughters delight in cavorting together on the playing
field.
Ahimsa is not chaining an elephant by
one front leg and one back leg so as to completely immobilize it,
cramping its ability to move six inches left or right, or one step
forward, one step backward, to lean against a tree to scratch its
back when a skin itch is driving the animal to madness.
Ahimsa is also respect and love for the
environment.
Ahimsa is not about polluting rivers and streams and cutting down
trees that sustain the ecology.
Ahimsa is about saving this island from those who destroy its
forests, its shoreline, its natural greenery, its beauty.
Ahimsa can be as abundant as we wish to make it.