"We will pose as protectors of the cow, and quarrel with Mussalmans in her sacred name, the net result being that her last condition is worse than the first,"[1] laments the faithful accuser on Mr. Gandhi's staff, and again:
[1. May 6, 1926, V. G. Desai, p. 167.]
"In spite of our boasted spirituality, we are still sadly backward in point of humanity and kindness to the lower animals."[2]
[2. August 26, 1926, p. 303.]
Legislation for the prevention of cruelty to animals was enacted in the early years of Crown rule in India. But such legislation, anywhere, must rest for effectiveness on public opinion, and the opinion of Mr. Gandhi's paper is, in this matter, as a voice crying in the wilderness, awakening but the faintest of echoes. If the people feel no compassion; if the police, themselves drawn from the people, privately consider the law a silly, perhaps an irreligious law, whose greatest virtue lies in the chance it gives them to fill their pockets; and if little or no leaven of another sentiment exists in the higher classes, Government's purpose, as far as it means immediate relief, is handicapped indeed.
Laws in India for the prevention of cruelty to animals have uniformly originated as Government bills. Whether of the Central or of the Provincial Adminis-trations, measures for the protection of animals frort. cruelty have been passed over the indifference, if not over the pronounced hostility, of the Indian representation.
Thus, a bill to limit the driving of water buffaloes, heavily laden, through the hottest hours of the day in the midst of the hottest season of the year, was introduced in the Bengal Legislative Council by Government, on March 16, 1926. In the streets of Calcutta the sufferings of buffaloes so driven had long been, to Western susceptibilities, a public scandal. But this proposal for the animals' relief was finally enacted into law despite the resistance of the leading Indian merchants, who saw in it merely a sentimentality inconvenient to their trade.
The practice of <>i>phúká, the deliberate daily torture of the cow in order that the worth of a few more pennies may be wrung from her pain, has been forbidden and heavily penalized by the Governor-General-in-Council and by successive provincial laws. Mr. Gandhi finds room, in the columns of Young India,[3] to print an Englishman's protest against phúká. But if any mass of Hindu feeling exists against it, the vitality of that feeling is insufficient to bring it forth into deeds.
[3. May 13, 1926, p. 174.]
In 1926, the Government of Bombay Presidency introduced in the Bombay Legislative Council a measure[4] amending the Police Act of the City of Bombay so that police officers should have power to kill any animal found in such a condition, whether from hurt or from disease, that it would be sheer cruelty to attempt to remove it to a dispensary. In order to safeguard the owner's interests in the matter, the amendment further provided that, if the owner is absent, or if he refuses to consent to the destruction of the suffering animal, the police officer must secure, before he can proceed under the law, a certificate from one of several veterinarians whom the Governor-in-Council should appoint.
[4. Bill No. V of 1926, "A Bill Further to Amend the City of Bombay Police Act, 1902."]
No small part of the necessity for a law such as this would arise from the Indians' habit, already described, of turning diseased and dying cows, and calves that he is in process of starving to death, into the streets to wander until they die what he calls "a natural death." As their strength fails, they become less and less able to guide their movements, and, in the end, are often caught and crushed by some vehicle against whose wheels they fall.
The debates evoked by the Bombay Government's proposal of relief throw so much general light on Indian modes of thought that their quotations at some length may be justified. On the introduction of the measure, a Hindu member, Mr. S. S. Dev, came at once to his feet with:[5]
[5. Bombay Legislative Council Debates, Official Report, 1926, Vol. XVII, Part VII, pp. 579-80.]
The principle of the bill is revolting to an Indian mind...If you will not shoot a man in similar circumstances, how can you shoot an animal, in the name of preventing cruelty to animals?...Further, the bill, if it becomes law, may in actual operation give rise to fracas in public streets.
Then follows Mr. Pahalajani, of Western Sind. Says he:[6]
[6. Ibid., 580.]
This section makes no exception whatever whether the animal is a cow or a horse or a dog. The policeman with the certificate of the veterinary practitioner can destroy any animal. The official [British] members of the Council ought to know--some of them have remained here for over 30 years--that no Hindu would allow a cow to be destroyed in whatsoever condition it is. There are pinjrapoles[7] in which the worst diseased animals are nursed and fed...[This measure] proceeds on the assumption that animals have no soul, and they deserve to be shot if they are not in a condition to live. The Hindu idea of soul is quite different from that held by Westerners...A measure of this kind would wound the religious susceptibilities of Hindus.
[7. Animal asylums, later to be described.]
To this declaration Mr. Montgomerie, Secretary to Government, responds, with a picture from the daily life of the city:[8]
[8. Bombay Legislative Council Debates, p. 581.]
I can hardly think that the honourable member means what he says. Is it a decent sight to see some poor animal disembowelled, legs broken and bleeding, in the streets of Bombay? The only humane thing...is to put the beast out of misery. It is inhumanity to allow this animal to suffer and remove it with the probability that it may break to pieces while being so moved.
But Hindu after Hindu decries the measure, and on grounds of offended sentiment alone, save that one of their number, Mr. Soman, takes thought that a question of expense is involved. For the bill empowers Government to appoint a few area veterinarians, to be locally handy to the police. This charge upon public funds, Mr. Soman feels, goes beyond any suffering animal's proper claim. As he puts it:[9]
[9. Bombay Legislative Council Debates, March 2, 1926, p. 583.]
If any generous minded practitioners come forward to help the police officers, so much the better. But if any new posts are to be created, which are to be maintained at public expense, I would like certainly to oppose the bill.
And the debate, for the day, closes on the note of fate. Says Rao Sahib D. P. Desai, member from Kaira.[10]
[10. Ibid., p. 585.]
All the trouble arises from having two conflicting ideals of mercy. The f ramers of the bill think that shooting an animal which is diseased and which could not be cured is much better. We on the other hand think that God himself has ordained what is to come about.
On the resumption of the reading of the bill, over three months later,[11] the Honorable Mr. Hotson, Chief Secretary to Government, assumes the labor of trying to win Indian support. He pleads:[12]
[11. July 26, 1926.]
[12. Bombay Legislative Council Debates, Vol. XVIII, Part I, pp. 70-1.]
The one object of this bill is to make it possible to deal with injured animals which are lying in the street or in any other public place in a state of suffering and pain, for which there is no relief for them. It is open to the owners of such animals to remove them, [or] to have them taken away by other charitable persons to a pinjrapole or to any other place where animals are received and cared for. It is only in cases where the animal is neglected in its misery, where, as things are now, the animal has to lie in the public streets of Bombay for many hours, perhaps until death brings relief, that the power...will be exercised. That such an animal should be in such a condition in a public place where there are many passers-by in a great city like Bombay...causes pain to observers of all classes and it is desirable not only that the animal should be relieved...but that the feelings of the passers-by should be saved from the extreme discomfort caused by such sights. That is all that this bill seeks to attain.
But the Hindu position remains unshaken. The old arguments[13] come forward until, presently, they arouse the Honorable All Mahomed Khan Dehlavi, Muham-madan, Minister of Agriculture in the Bombay Government. Says he, expressing himself as "rather anxious in the interests of agriculturists":[14]
[13. Ibid., pp. 72-3.]
[14. Ibid., p. 73.]
It was argued at the last session that every animal having a soul should not be destroyed. I have been tackled severely in this House by honourable members on the opposite benches for not taking sufficient precaution and for not spending sufficient money to kill elephants, [wild] pigs and rats in the interests of agriculturists. And if this is a question of killing a soul, I think an elephant has a bigger soul than a pig, and the latter a bigger soul than a rat. If that principle were applied to the agricultural department, I shall be asked to stop killing the animals I have mentioned. The result will be that the agriculturists in the country will suffer very much. I say, Sir, there is absolutely no difference at all between the case of an animal in the streets of cities like Bombay, or in the jungles or fields in the country outside.
The concern of the Minister of Agriculture for the cultivators, his special charges, again uncovers the usual attitude of the Indian politician toward that body of humanity which constitutes over 72 per cent, of the people of India. Says Rao Sahib D. P. Desai, frankly tossing off their case:[15]
[15. Bombay Legislative Council Debates, p. 76.]
The agriculturists should not be taken as the whole of Indian society...But even if the agriculturist thinks that it is desirable that any animals that are dangerous to agriculture should be destroyed, it should not be taken that the whole Hindu society agrees with that view of the agriculturists, and I think that no weight should be given such views in this House.
Out of the remainder of the day's debate emerge much sterile criticism and accusation of Government's effort and no fresh thought excepting that of the old Muhammadan member from the Central Division, Moulvi Rafiuddin Ahmad, who counsels, Nestor-wise:[16]
[16. Ibid., pp. 77-8.]
It is not the intention in the remotest degree of the Government to injure the susceptibilities of any classes of His Majesty's subjects in India...If [anything] can be done by any other means than by the provisions of this bill, I think Government will be only too pleased to adopt them, and as far as I know--and I have been in this house long enough--there has never been any question of sentiment which Government have not taken into consideration, and I do admire them for that...In this House Hindus and Muhamma-dans have joined to oppose Government if in any remote degree they thought that Government were mistaken and on many occasions Government have conceded...It is no use coming here with empty heads, there must be some suggestions offered, it is easy to criticise, but it is at the same time our duty also to suggest better measures. I appeal to all those persons that have raised objections...Government is quite open to reason.
"Are you authorized to speak on behalf of Government?" a Hindu hotly interrupts.
"I am authorized to speak on behalf of every person with whom this Council is concerned. I do say this, this objection is altogether unreasonable," the other returns.
But his appeal wins no response. On the contrary, a Hindu member grimly suggests that if by chance a Muhammadan were to be appointed veterinary and were to approve the killing of a sick cow, the peace of the city as between Hindus and Muhammadans would go up in smoke.
And the discussion ends by the referring of the bill to a select committee of the House, composed of nine Indians--Hindu, Muhammadan, and Parsi, and of two Britons.
In the second reading of this bill,[17] we find the Chief Secretary of Government, Mr. Hotson, presenting the select committee's report with the comment that the committee "has gone so far m the desire to avoid giving offense to any of our brethren" that the usefulness of the bill has been impaired--a mild and diplomatic phrasing of the emasculation that has taken place.
[17. August 5, 1926.]
Cows and bulls are now excepted from the proposed law, and temple precincts are put beyond its reach; anything may happen there. Yet, without a single constructive proposal of any sort, the Hindu opposition keeps up. Members urge that legislation be delayed if not abandoned, that Government are indiscreet in urging any action; that "the agonies of the animals" are not so great that sympathy need pass the point of theory; that, in any event, Hindu policemen should be exempt from the duty of shooting animals, since to do so is contrary to their religion; that to avoid invidious distinctions Muhammadan officers may likewise claim exemption; that, because Indian officers bungle with firearms, British police sergeants "whose marksmanship is perfect" be charged with the duty. Says Mr. Surve, Hindu member from Bombay City, advocating the last suggestion:
"To kill a disabled animal which is just about to die, that kind of butchery we are incapable of...that is not our chivalry."[18]
[18. Bombay Legislative Council Debates, August S 1926, p. 716.]
So failed, for this time at least. Government's attempt to defend the cow from her worshipers. With its intended chief beneficiary left out, the bill passed. Yet, Government's argument, so patiently and courteously pursued, did, as it continued, educe a certain amount of Indian support. And in view of the fact that the principle involved is a complete exotic in minds committed to the expiatory journey of the soul, each bit of ground so gained speaks of reward, however distant.
It was in 1890 that the Governor-General-in-CounciJ passed the Act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, of which Act the fifth section prohibited the killing of any animal in an unnecessarily cruel manner. In 1917 it was found necessary to clarify the intentions of Section V, expressly directing it upon persons cruelly killing a goat, or having in their possession the skin of a goat so killed. Provincial Governments have enacted the same laws. And yet the offense against which these measures are aimed continues in the land.
It is the skinning of goats alive.
The skin stripped from a living goat can be stretched a little larger, and therefore brings a little higher price, than one removed after killing.
It will scarcely be necessary to amplify this point. In the Province of Behar and Orissa in the year 1925, thirty-four cases of the flaying alive of goats were brought to court by the police. But light fines, meted out by Indian judges whose sentiment is not shocked, are soon worked off in the extra price fetched by the next batch of flayed-alive skins. The risk of prosecution is small; and "there is every reason," concludes the Provincial Police Administration report, "to suppose that the number of reported cases is no criterion of the prevalence of this outrage." Many skins so stripped have been shipped to America.
Britain, by example and by teaching, has been working for nearly three-quarters of a century to implant her own ideas of mercy on an alien soil. In this and in uncounted other directions she might perhaps have produced more visible results, in her areas of direct contact, by the use of force. But her administrative theory has been that small constructive value lies in the use of force to bring about surface compliance where the underlying principle is not yet grasped. And, given a people still barbarian in their handling of their own I women, it is scarcely to be expected that they should yet have taken on a mentality responsive to the appeal of dumb creatures.
Unhappily for the helpless animal world, Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is, under the current Indi-anization movement, a "transferred subject" of Government. That is to say: in each province working the "Reforms" the administration of this branch has been transferred by the British Parliament into the hands of an Indian minister. Dumb creation pays with its body the costs of the experiment.