When people were restricted to their homes since March 25th, I thought it would be an opportunity for everyone to discover the best of themselves: they would read books, cultivate pot plants, play cards with the family, laugh a lot, breathe better air, play with their children and animals, feed the homeless, both animals and people, write jokes on Facebook, catch up on homework, learn cooking, play music etc.
This didn’t happen. Just as people in jail become vicious and want to hurt each other, many became as mean as jail birds – especially those that, like jail wardens, had the power of their little kingdoms of villages and communities. It’s as if we were in a sci-fi movie and the monsters had taken over. The heads of so-called “resident welfare committees” actually broke into people’s flats if they had animals. I had to rescue a boy, who fed cats in Mumbai, and sent his attackers to jail. And he is one of the several thousands who became victims simply because they had a gentle compassionate side.
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These “elected” heads ran vicious campaigns on their local Facebook pages, threatening to beat feeders. They locked gates and ordered guards to beat the animals inside the compounds, even though these animals are protected by Supreme Court orders. They refused to let feeders out, even though they went out on their own will. They threatened to cancel the leases of tenants who fed animals. They mischievously placed poison for birds and animals. In Kirti Nagar, built for middle-level bureaucrats, one deputy secretary chased a 16-year-old girl and her mother, calling them whores. One locked the gates at night after a feeder, who wanted to avoid human contact, had left to give the strays their first meal of the day. She spent the night on the road. One guard has beaten an already paralysed dog in Saidham building in Kandivli. In Mandsaur, the municipal employees, in full view of the public, beat a dog to death with lathis because his owner was suspected of corona.
One high court judge in Delhi took his dog out for a walk every day. He refused to wear a mask. He came across a person feeding monkeys with a legal pass from the police. He threatened to slap him and was filmed. He then rang up the police commissioner and had the feeder’s pass cancelled. I had it restored. People who had lived as good neighbours for years made up stories about being bitten by the dogs their neighbours fed. Some groups went and spat in front of animal owners. One temple priest in Ludhiana attacked an old lady with his idol’s “bhala” for feeding dogs near his temple. Another well-known priest, of a major government-run temple in Guwahati, was caught selling donated cows to a Meghalaya butcher gang.
A bus driver ran over a pregnant dog repeatedly till she was mashed into the ground and her babies in bits. Someone in Thane took a cricket bat and killed a mother of six puppies. One person threw his family dog from the 9th storey. People threw stones at street animal feeders. A man and his three sons newly moved into Betim, Goa, took lathis and beat up a local old couple that had been feeding the dogs for 30 years.
The police told me that every second call they received during this time was either people complaining about dog feeders, or from people who were being attacked for feeding dogs. I alone must have sorted out about 7,000 or more quarrels. World War 3 has been raging for the last one month and, as time goes on, it will get much worse. One of the problems is that the police don’t want to take action on anyone except counseling them. They have been asked by the “higher” authorities to show zero crime figures. Which means that this is a good time for all to indulge in crime. Those who have the courage can murder humans, those that have less courage can murder animals. You can steal and rape – but India has officially no crime.
Some 90 per cent of this viciousness is aimed at women. They are the caretakers, they are the feeders. They are the ones who have embraced all life. And they are the ones who are being attacked. An hour ago, I got a call from a man who had been sent a legal notice by us to desist from hounding a woman feeder in a building. He said she had put all their lives in danger by going out. Notably, none of these incidents has a single Muslim in it. Even those Hindus, who say the loudest prayers, were among the meanest.
To join the animal welfare movement, contact gandhim@nic.in, www.peopleforanimalsindia.org.
