Rescued Animals (Published on a Local Daily on 4.7.2005)

It was with much fanfair in 2000 that display of animals in Circus was banned in India. But now a recent news report says that the "rescued" animals lay neglected and sick at a place called Dankuni, close to Kolkata. This has been published in a regional language press in Kolkata. The point of this blog is that English language print media is unlikely to publish this story.

However, the Hindustan Times has recently published an editorial that criticises animal rights activists, who were protesting in Assam against the animal sacrifice by the Royal Family of Nepal in a local temple. The editorial questions the public silence in the recent legal controversy regarding a woman in Utter Pradesh, who was raped by her father-in-law and barred by religious leaders from living with his husbands, as they considered her marriage has been rendered 'polluted'. The controversy has been published and written about in print media a lot, and if one has access to the internet, I believe one can find quite a diskful about this if one cares to search. That is not my point. There should have been a general univocal protest from urban educated India, which was conspicuous by its absence. It is that the editorial had pointed out. While it was safer to raise one's voice against animal rights violations, violation in the midst of rational animals is always sidestepped.