Dawn
Of pet hate and pet love
JAWED NAQVI
2013-07-18 07:41:06
WHEN Hindutva’s virulent mascot Narendra Modi was cajoled by a journalist into describing the plight of Muslims on his watch with some sympathy he ended up likening them to an unlucky dog that came under his car’s wheels.
The pogrom of 2002, the state-sponsored massacre of Muslims, was thus turned into an accident. Muslims were mere ‘puppies’ that got in his way. He regretted that.
That Modi hates Muslims, particularly the Indian variety, should never be doubted. The only people he possibly loathes a little more are Hindus who have sympathy for Indian Muslims.
To him they are the men and women who threaten to stand between India’s hopes for the survival of its secular democracy and a full-blown corporate fascism, masquerading as Hindu nationalism, of which Modi is the current usher.
The Indian view about dogs varies by the cultural milieu and region. Fading movie star Dharmendra is best remembered for his loud threats to fix his quarries with the battlecry: Kutte, main tera khoon pee jaoonga. (You dog, I'll suck out your blood.) In certain tribal communities of northeastern India, dog meat is regarded as a delicacy. Muslims generally shun the animal as najis, or polluted. To liken the community to a dog is either insensitive or calculated contempt.
Since fascism inevitably has an economic worldview Modi’s culture of invectives hurled at perceived foes has to be seen minus the garble of sneers and bad blood.
Communal Muslims too sneer at Hindus, as we have seen the Owaisi family doing in Hyderabad. But neither their political prowess nor their economic clout, if any, enables the Muslims to even dream of capturing power in India, which is the first condition of unleashing fascist rule.
We all know that Modi has boundless support from leading business houses to stake a claim as India’s prime minister next year.
What is equally relevant to understand his dog analogy for Muslims, however, is a less discussed fact that flows from India’s pro-market economy — a market-driven love of pets.
The old-fashioned animal lovers that Indians always were — worshipping cows, monkeys, snakes, scorpions, rodents, deer, certain birds — have been swamped by a new class of urban animal lovers.
Unlike the Englishman though who walks his dog with affection and passion the Indian upstart gets his servants to jog the dogs. Their minions look after other pets too.
Anyone who has read or heard Zia Mohyeddin recite Ratan Nath Sarshar’s beautifully hilarious story of the Saf Shikan Batair, the nawab’s pet quail that fled the coop, would grasp the deep, even extreme, emotions that pets kindle in their owners. The nawab’s courtiers were trained to praise Saf Shikan to the skies.
Yet, there was marked ambivalence in the way India’s British rulers loved their dogs, for example. Indians and dogs not allowed was a notice that did justice to neither.
Mark how the British would often give the pets names after vanquished Indian heroes. The anti-colonial icon Tipu Sultan was so reviled by them that Tipu became the preferred name for their canine pets. Indians continued the tradition, mostly unthinkingly. The ambivalence towards pets is equally vivid in the new urban classes who form Modi’s mass base.
There will be valid exceptions to my saying so, but by and large the new pet-owning classes in India would seem to agree with Modi’s top-down economic worldview, his neo-liberal promise.
The means to get to the objective are of secondary importance though the urban classes would preferably want to get there without unnecessary bloodshed.
They don’t want stray puppies to be crushed by speeding cars. But if dogs and cats have to be sacrificed to widen the reach of automobiles on newly asphalted roads then so be it. Modi’s remarks of feigned sympathy for the bruised and battered Muslims were aimed at this mass base.
It may not be an unintended irony in India’s current political trajectory that a mother and child team of politicians who support Modi’s drive to capture power comprises former minister Maneka Gandhi, an animal rights advocate, and her son Varun Gandhi who is best known for his hateful speeches targeting Indian Muslims.
There is thus at least one clear nexus between the fading stars of India’s Muslims (as per the Sachar Committee’s report) and the rise of the pet care industry in India.
According to a research conducted by a consultancy firm in Ghaziabad there are about 2.2 million dogs in the Indian household with the population increasing by 26pc every year.
“Pets seem like perfect companions providing unconditional love and not expecting anything in return.
Pets are also considered as fashion accessories in celebrity culture.”
In a country where an overwhelming lives on less than a dollar a day, the cost of pedigreed dogs varies widely, from Rs5,000 to Rs75,000 and beyond, while winning a dog show increases their value manifold. You could give Prime Minister Manmohan Singh credit for the fact that pet insurance too is “slowly but surely catching up in India”.
A report observes that pet insurance schemes essentially pay for the veterinary costs in case one's pet falls sick or suffers an accident or injury. Some pet plan insurance products also make payments for loss or death of the insured pet.
“Pet medical insurance is essentially a risk mitigation strategy for guarding against significant medical expenditure for treatment of sick or injured pets,” says a report.
With so much being done for canines and other pets in India ( if you can take your mind off the more numerous and mistreated stray counterparts) Muslims should feel hopeful that perhaps a tiny corner in Narendra Modi’s heart may be opening up for them. All they need to do is mind his speeding car.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi
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