I hope the arguments against and for Jallikkattu in Tamil Nadu, India aren’t
over and the verdict isn’t out yet; they have been just adjourned. I have heard
that voices of reason get submerged between noises of anger. So I am trying to
sneak past my views on the emotions and nostalgia at play when the tempers have
been relatively cooled.
There had been several arguments on the issue. The one I
remember most against the sport(?) is a photograph of a tamer bull, shivering
in fright at the gates, ready to be released in the middle of, what it believes as a murderous
crowd, booing, baying and lusting for its blood. It is reminiscent
of gladiator combats where unarmed slaves and captured fighters were pitted
against ferocious animals and Sabre rattling warriors when blood and gore
overflowed for the pleasure of royalty and to entertain the people.
I remember the stand out argument in favor of the ‘sport’;
it’s just a traditional sport, with more stress on ‘traditional’ than ‘sport’; no
bulls are harmed, none of the men are armed, no bloodshed out there, and that its
not a murderous raging crowd, but just an excited one.
I have nothing against the bulls or its supporters, who are
growing in numbers by the day. Sure it has become fashionable sport to take a
shot at the word ‘tradition’ these days, even if a shot means just clicking
their mouse to say ‘yes’ from the comfort of their couches. I have watched much
worse sports among humankind played out there, without involving the pitiable
animals. Boxing for one; there is more blood shed and more deaths due to boxing
than Jallikkattu. I have also seen a human in a similar plight, tamer than the
bull in question, ready to head into a crowd of muscular helmeted men, who were
ready to overpower him by sheer might and weight, unmindful of the bruises and
broken bones they could inflict on him. The tamer being, un-rattled by the
might and weight staked up against is determined to charge forward and to outwit
and outrun them without giving the combined power-pack of his antagonists a chance
to smother him down. When he instinctively manages to slip past the muscular cordon
and touch the other end, he scents victory. For him, there’s no scent sweeter
than this. We all know this sport to be either ‘American Football’ or Rugby.
Should these sports be banned too along with Jallikkattu? How is a human bruise
lesser unkinder than a cut on a bull?
Do the bulls that succeed in reaching the other end without
being tamed, feel similarly victorious and elated? Why not! All living beings
are driven by the same basic instincts of fear, their response to fear and
the sense of pride in slipping out of the perceived jaws of death. Such a
moment surely should be a source of pride for them. They should feel re-invigorated
after such a bout after all. If they are conquered at a Jallikattu meet, it
still doesn’t do a bull any harm, because they are not dead or at the end of
the day as they probably would have feared. They are most likely not even
injured badly, save a bruise here and there. They also possibly feel good about
the number of adversaries they felled or slipped past during their run.
Closer home at Mumbai, we see different version of the same
sport being played at least four times everyday by millions of tamer human
mortals everyday, without any activists, politicians, media and the courts
bating an eyelid; venue: the electric trains. If anyone does bate something, it
is the children, who bate their breath in fear before they lunge
forward into the surging crowds to either aboard or to alight from the trains
to their schools or other destinations. At the end of the run, or say plunge,
they are squeezed, straightened, bent, crushed, choked, torn apart, bruised and
injured every time; not to speak of having been assaulted, modesty outraged,
pilfered of shopped goods and pick-pocketed; just as one of the several legally payable
surcharges on top of the already paid heavy taxes. I suggest that the school
uniforms be modified to include with Viking Horns, so the dread in the eyes of
the threatened children will be noticed by the activists so that they can raise
a cry of shame and pain, they feel towards the fortunate bulls.
Back home in Chennai, I heard a gentle old man say a few months
earlier that he takes steroids to reinvigorate him after a peak hour travel in
one of those over crowded city buses. The last time I met him a few days
earlier, he said that he now takes his steroids before he undertakes the travel
and not afterwards. He reminded me of the charges that the bulls are being put on
steroids and drugs. Whichever the Jallikattu, there should be no flagrant use
of steroids and drugs.
The one who hasn’t seen fear in the eyes of school children
in the Mumbai trains and the infirm on the Chennai buses while stepping in and
out , should cast the first stone on the sport of
‘Jallikattu’.
If there was something inhuman about Jallikattu, then the
cruelty started when man began domesticating animals robbing them of their
natural environs, stealing nature’s order of ‘survival of the fittest’, where
everyday they have to slip past, if not fight back predators at the higher
level of the food chain. In any case, these animals if returned to their
rightful natural environs will have to play ‘Jallikkattu’ of a more fatal kind.
Most of them would not survive a single day’s run, far from being venerated
before and after a run, success or not. I’m inclined to think that through the
sport of Jallikkattu, for a day or two a year, the bulls would feel surcharged
and fighting fit, having tasted their natural environs though diluted in scope. Here I
have to remind of the decision of the Government of Tamil Nadu to send the
temple elephants on a vacation for a week every year to their natural
environments in the forests so they would feel invigorated. This was
appreciated by all.
What is this article to highlight the problem, if it does
not have a solution? Yes, I have one. :-)
Before human intervention, the bulls were born free to
compete and fight among other bulls to win over a cow of their choice. They do
not tend to curb their natural instincts for the fear that they could be
‘bullied’ by others of their species and probably for the fear of being gored to death. But
domestication and commercialization has robbed them of their opportunity to display
their natural instincts to fight and win their mates. My idea is to make the
sport more rewarding for the bulls. Instead of running without a purpose, other
than to save their skin, let them run for this reward. Let’s house a number of healthy, fertile cows in an open field at the end of the bull-run path and let the bulls
know that they could select their partner of affections from among them.
See the lust in their eyes as they wait to charge out of the gates, not fear.
I’m sure that they would join the fun fest. Let the game continue through the night
in the pseudo-natural environs where the strongest of them would fight and win
the lick of their favored mates. I would caution that the humans who trespass
their path wear body armor and helmet to protect themselves from the ‘vigour’ous
bulls that could toss, trample or ignore them in their run for their mate.
I also hope the activists lined up against ‘Jallikkattu’ would
feel assuaged that the balance of power, purpose and fun have been firmly
established between the bulls and the men.
pun'nily yours
Ravi Krish
