| January 07, 2009 | Wednesday | Muharram 09, 1430 |
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Animal rights and wrongs
Last week, we were puzzled one afternoon by the sound of crackers exploding along our beach on Sri Lanka. Initially, I thought the locals were scaring away the band of macaque monkeys that occasionally visits the area. Playful and often destructive, they swing along the trees, stopping to snatch fruits from branches, and toss tiles from roofs. They also mess with TV antennas, so their presence is not usually welcome. Hence the firecrackers to scare them away.
But this time, the cause was very different: President Rajapakse had just announced that the Tamil rebel capital of Kilinochchi had finally fallen after weeks of stiff resistance by the LTTE. However, given the high cost in human suffering, and the prospect of more heavy fighting to come, perhaps the celebrations were premature. As it was, the president’s broadcast was followed within minutes by a suicide attack against an air force facility in Colombo that killed three. The next day, there was another bomb attack, with more feared in the days to come.
Despite the civil war, life goes on, especially for animals. The Buddhist tradition in Sri Lanka prohibits taking life, so the island is full of stray dogs. Wildlife and many kinds of birds thrive in a country with few hunters. Alas, elephants have not been as lucky. Their requirement for large amounts of food (250 kilos a day for an adult male) brings them into competition with farmers who can lose their entire crop to a hungry herd in one night. Driven close to extinction by the British, their numbers fell from 20,000 at the turn of the 18th century to around 1,500 at independence. The Brits, apart from hunting them, also posted bounties on the heads of these wonderful beasts as they considered them as a hindrance in their efforts to replace the forests of the highlands with tea plantations.
Luckily for them, very few Sri Lankan elephants have tusks, so they have been saved from the kind of massive poaching that has driven their African cousins to the brink of extinction. But apart from their one-sided competition for food with farmers, elephants have suffered terribly in the civil war, with hundreds being killed or maimed by land mines. Due to concerted conservation efforts, the numbers have slowly recovered to around 4,500 now. Imaginative and humane methods have helped. There is an orphanage for elephants at Pinnawela where over 70 live in safety. Volunteers from around the world come to help with their care, and the park is a popular tourist attraction.
Closer to us is the Uda Walawe National Park. Here, I saw a sight that will forever remain with me: a big bull elephant, with his eyes half closed in bliss, rubbing himself against a large tree. He was with a female and a young calf, and our open jeep was parked barely ten feet from the group. A little further on, we stopped near a small lake to watch a large herd of some thirty elephants playing in the water. Babies clambered on to their mothers’ backs before tumbling into the lake, and young elephants blew water at each other from their trunks. I could have stayed at that spot the whole day.
Driving on, we came across large groups of monkeys, swinging from branches with their babies clinging to their backs. Large males glared at us with scarcely concealed resentment at our presence. The park itself was very well run, and encloses an area of over 300 square kilometres. Danyal, my two-year old grandson, was enchanted and protested loudly when we had to leave. His mother Sheila was just as reluctant to leave.
Over the years, successive Sri Lankan governments have opened a number of national parks where all kinds of species are protected. Heavy fines and jail terms deter poachers, and the Buddhist ethos acts as a further disincentive to hunters. Despite the war that has dragged on for 25 years, the state has allocated scarce resources to protect wildlife. This is an important thing to remember for us in Pakistan where, in this newspaper and elsewhere, a debate has gone on about the rights of animals in a poor country where, all too often, people go to sleep hungry.
In an important editorial in this newspaper recently, it was suggested that Pakistan did not deserve to have any zoos, given the way animals are tormented there. Ardeshir Cowasjee has also pleaded the cause of animals in his column. When I contrast the care and affection often shown to wild and domestic animals in Sri Lanka with how we mistreat them in Pakistan, I feel deeply ashamed. It is all very well to argue, as many do, that we should pay more attention to the needs of human beings before caring about animals. But the point here is that there are laws and institutions to protect human rights. Even though they may not be effective, at least human beings can voice their protests and their concerns in a way animals simply cannot. In any case, they have as much right to the resources of our planet as humans do. Years ago, my father was being interviewed in our home for a literary programme on PTV. His beloved collie Sandal lay at his feet during the discussion. After the recording, the presenter commented inanely: “Doctor Sahib, you seem to be very fond of animals.” My father replied dryly: “Actually, I prefer them to most humans.”
I must confess to a similar sentiment. When I look at the senseless violence we commit against each other in the name of the most absurd causes, and the damage we are constantly inflicting on the environment, I must say that homo sapiens comes off very poorly by comparison with the supposedly lower species. As it is, we in Pakistan have a very poor record when it comes to our treatment of women and the minorities. But our attitude towards animals is even more barbaric.
While a number of NGOs are trying to defend human rights and the environment in Pakistan, animals have few activists on their side. The one exception is PAWS (Pakistan Animal Welfare Society), a small new organization that is trying to reduce the abuse animals are routinely subjected to. But until there is greater awareness that animals have rights too, they will never get the treatment they deserve.
