FB Debates - Jallikattu (2)

(via Sunny Narang)

For me who knew nothing about #‎SaveJallikattu , has learnt many things about it in the last one week. All from Tamil friends. A majority of Tamils are up in arms against the Supreme Court ban in 2014 and the PETA campaign. Western Animal Welfare Rights organisation as well as Ahimsa kind of Hindu and Jain organisations are against Jallikattu.

Farming, herding and livestock cultures have their own traditions since eons. Urban people think now of machines and extracted oil as "humane" but for farmers there is still a bull in many dry regions . Animal labour is part of human society since forever and will remain after oil is finished .

Vegans want all milk cattle to die off . But then what about the organic dung for fertiliser ? In agriculture , everything , from bull to milch cattle to sheep herds is connected . Not only have we urban people destroyed dignity of agriculture , we are slowly destroying the whole indigenous breeds rearing system . Even animal rights people in Tamilnadu see that .

Jallikattu bulls belong to a few specific breeds of cattle that descended from the Kangayam breed of cattle and these cattle are very pugnacious by nature. These cattle are reared in huge herds numbering in hundreds with a few cowherds tending to them. These cattle are for all practical comparisons, wild and only the cowherds can mingle with them without any fear of being attacked. It is from these herds that calves with good characteristics and body conformation are selected and reared to become jallikattu bulls. These bulls attack not because they are irritated or agitated or frightened, but because that is their basic nature.

Draught cattle are castrated and worked to death, but jallikattu bulls are treated like gods .

Gauhar Azeez, a former member of the National Commission on Cattle, who now runs the Bharatiya Prani Mitra Sangh, estimates there were about 5,000 native, drought-resistant bulls like Kangayam and Puliakolam in Tamil Nadu back in 2006, before the jallikattu guidelines came into effect. “Now there are about 2,000,” she says. “In animal husbandry, the trend is to send male calves to slaughter; only milch cattle are taken care of. The people who breed bulls for jallikattu need to be given incentives.”

Read the PETA study on Horse-Racing below . No one listens to them anywhere in the world .

While horses are sometimes raced purely for sport, a major part of horse racing's interest and economic importance lies in the gambling associated with it, an activity that in 2008 generated a world-wide market worth around US$115 billion.

Spanish Bullfighting is normally fatal for the bull, and it is dangerous for the matador.

Author Alexander Fiske-Harrison who trained as a bullfighter to research for a book on the subject, has argued that there are mitigating circumstances to this:

"In terms of animal welfare, the fighting bull lives four to six years whereas the meat cow lives one to two. What is more, it doesn’t just live in the sense of existing, it lives a full and natural life.

Those years are spent free, roaming in the dehesa, the lightly wooded natural pastureland which is the residue of the ancient forests of Spain. It is a rural idyll, although with the modern additions of full veterinary care and an absence of predators big enough to threaten evolution’s answer to a main battle tank." Other arguments include those to the effect that the death of animals in slaughterhouses is often much worse than the death in the ring, and that both types of animal die for entertainment since humans do not need to consume meat, eating it instead for taste (bulls enter the food chain after the bullfight)"

Forms of non-lethal bullfighting also appear outside the Iberian world, including the Tamil Nadu practise of jallikattu; and the Portuguese-influenced mchezo wa ngombe (Kiswahili for "sport with bull") is also practiced on the Tanzanian islands of Pemba and Zanzibar. Types of bullfighting which involve bulls fighting other bulls, rather than humans, are found in the Balkans, Turkey, the Persian Gulf, Bangladesh, Japan, Peru and Korea. In many parts of the Western United States, various rodeo events like calf roping and bull riding were influenced by the Spanish bullfighting.

Jallikattu, which is bull-baiting or bull cuddling/holding was a popular sport amongst warriors during the Tamil classical period. Bullfighting was common among the ancient tribes who lived in the ‘Mullai’ geographical division of the ancient Tamil country. Later, it the sport became a platform for display of bravery and prize money was introduced for entertainment. The term "Jallikattu" originated from the words "Jalli" and "Kattu", referring to silver or gold coins tied to the bulls’ horns.

A seal from the Indus Valley Civilization depicting the sport is preserved in the National Museum, New Delhi. A single painting discovered in a cave about 35 km west of Madurai shows a lone man trying to control a bull and the painting, done in white kaolin is estimated to be about 1,500 years old.

In 2004, at least 5 people were reported dead and several hundreds injured. Over two hundred have died from the sport over the past two decades.

Unlike in Spanish bullfighting, the bull is not killed and there are rarely any casualties suffered by the bulls.

The Supreme Court of India banned jallikattu bull fights on May 7th, 2014.

And here are excerpts from the PETA website on horse-racing !

"They weigh more than 1,000 pounds, are supported by ankles the size of a human’s, and are whipped and forced to run around tracks that are often made of hard-packed dirt at speeds of more than 30 miles per hour while carrying people on their backs. Racehorses are the victims of a multibillion-dollar industry that is rife with drug abuse, injuries, and race fixing, and many horses’ careers end at the slaughterhouse.

Horses begin training or are already racing when their skeletal systems are still growing and are unprepared to handle the pressures of competition racing on a hard track at high speeds. One study on injuries at racetracks concluded that one horse in every 22 races suffered an injury that prevented him or her from finishing a race, while another estimated that 3 thoroughbreds die every day in North America because of catastrophic injuries during races.

When they stop winning races or become injured, few racehorses are retired to pastures, because owners don’t want to pay for a horse who doesn’t bring in any money. Many end up in slaughterhouses in Canada, Mexico, or Japan, where they are turned into dog food and glue. Their flesh is also exported to countries such as France and Japan, where it is considered a delicacy."

"This is a very interesting campaign by Indigenous Tamilnadu Cattle Breeders against PETA .One of traditional community knowledge system and sustainable economy versus an International NGO who is absolutely hypocritical and this post proves it brilliantly.
Of different knowledge systems, a clash.

These kind of clashes will be the new normal. Where communities on the ground will defy values forced unto them by centralized judicial or activist systems .If that kind of "knowledge and value" arrogance is not undemocratic I don't know what is .

The Centre should have power only over Defense , Foreign Affairs , Currency and National Economic Policy , not regional cultures and customary systems .
And Centre should be the available for legal issues unsolvable at state or inter-state levels.

Jallikattu for me questions the whole gamut of Centre-State relations and how much power a de-racinated and a far-removed elite , that knows at most about few metropolitan centres , should have.

Great job Komakkambedu Himakiran Anugula. More power to people like you .
Hima , as we call him , did Industrial Engineering in USA , stayed there for almost 6 years before coming back and getting deeply into understanding organic farming and livestock systems, as well as the issues of culture , communities, languages and Tamil history , among other South Indian narratives ."

https://www.facebook.com/notes/komakkambedu-himakiran-anugula/petas-faq-on-jallikattu-hypocrisy-exposed/1203402569687697