FB Discussions - Jallikattu (4)

I would never have any opinion on any elephant game in Africa or Siberia. Simply because I have no way of understanding the nuances of that culture.

But the urban english speaking elite of India are rearing to go - to comment and criticize all rural ways. With nary an intention of going to the hinterlands, staying, learning, working ...

The rural people can come and criticize the urbans, hoot at the overflowing landfills, the sewage pouring into rivers and the blatant consumerism and disparity that they revel in. But they are  too civilized and cultured to, and they mind their own business.

ViswanathanPadmanabhan The urban elite have nothing to do except offering their profound opinions on everything in our country. It is time the media and press ignored them

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Manish Pandit Defy the ban. Even Gandhi had to take salt in such a way. Why are we letting people interfere in such places?

T.R. Shashwath We've decided to live in a society with certain common laws. The village, or even a single state, or for that matter the city, can't contravene that. Certain principles are universal. At least with respect to his world. Your village needs to fit into the whole. Freedom isn't limitless.

KomakkambeduHimakiranAnugula When prices of commodities go up outside India, export of agricultural produce is banned. When prices go up in India, imports are opened up.   Is that a free market system?  Is there any other field/industry where that happens?

Common laws?

3 lac farmers have committed suicide in the last 20 years. Hell, one even hung himself on live TV when the PM was speaking in Delhi.

Our land, water already grabbed. 50 million people displaced internally due to big dams. Millions forced to migrate under distress and toil as unskilled construction labor in the cities.

Where did the compassion and morality go?

This country is built for the upper caste English educated male, preferably North Indian. Rest progressively are lower, much much lower.

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Rajesh Mehar  MrShashwath: I think the larger point being made here is that "we have all decided" means that most people have actively opted in to whatever legal system operates in the place you live. While this may be true of urban upper class communities, rural communities are facing a cognitive dissonance between customs and ways that are ancient that they want to live with and a legal system that they DID NOT opt into being forced upon them.

Many poor, landless, rural people today feel utterly disenfranchised. The system is built by the urban rich to serve the purposes of the urban rich.

Rajesh Mehar For example, the current problem around Jallikattu:

The  Prevention of Cruelty to Animals act privileges and exempts urban rich cruelty (violent slaughter of animals for eating, tying up of pet dogs) but picks out and penalizes so called cruelty in Jallikattu. Did we all decide to follow this common law? No. The answer you probably have is "but that's the way the system works. There should have been dissent when the law was brought in place."

Again, at that layer too, the rural poor don't have any agency to participate in such systems designed by the urban rich for the benefit of the urban rich. If you ask TN villagers about the Act in question, many people may know about it's name, and why it's famous right now, but little else about it. That is how the system wants it, needs it, and keeps it.

Rajesh Mehar "customs and ways that are ancient  - but not necessarily right” ...Not necessarily right according to whose frame of reference?
 
Aparna Krishnan We are by our very educational system deep alienated from the real India.  I have faced it and it has helped me slowly understand the reality of India, as also the reality and vastness chasm between the real India and me created by privilege of birth and an English medium schooling .

Aparna Krishnan The laws are biased towards the rich. Any debate there - please look at the subsidy distribution. The laws are also biased towards the Hindi belt. The English speaking get maximum privilege, employability, and after that Hindi. Other local languages are a far third.  The modern-educated have inherited the mantle of the Englishman.  

Rajesh Pandey Aparna Krishnan, there is hardly any doubt that Government spending is urban centric and tilted heavily towards the haves. This can be confirmed by the simple choice of words - while "subsidies" remains a dirty word as they go to he poor (or at least are supposed to go to the poor), "incentives" remains a good and positive word as they go to businesses. Nobody asks Government to increase subsidies, but all lobbies ask for increase in incentives 

RajeshPandey But, the question you have been raising Aparna Krishnan about allowing a traditional practice, is difficult to comprehend for many urbanites whose sense of right or wrong is conditioned by the urban-centric education they had (me included), which looks down upon Jallikattu, but loves Bull-running of Spain and feels privilegd in rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous in a race course.

Aparna Krishnan Rajesh Pandey, the problem is in the upper class even seeking to have an opinion on the rural class which they are alienated from, and which they do not have any real intention of understanding. Simply moralizing because they are richer and know English !! And suffer from a deep superiority complex.

Aparna Krishnan Let the traditional people decide the bounds of traditions. Let the modernists decide the bounds of modernity (polluted rivers. leaching landfills, cattle killed by grazing on plastic garbage heaps ...).  

Aparna Krishnan Urban dwellers understand and are responsible for their spaces. Nobody invited them to carry their moralities into our villages. This is the white man carrying the  burden of civilizing the natives.

Rajesh Pandey I feel, why we city folks sitting thousands of Kilometres away, have such strong opposition to a traditional practice, when we have plenty of urban malpractices to worry about.

KomakkambeduHimakiranAnugula T.R. Shashwath Aparna has seen both worlds intensely. So her take has much more of a credibility.

You are speaking from propaganda of animal welfare groups incl the videos and from the judgment. Be fair now. Engage with stakeholders and then comment.

Aparna Krishnan Responsible opinions can only come from sincere engagement. Otherwise the comments are irresponsible at best, and mischeivous at worst. T.R. Shashwath