In this live, Sindhoor and I talked about recent events in India. You might remember that we had chosen streeties in India for “Philosophy in the Wild: Finding Hope in Mixed Communities” as another case of mutualism between humans and wild living animals (and streeties are yet another wonderful case to question our preconceived and unduly romantic notions of ‘wild’). While not all humans in India are “dog lovers”, India has a long history of tolerance vis-à-vis other animals. What is more, experiments with lethal control of street dog populations under colonial rule had shown that that were not effective at controlling the risks from rabies and dog bites. Hence, streeties in India came to enjoy some important legal protection both under the general prevention of cruelty to animals and regarding their right to belong to certain neighbourhoods.
Last summer, things took a turn for the worse, with the Supreme Court of India first declaring that all dogs in New Delhi were supposed to be removed. Meanwhile, the goal is to capture 10% of the 60 to 100 million streeties nationwide and put them into shelters. If there already wasn’t enough money to implement previous laws and regulations, this idea is not only unjust and ecologically unsound but also highly unrealistic. Sindhoor calls these “mythical shelters” “a Shangri-La” and walks us through the complicated political and cultural landscape that has formed around this issue. She argues against only seeing suffering as far as street dogs are concerned,1 and shares vivid accounts of what it really is like to share communities with these “independent thinkers”. And she urges us to keep having conversations about vital matters with our neighbours and communities even when, perhaps particularly when we disagree.
Please keep paying attention to the issue of streeties in India by following Sindhoor’s organisation BHARCS’ work on the matter, also on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Here is the paper that at one point came to mind:: “Pampered pets or poor bastards?”.
