Ebullient Libran

Let live or kill to live?

Recently, in my home town- Bangalore, residents of a locality witnessed a gruesome incident. A 6-year-old girl was viciously attached and killed by a bunch of street dogs. The incident rekindled debates between the people for euthanasia and people against euthanasia. The debates are not a new affair. They have been happening for a long time and have been given a greater impetus by the aforesaid gruesome incident. Post the incident many more such incidents have come to the view of citizens and the Bangalore Mahanagar Palikke (BMP-the municipal authority in Bangalore) has become active in catching and mercy killing dogs (Mercy killing is word coined in the West where the killings were done mercifully, but what I have seen of BMP’s ways, its anything but merciful).

No matter how much we feel about this topic being commonplace, we as the caring citizens have a responsibility in participating in the debate, for it is the question of lives, not just human but also non-human- with street dogs being accepted as a part of Indian human life.

I for one have always believed in a humane approach towards this problem. Sterilization, with all its slowness and sometimes ineffectiveness, can be the only way out. For it is a fact that, when a human is murdered by another, we do not set out killing all the other human beings. The same should hold true with dogs as well, with the above incident as a case in point. You just cannot afford duplicity on this issue, as it sounds too hollow to have different actions for different beings.

Now the question is do you have a stand or are you going to live with a big “?” in your mind? Do you want the canines be a part of your lives, as they have been all this while or do you want to terminate their lives to secure your own life in the face of changing dog-human dynamics or for that matter human-non-human dynamics? To put it succinctly, do you want to let live or kill to live?

PS: While I’m writing this article dogcatchers from the BMP are actively catching all the street dogs, in the most brutal fashion possible, right in front of my own house!!!

posted by Akhilesh @ 11:30 PM