Sarama and Her Children

by Bibek Debroy

  This debate was much after the Bombay dog riots of 1832,10 a major test of British–Parsi relations. The British government was attempting to tackle the problem of pariah dogs in the streets. There was already a regulation that went back to 1813, permitting the destroying of ownerless dogs from 15 April to 15 May and from 15 September to 15 October. The magistrate of police (Bombay) now wanted an extension from the Bombay government till 15 June. At first, the government extended powers of destruction to ownerless dogs that were within public and government property, but thereafter gave an extension to whenever there was a perception of nuisance and danger. The disturbance largely resulted from the way these powers were enforced. Special police dog-killers were paid eight annas for every dog they killed. Many of the dogs captured were neither dangerous, nor loose. Dogs were killed and bodies left on the streets. In the intense heat of the Indian summer, and one remembers Noel Coward’s song about mad dogs and Englishmen venturing out in the mid-day sun, stray dogs often turn wild and vicious. But de facto, the cull was not restricted to stray dogs alone. Religious sensitivities were offended, beyond the Parsis extending to other Indian communities, and there were strikes and riots. Such a near-spontaneous reaction to dog slaughter was completely unanticipated.

  There is a story about Madanmohan Malaviya. When he was a student, he was walking along a road and his eyes fell on a restless dog. He fed it and because the dog was wounded, took it to a veterinary hospital. The vet attended to the dog, but warned Madanmohan Malaviya that one should be careful. Stray dogs could be rabid and could bite. But for the time and the age, there is nothing particularly remarkable in what Madanmohan Malaviya had done. Why did this then become a story important enough to be recounted? The answer lies in our attitudes towards dogs and stray ones. Being affectionate towards a dog was remarkable.

  The principles and the law for stray dogs are fairly clear. Unfortunately, they are rarely enforced. Sections 428 and 429 of the Indian Penal Code have all along made it illegal to maim or cause injury to animals. The Prevention of Cruelty towards Animals Act and Rules make the poisoning of animals illegal and transportation of animals in ways that cause suffering also illegal. Stray dogs must be captured using humane methods like lassoing or soft-loop animal-catchers. Since 1992, municipalities can no longer kill stray dogs. There must instead be a sterilization and ABC (Animal Birth Control) programme and the Animal Welfare Board has a code of conduct for municipalities. These principles have also been upheld by assorted high courts. Nor can stray dogs be used for research. After all, it costs less to sterilize than to euthanize. That is in addition to the Surat kind of problem of extermination leading to an increase in rodent populations and perhaps even plague. Several different elements feed into the current programme, in addition to pet control laws. There is an element of rabies prevention, but that works only if there is sustained re-immunization. And there is an element of dog population control, addressed through sterilization.

  There are also rather unusual reports that appear about stray dogs. For example, police stations in Andhra Pradesh have now begun to adopt and feed stray dogs, so that there can be advance warnings against extremist attacks of the Maoist variety.11 The stray dogs have effectively been adopted by police stations. In Kolkata, dogs from the Police Dog Squads offer salutes at the time of Republic Day parades.12 In Khanyan, a village near Kolkata, a nine-year-old tribal girl named Karnamoni Handsa suffered from a tooth problem. Her tooth was rooted to her upper gum and this was a bad omen. To ward off the bad omen, the panchayat got her to marry a stray dog named Bacchan.13 In 2001, in Sector 29 of NOIDA, a security guard, on instructions from his employer (a colonel) beat a stray dog with a lathi and the beaten dog (‘Chikki’) subsequently died. Enraged residents beat up the guard and the colonel, who were arrested by the police and charged under Section 429 of the Indian Penal Code.14 Simultaneously, every time there is a natural disaster, like the tsunami, reports appear about stray dogs having gone wild and feeding on human remains. And even otherwise, in Cuttack, eight lawyers were hospitalized after a stray dog got into a court and bit them. However, this court in Cuttack is apparently populated not only by stray dogs, but also by bulls.15

  Contemporary India’s attitude towards dogs, and not just stray dogs, is reflected in both films and literature. One still remembers V. Shantaram’s silent film Sawkari Pash, produced in 1925. A poor peasant loses his land to a moneylender and migrates to the city to become a worker in a mill. This film’s shot of a howling dog has become a bit of an icon. Dogs have generally been used in Bollywood, though not as strongly as in Hollywood (Of Mice and Men or Son of the Mask). Sometimes, stray dogs appear in scenes. In more recent times, pedigreed dogs appear in jogging scenes along beaches. Baazigar is an example. Sometimes, dogs are portrayed for their loyalty and friendship. On other occasions, they contribute to comic relief, such as chasing the village buffoon or even the hero. Ganga Jumna is an example, so is Soldier or Sajan Chale Sasural, where a dog, given a magical cake by mistake, falls in love with Satish Kaushik. A dog adds to comic relief in Chinagate also. In other films, dogs have a more constructive role, like the black Labrador in Teri Meherbaniyan that helps exact revenge or the white Pomeranian, Toffee, in Hum Aapke Hain Kaun that helps bring the lovers together. In Hulchul, a dog prevents the lovers from meeting. In Biwi No. 1, the dog helps bring husband and wife together and in Maa, the dog is inhabited by the spirit of a deceased husband. There are also dogs in Deewar, guarding the prison gates.

  The literature review that follows is restricted to Bengali literature, a few Bengali folk tales having already been included in the popular tales chapter. The justification for this selectivity is that the review is only meant to be indicative and not comprehensive. There are several non-Bengali stories that spring to mind. Premchand’s “Pus ki Raat” is a poignant story about a farmer and his dog who guard crops on a cold night and Premchand also wrote an autobiographical story of a dog titled “Kutte ki Kahani”, a metaphor for caste–class relations in the 1920s. There is a Manto story titled “The Dog of Tetwal”, about a stray dog that is caught between the Indian and Pakistani armies and does not know whether it is a Hindustani or a Pakistani dog. Eventually, the dog is shot. And who can forget Arun Kolatkar’s poetry? Or Gieve Patel’s “Pi-dog”. This Pi-dog claims descent on the mother’s side from the only bitch to survive thirty foxhounds imported from England by ‘by Sir Bartle Frere / in eighteen hundred and sixty-four, / with the crazy idea / of introducing fox-hunting to Bombay’. On the father’s side, this dog claims descent from ‘the dog that followed / Yudhisthira / on his last journey’. The choice of Bengali literature is because of one’s familiarity, and because of one’s non-familiarity with other Indian languages. That apart, Bengal was the first part of India to be exposed to western influence and this has a bearing on an argument that follows. As this illustrative sketch shows, attitudes towards dogs were a function of several factors—the time period, the author’s individual biases, level of westernisation and the brahmana versus non-brahmana background.

  Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–94) is credited with having completely revolutionalised Bengali prose. He was a novelist and an essayist and English educated. But he was not only a brahmana, he also had considerable empathy with traditional Hindu dharma. References to dogs are scarce in Bankim’s works, and when they occur, they are invariably derogatory. For instance, his essays have references to hungry dogs hankering for discarded food, just as an essay about Muchiram Guda has a reference to an English collector named Home, with a pet spaniel dog under his table. Bankim Chandra’s attitude towards dogs is best typified in an essay titled “Politics”, from the book Kamalakanta. A free translation of this passage is the following. ‘I [Kamalakanta] was thinking, when I noticed the ten-year old son of Shibu Kalu. [A kalu is someone who extracts oil.] This boy brought a bowl of rice to the courtyard to eat. From a distance, a dark black dog saw this. It saw and it stood up. It looked and in an unhappy frame of mind, stuck it
s tongue out. Pure white rice displayed like flowers in a copper bowl and I saw the dog’s stomach was drawn in. The dog looked, and while standing, stretched itself and yawned. Then it thought for a while and gradually, foot by foot, advanced, with an eye towards Kalu’s son’s mouth. The dog saw that the boy did not say anything. So the dog went up to the boy and sat down, with its paws stretched out. It wagged its tail gradually and looking up at Kalu’s son, panted. Its thin body, thinner stomach, forlorn eyes and deep breathing aroused pity in Kalu’s son. After having sucked a fish bone dry, he flung it at the dog. In delight, the dog proceeded to chew, eat, lick and swallow the bone. It closed its eyes in happiness. When this fish bone was well disposed of, the dog thought it might be a good idea to get a second bone. Having decided this, the dog looked at Kalu’s son again. But the boy was busy eating his rice mixed with molasses and tamarind. He paid no attention to the dog. The dog advanced a little bit more and yawned again. Since the boy still paid no attention, the dog began to whine a little. At this, the boy looked up. Since there was no more fish, he gave the dog a fistful of rice. The dog devoured this with delight. But at this time, Kalu’s wife came out of the house. At the sight of a dog sitting next to her son and eating rice, Kalu’s wife’s eyes reddened with anger. She picked up a piece of brick and flung it at the dog. Injured, the dog gathered up its tail and speedily fled, chanting assorted ragas of pain.’ Bankim Chandra was considerably influenced, in his novels, by Walter Scott. However, while dogs feature regularly in Scott’s novels, they rarely exist in Bankim Chandra’s novels. And these rare mentions are always derogatory. For instance, Anandamath has two references to dogs. In the first, a drought is described and we are told that lower castes and forest-dwellers survived by eating dogs, cats and rats. The second reference is when the war is over and we are told that jackals, dogs and vultures are frequenting the carcass strewn battlefield.

  If Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay revolutionized Bengali prose, Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824–74) revolutionized Bengali poetry. Their backgrounds were completely different. Madhusudan Dutt turned Christian and, initially, wrote in English. For a large part of his life, he was an outcast and perhaps even an outcaste. Dogs have no direct role to play in Michael’s works, although many other animals and birds occur in his assorted poems. But it is significant that in many of his letters, he describes himself as a dog. ‘I am about the most docile dog that ever wagged a literary tail,’ or, ‘If I deserve credit for nothing else, you must allow me that I am, at least, an industrious dog.’ This is not imagery that Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay would ever have used.

  Earlier, the poet Ishwar Chandra Gupta (1812–59) had a couplet that is sometimes quoted, to the effect that he would rather worship native dogs than foreign gods. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820–91) never seemed to have a problem with dogs. Of course, given the kinds of things Vidyasagar wrote, it is impossible to directly deduce his attitude towards dogs. But Vidyasagar transcreated or translated several of Aesop’s fables as Kathamala. Had he had a problem with dogs, it would have been easy to discard those of Aesop’s fables that involve dogs. Instead, these occur naturally in Kathamala. The fables about the hunter’s dog that became old, the dog and its shadow, the dog, the crow and the fox, the dog and the tiger, the hare and the hunting dog, the man bitten by a dog, the dog in the manger and the dog and the thief are examples. If anything, as a percentage, there are more dogs in Kathamala than in the original Aesop’s fables.

  Contrast the Bankim Chandra attitude with Shibnath Shastri (1847–1919), a noted brahmo. Influenced partly by the west, the brahmo movement was a reaction against brahmana practices, in particular, idol worship. In the process, brahmos tended to be ostracized and were effectively outcasts. The brahmos were also identified with emphasis on education, especially of the women’s variety. In his autobiography, Shibnath Shastri talks about his childhood, which pertains to a period when he was still a Hindu. One of his childhood companions was a bitch named Sheyalkhaki. This dog was so named because as a puppy, it was being carried away by a fox (sheyal) and was rescued by Shibnath Shastri’s father. It took several years for the fox’s bite-marks to disappear from Sheyalkhaki’s back. Sheyalkhaki was a regular companion for Shibnath and his other friends, accompanying them on picnics and expeditions of catching pigeons. The family also possessed a cow named Budhi and Budhi was taken out for grazing by a cowherd. When this cowherd was sacked, the job was entrusted to Sheyalkhaki. On one occasion, the cow and Sheyalkhaki did not return in the evening. Eventually, Sheyalkhaki returned, barking her head off, heading in a particular direction, barking and returning again. The family realized that Sheyalkhaki was asking them to follow her. Sheyalkhaki led them to another house, where the cow had been imprisoned and tethered up. Indeed, Sheyalkhaki had also been chased away by that family and had returned for help. Shibnath Shastri tells us in his autobiography that he had several other dogs as pets. When he was married for the first time, he was twelve or thirteen years of age. As soon as he returned home after the marriage ceremony, his friends reassured him that his dog Roba was safe and fine. Roba was also a bitch, and Roba was an abbreviation for ‘Robert’, a name encountered in the school textbooks. Shibnath had entrused Roba’s welfare, when he went off to get married, to his friends, since his mother did not like dogs. What is odd about this autobiography is that the Shastri family was an orthodox Hindu family and attachment to dogs was unusual in such families. And curiously, Shibnath Shastri went on to become a brahmo later in his life.

  The Dog

  Every morning my devoted dog

  Waits silently by the chair

  Till I have greeted him with a touch.

  Receiving this slight recognition

  His whole body thrills with joy.

  Among all dumb creatures,

  He alone, piercing the veil of good and bad,

  Has seen Man in his entirety—

  A being for whom he can give life gladly,

  To whom he can pour out love without reason,

  From a dim awareness that gropes its way

  Towards the world of consciousness.

  When I see the self-offering of this mute heart,

  Pleading its own need,

  I cannot imagine what unique value

  His simple wisdom has found in Man.

  With his wordless look of pathetic bewilderment,

  What he comprehends he cannot put into words;

  But to me he reveals the true significance of Man

  In the scheme of Creation.

  This is a poem written (in the Bengali version) by Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) in December 1940 and figures in the collection Arogya. Dogs figure in Tagore’s works, such as in his poems and songs, in a matter-of-fact kind of way, as companions. For instance, there is an old woman named ‘Achala buri’ and her companion is a lame dog, run over by a car. Or there is a labourer named Mahesh, often described as mad. His companion is Bhuto, a lame dog. In yet another poem, there is a ten-year-old child with a lame mongrel dog as a companion. Tagore seems to have had an obsession with lame dogs. Perhaps there is scope for someone to undertake some research there. At that time, there was an English textbook that everyone used, including Tagore. This was by Peary Churan Sirkar and had this sentence, ‘The lame dog jumped over the sty.’ Did this influence Tagore subconsciously? Tagore’s elder brother, Jyotirindranath Tagore, possessed a dog. He was a writer and a musician in his own right, apart from being the son of Debendranath Tagore and the brother of Satyendranath and Rabindranath Tagore. Jyotirindranath’s business interests not having worked out, his wife having committed suicide, in his later years, he retired to Ranchi. And his biography tells us that he had two companions in his house in Ranchi, a puppy named Ganju and a monkey named Rupi. Ganju was was adopted as a child by Rupi, who also suckled him.