Jallikattu: Tradition wins over modernity

There was immense political expediency in the Centre’s hurried endorsement of a Tamil Nadu ordinance removing the bull from the Prevention of Animal Cruelty Act’s ambit. Politicians in Chennai and New Delhi may have had no alternative but to act swiftly amid rising protests at Chennai’s Marina Beach and elsewhere. As tradition trumped modernity, the bulls ran in parts of Tamil Nadu in Jallikattu and rekla races on Sunday, but not in the most traditional centre, Alanganallur near Madurai, where the protesters refused to allow the chief minister to flag off the event. The protesters seek a solution more permanent than the ordinance, so an impasse looms, defeating the efforts to allow Jallikattu to be freely held.

Emotions are still running high after a public uprising was triggered by the Supreme Court’s ban on Jallikattu, a movement that had no recent parallel, not being politically or ideologically inspired. The protests became a rallying point for Tamil pride, dented somewhat in events ranging from the lack of Cauvery waters, leading to a high number of farmer deaths in the harvest season, to the festering fishermen’s issue with Sri Lanka. The Tamil Nadu government has promised a more wholesome solution in a law to be passed in the Assembly, which the judiciary can later examine regarding its legitimacy. Given the depth of public sentiments, the issue is a tricky one for the legislature as well as judiciary, with only the executive having acted with alacrity to satisfy the growing public demand for a cultural tradition, which however is laced with cruelty to bulls in the form in which Jallikattu is now practised.

The principal antagonist and prime litigant in this is the international organisation Peta, much reviled at this point, but which also has many things to hide like the euthanasia practices to put down abandoned animals in its care and its sometimes violent demonstrativeness. The major point in the debate is, however, not Peta but whether Jallikattu is so offensive a traditional practice that it can’t be allowed, and whether cultural symbols can be suppressed by the courts, which may be far removed from ground realities. The judiciary is by no means infallible and yet it must always act on constitutional principles and not pander to public sentiments. However, a sanitised version of Jallikattu, in which the bulls come to little injury in a one-day sport, would do no harm in a country that is a leading exporter of beef, with its concomitant processes of animal slaughter. There are bigger issues like child marriage and harassment of women, that must occupy our minds more than a few bulls running in an ancient pastime. Jallikattu can’t be a defining debate between culture and change, between tradition and modernity.