The jallikattu challenge

The jallikattu challenge

Context:
What must the Supreme Court do when a community’s right to cultural freedom comes into conflict with values of animal welfare?

Tamil Nadu’s Amendment to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 (PCA Act)

• The amendment discharges the practice of Jallikattu, which it defines with a sloppy lack of precision as “an event involving bulls conducted with a view to follow tradition and culture”, from the various rigours of the PCA Act.
• The petitioners, including the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, argue that the amending law violates a slew of fundamental rights.

Animal Rights in India

• Part III of the Constitution, which lists the various fundamental rights, provides to persons different manners of guarantees, including in Article 14 a right to equality, and in Article 21 a right to life. However, do not explicitly recognise animals as persons.
• Indeed, until now, the liberties contained in Part III have largely been understood as promises made to human beings, and, in appropriate cases, to associations of human beings, such as corporations, partnerships and other similar entities.
• As a result, when a movement for animal welfare in India was initially launched, it stemmed not through an argument predicated on rights, but through an effort founded on qualities of decency, on a belief that to inflict unnecessary pain on animals was morally unconscionable.
• Since the Constitution imposed no binding obligation on the state to protect animal welfare, it was left to campaigners to beseech Parliament into enacting a proper law for the purpose.
• In 1960 the Union government brought into force the PCA Act, which criminalised several different types of actions resulting in cruelty to animals.
• These include exceptions like the performance of experiments on animals aimed purportedly at advancing discovery of drugs and a wide and general concession for “killing any animal in a manner required by the religion of any community”
  

Legitimising Jallikattu:

• The bull-taming spectacle Jallikattu, which is traditionally held during the Pongal period in southern States, violated many of the provisions of the PCA Act.
• Given that the subject of preventing animal cruelty falls in the concurrent list of the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution, State governments possess an equal authority to determine what actions constitute cruelty to animals within their respective territories.
• It was on the basis of this power that the Tamil Nadu government legitimised Jallikattu, by amending the PCA Act, and by exempting the practice entirely from the statute’s demands.
  

Defending the Statute:

The State can put forward two arguments:

• the amendment serves to preserve native varieties of bulls
• The exemption in favour of Jallikattu furthers the Tamil people’s right to conserve their culture.

Way Forward:

Court can do one of two things:

• The Court can hold that animals also possess a right to live with dignity, and, therefore, enjoy a right to life under Article 21.
• Or, it could hold that this right under Article 21 includes within its ambit a larger freedom to live in a society free of animal cruelty.