Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "Nikken's End #5: 2003 Tour de France [Chaude] -...(@"

In article <f7fbe28c.0203091434.5ba59c46@posting.google.com>,

victorthecleaner@netscape.net (zach) wrote:

> > > Wow. A friend (Indian engineer) here at work is a vegetarian. She's
> > > as sweet as can be. I can see now it's all a ruse! She's scared of
> > > animals, too... hmm.

> > Scared of animals ? Pardon me ?

> > Rachael

> I knew that would get someone's attention. Yes, I does sound strange.
> I don't know about the rest of Indian culture, but even in the Brahmin
> cast, it seems pets are not kept, though she says it is true that some
> people do keep cows as pets. What pisses me off is that she was fed
> lies when she was a child that stayed with her as an adult, even
> though she logically knows they are not true. For instance, she was
> told as a child that cats are evil, and that if you see their eyes
> shining in the dark, they are stealing your soul. I'd really like to
> put those people on Fear Factor, exposing them to various types of
> animals.

The common assertion that there are no pets in India is pretty much an
exaggeration of a caste distinction, & even that caste distinction is
breaking down. Ritual cleanliness makes it hard for a high-casted
brahmanic family to keep a companion animal inside the house without being
censored, but even a Brahman's garden may be populated with a little group
of peahens & a peacock which will be completely tame & thought of as
protectors of the household.

Many cultures throughout Asia Minor, Southeast Asia, & Japan do regard the
keeping of pets as a rather filthy habit, indicative of pathetic
loneliness, or mental illness. But that stigmatizes pet keepers, it
doesn't really stop people from keeping pets. Only cats are rare as pets
in much of India, almost anything else is apt to be a pet, but cats are
surrounded by a religious mythology of evil. Cats' fame for doing
mischief is reflected in the story of a medieval king who had many royal
cats. The cats ate the porridge offerings to the gods, and for this reason
the gods arranged an accident with a bubbling hot cauldron of porridge
being prepared for the gods. As the steward carried the cauldron toward
the offering table, cats rubbed against the steward's legs, tripping him,
& the boiling porridge was flung in the face of the king, burning him
severely. The king even then loved his cats, but not wanting to anger the
gods further, decreed that before any divine feast-day, all the cats of
the kingdom must be rounded up & tethered to posts, & fed extremely well
so that they would not be sorry to no longer have access to offerings to
gods. The tradition of the Tethering & Feeding Of The Cats became so
ingrained that even when poor people starved to death, the cats had to be
captured before feast days & well fed. This further angered the gods who
sent famines. To this day the image of a tethered well fed cat is symbolic
of famine, & of the gods' dislike of layabouts who don't earn their keep.

Now obviously cats do earn their keep hunting vermin, nevertheless, the
Indic mythology demeans them as layabouts & mischief makers & forshadowers
of doom, thus unlucky or even harmful to keep as pets.

But India is a big place. Cats are not EVERYwhere disliked. They are not
thought so evil by Moslems, so in Kashmir & Bangaladesh cats are common
enough as pets, but in much of India you won't see many cats though you
will see plenty of dogs & parrots & cockatoos as pets. One exception is
Bengal, where it is believed cats assist the Great Goddess Sitala, so are
kept in homes to appease Sitala, who gives the pox to people she doesn't
like, but protects from illness whoever is devoted to her. Sitala rides on
a great tiger, & the ordinary housecat is that tiger's servant. The
domesticated "Bengal cat" is believed to be the direct descendant of a
wild bengalese forest cat that
was domesticated in India because they were cousins of the demonic tiger
the goddesses Sitala and Durga ride. The medieval Goddess Bidali had the
form of this cat. The association with evil is still intact, however. The
Great Mother Sitala causes death & disease, but what westerners don't
understand about Saktism in India is that a Goddess like Kali who carries
swords & has blood on her mouth & a ring of human skulls for a waistband,
or like Sitala who has bug-eyes & snake-fangs & smites with terrible
diseases, can be thought of as lovely & wholesome & protecting & addressed
sentimentally as "Ma" the Loving Mother with as much sentimental affection
as a moslem crying out to Allah or Jew to Adonai or Christian to Jesus --
not that those other divinities are even close to lacking demonic
qualities themselves.

Hence people who place the Goddess formost -- primarily saktists who
outnumber brahamanists by a vast number but are mainly lower-casted so you
don't read so much about them as about brahmanic hindus -- love cats the
way they would love Kali or Sitala. In Bengal at least.

There are many dogs kept as pets, some breeds developed in India, though
small English breeds are unusually popular for indoors. There is also a
religious ban on harming dogs, many of which are half feral escapees and
potentially dangerous but not much can be done about them -- in the USA
they'd be rounded up & the majority euthanized, but Indians tolerate them
because killing them is unthinkable. Tourists are warned not to approach
dogs which are not exactly neglected but are not tame either -- they are
respected in the same way monkeys are respected. Still, this very visible
way of seeming to ignore feral dogs does look strange to visiting
westerners, who wrongly take it to mean no one cares about dogs at all,
never seeing that there are also many home-dwelling companion dogs doted
on as would be a pet in the west.

The attitude that mainly low-casted or dirty or lonely people keep pets
(especially dogs; cagebirds were never so stigmatized) is fast changing.
People with money, rather than just the poor, are now keeping pets more
than ever, & that means there are more companies catering to the needs of
pet owners. The biggest Indian pet shop is Kennel Mart who cater formost
to those who keep dogs, tropical fish, and birds. Nothing for cats,
Indians still really don't trust cats.

India is very diverse, & what is true in some places is totally the
opposite in other parts of India, or even in a different neighborhood of a
single expansive city which embodies many cultural & varying caste
attitudes. In Ludhiana, which Brits call "the Manchester of India," dogs
are today such status symbols the marketplace cannot keep up. Late last
year, Indian papers carried warnings from the Indian National Kennel Club
that many dog factories were pawning off dogs with fake pedigrees because
not enough purebreds could be bred fast enough. These warnings caused a
"run" on petshops with "mixed breeds" because people felt guilty seeking
status symbols that inspired cruel dog factories, & the new status symbol
was to prove one's magnanimity by taking home a dog that was not
pedigreed!

So while you will find some high casted people who would be indignant to
be invited into a home with too many animals living inside, this is
more of a caste distinction than a cultural one, & India's Animal Welfare
Association is not only active for "animal right to live in dignity" but
has tried to raise public awareness in India that people with many pets
are not lonely & dirty, but have big hearts. India Animal Welfare
Association has a slogan, "The Four C's," which are Caring, Concern,
Compassion, and Commitment for animals. A.W.A. has established many
offices outside of India too, in places like Korea and Thailand, to extend
their concern for animals internationally. They have been a little
troublesome in less vegetarian-prone countries where poor people eat dogs
-- A.W.A. strongly believes being a vegatarian, and not eating dogs, is
important.

Veterinarian medicine focusing on pet ownership is also of growing importance
in India. They graduate 1,800 new veterinarians every year, which
one Indian veterinarian professional society notes is not nearly enough to
service the needs of India's one million pets. Where they get the "one
million" I don't know, but that's what they toss out as the number of pets
veterinarians must care for. Hindu veterninarians take their profession
religiously, & do "field service" spending time in poor parts of the
nation tending to the needs of animals that belong to people who have no
money. The organization Vet Help India (in Mumbai), and the Bombay
Veterinary College Alumni Association, strive to service these underpaid
or unpaid field veterinarian volunteers to get medicines & vaccinations
for pets & other domestic animals in rural places.

There's a famous Goddess temple for which rats are sacred and people come
to feed the rats & sit with the rats & let rats climb all over them.
Elephants though no longer very useful in labor projects, having been
displaced by tractors, are still kept by families who sell rides
on them, enter them into elephant contests of various sorts, or sell fruit
to tourists so the tourists can feed the elephants.

Places like Bombay with overcrowded conditions have Animal Protection laws
so that animals can continue to live semi-free in street-corner parks or
gardens rather than be routed or removed as they would in the United
States or England. There are even programs to get shots to feral city
animals which will be captured, treated for any illness, & again set free
-- whether a feral dog, or a member of a tribe of city monkeys. Even for
the disliked dog, Indian activists are striving for a NATIONAL "no kill"
law like the laws they have in Bombai, Jaipur, Madras & Delhi, which in
essence says that if a dog or pack of dogs is a problem, they have to be
captured live & relocated, not harmed; because the dog population is not
overwhelming to start with, this has proven practical; the dog population
in the United States is much more out of control no matter how many are
killed or neutered suggesting Americans are the actual ones who care
insufficiently for animals.

To great extent, from the Indian point of view, it is Americans & Brits
who seem to hate and fear animals. We keep dogs and cats sure, but if a
harmless mole makes a mound of dirt in the yard, we kill it. If possums or
racoons get in our yards, we demand Animal Control trap them and get them
away. If there's a squirrel raiding a birdfeeder, it is despised. Even our
purportedly beloved cats and dogs, hundreds of thousands are killed every
year by Animal Control, rendered in rendering plants, & used as "meat &
meat byproduct" filler in dog & cat food, or in fertilizers. Bears aren't
permitted in many areas of wilderness, because people want to feel safe
walking there, & companies like Warehouser hire hunters to kill every
single bear & beaver in a harvestable forest because American businessmen
don't want to share trees with the wildlife. In India, animals are
permitted to live
semi-wild in ordinary neighborhoods rather than restricted to zoos or
distant vanishing forests. To a Brahmanist, keeping pets in cages, or
letting animals live & shed & shit inside the house the way Americans
always do, is not invariably understood; & not permitting anything to live
anywhere near our homes or businesses, THAT looks crazier still, &
probably is crazy.

Here is what Vet Help India says about companion animals in India,
primarily meaning dogs: "Although Veterinary care in India has
traditionally been focused on production species, the companion animal
population is also rapidly growing, particularly among the middle class
and affluent segments of society. Increasing numbers of new kennels and
pet shops, and pet-related publications are emerging; these serve as clear
indications of this trend. With an ever-increasing number of web sites
and magazines, information regarding pet care is now readily available to
pet owners, who are coming to value and expect access to key information."

Indians do also keep caged pets so their methods are not inevitably
alien from the western-value perspective. Aquariums for tropical fish are
popular with well-off Indians. But the most common caged pets are hardbill
birds, and the parakeet is the most popular of all cagebirds in India. In
Jammu and Kashmir the parakeet is so identified with good luck that almost
no house is without one, though it is definitely more loved by Moslem
Indians than Brahmanists & Saktas & Jains. In the 16th Century, a parakeet
saved the life of the Moghul warlord Hamuyan, & the heroic deed of that
parakeet is well known. Many other birds are kept, & the trade in parrots
is very brisk throughout India. Hindu brahmanics are very apt to keep
peahens as garden pets, & these too are praised as heroic animals that
will challenge snakes, & are used like "watch dogs" because they cry out
when anyone tries to invade or break into an enclosed garden or property.
Indian petshops are always best stocked with a wide variety of birds, and
so many have been taken from the wild that many favorites are becoming
endangered & India is trying to enforce laws against collecting so many.

Apart from the famous temple of tame rats sacred to Karni Mata the Great
Rat Mother (who rewards her devottees by having people reborn as rats
cared for in her temple, these being incarnated saints & wise people),
private pet owners are more apt to select a mouse than a rat, & Indian
mouse fanciers believe the mouse is native of India and spread to the rest
of the world from India. They may be right, too, as there are mus species
& subspecies
so old in India it suggests the common housemouse may indeed have been
there longest. The mouse is the favorite pet of the god Ganesh and
therefore of his mother Parvati/Kali. So it has good feelings about it,
and sometimes a rat or other rodent does stand in for the mouse as a
good-luck pet. Even in places where Karni Mata is not worshipped, beggars
are known to bring tame rats in open-top cages to parks or business
streets & fairs, tocharge the smallest coins to pet the rat, which is good
luck, because of Ganesh.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Flowers are commonly badly designed, inartistic in
color, & ill-smelling." -Ambrose Bierce
Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl:
http://www.angelfire.com/grrl/paghat/gardenhome.html#top