AN URGENT SOS FOR HELP TO H.R.H. QUEEN ELIZABETH II FROM NEW DELHI’S PERSECUTED ANIMALS
You Royal Majesty,
We, the unfortunate animals of India’s capital city, like animals everywhere, have no voice, no real rights and no say in our fate. We make this desperate appeal through and to those who may/may not love us but hold onto unfashionable concepts of justice and fairness. Aesthetes, who love this city for its quirks and character ; distinct thumbprints which are Delhi’s alone : human beings, who cannot bear to watch our needless torture and extermination passively. Aided, of course, by faint stirrings of the implacable finger of God. The case Your Majesty, succinctly presented, is this :
The government of your erstwhile colony, through its organs : the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the New Delhi Municipal Committee, at the behest of an opaque, corruption ridden, dysfunctional and entirely questionable Organizing Committee of the Commonwealth Games 2010, has decided to erase this ancient city’s essential character : community animals. As surely as India, we have existed as a leitmotif of civilization. Steeped in its sensibility, its culture, religion and tradition for the 4600 years this city has been . In the post modern century of teflon, plastic and ersatz pretensions, alas, we have no place. We have been robbed, are routinely kidnapped, separated from our families, caged, tied, beaten, poisoned, crammed and killed. Curiously, laws and even this country’s apex court exist for us in theory, but not in practice. And whilst we suffer the cruelty of our enemies, the silence of our friends pierces deeper.
The cattle were robbed of their pastures decades ago as this greedy city swelled. The lovingly offered roti disappears as rapidly as dying traditions. Cattle roam in exile to eat the city’s new and endemic offering : polythene and filth, to painfully and slowly die. The Games offer an alternative : to be confined in shelters to starve to death and/or be sold for slaughter. This, in a country which claims to revere the cow as mother, the bull as Shiva’s mount. And where right wingers threaten riot after riot for trivia. Horses, those environment friendly clip-clops with irresistible retro appeal, who have ferried generations of commuters and are still pride of place in upscale New York , have been thrown out of New Delhi ; their stables razed. Donkeys, who built and still toil for New Delhi’s BPO and MNC showcases like Gurgaon, have suffered similar fate. Monkeys, worshipped by hypocritical society as Hanuman on Tuesdays and Saturdays, have been exiled after the last bits of inhabitable urban forest disappeared in New Delhi. This government is now targeting community dogs. There are already orchestrated pogroms underway to kill, dislocate and/or confine those, who in most cases are sterilized, vaccinated, looked after by ordinary citizens and pose no threat to anyone.
The governing dispensation considers all non human beings unsightly, regressive, exterminable pests. Its view of voting bipeds who proliferate and breed like bacteria is copiously indulgent. It imports poverty from neighbouring Bangladesh, latent upheaval from the uneducated hinterland, and unemployable scores from medieval seminaries. With regards to us the argument , if there can be one, is that of Delhi’s image in the eyes of squabbling nations for a mere fortnight and an event mired in murky controversy. They say New Delhi must be an international city and appear appropriately tony. A contradiction in terms : while the innocent, the powerless and voiceless are persecuted, denied their right to life, picked up and trashed, corrupt politicians and officials thrive irrespective of demonstrable ugliness and proven hands-in-till. The great Delhi middle class openly pisses, masturbates and defecates on its streets, fornicates in its parks, spits filthy red betel leaf juice everywhere, vandalizes or simply destroys street furniture, litters wantonly, squats on the floor of its showpiece metro rail, beats or kills while holding up traffic for the brush of one fender against another, robs and occasionally murders unsuspecting tourists, defaces historic monuments. The aspiring middle classes in Delhi’s villages run parallel medieval governments within India’s National Capital Territory and compete with the Taliban in awarding capital punishment in kangaroo courts. Newly arrived representatives of India’s overwhelming majority glue grimy faces to car windows, stalk tourists with crafted persistence and drugged babies. Or otherwise service potbellied, shabby policemen in dingy alleys as the capital of India fights itself for electricity, water, sewage, housing and that great bane of this overpopulated country : swarms of unwanted living bodies. It dreams of world-class status while being unable to manage a few millimeters of excess rain which turn its arterial roads into muddy, stinking rivers. The capital of India deludes itself by planting bamboo screens across its slums for the Commonwealth Games and dressing up a sewer which was once a holy river. New Delhi unabashedly showcases the utterly ugly face of a decaying civilization and a rotting country. The irony is, it denies truth. And in its propensity for the insensate, deludes itself completely. But things, we know, come to pass. Eventually.
The inept collaboration of Janus faced crooks and fools which rules, believes it can woo the world and seduce the 2020 Olympics by persecuting those who have no vote, no status, no voice : us, the animals. Where do ‘dumb’ animals figure in all this ? Perhaps, nowhere. But since the Commonwealth Games 2010 are parvenu India’s attempt to appear ‘proper’ in the comity of nations, since the country swaggers in its belief of an emerging power, and because its national emblem (which incidentally incorporates a bull as well as a horse) proudly and loudly proclaims, Satyamev Jayate : Truth Alone Triumphs ; we, the powerless, the disenfranchised, the voiceless and the broken, appeal to you, former Monarch of Empire and eternal Sovereign of the Commonwealth of Nations, to discharge that one divine right of all true rulers : Direct. Direct and remind this former colony of its lost civilizational heritage. And with a more than liberal dose of quintessential royal dryness, disdain and sense of fairplay. Remind a moth eaten culture the moorings of its own proclamations. Direct it to discover itself and be itself. James Princep, an official of the Honourable East India Company discovered and introduced India to itself in the 19th century. Her Most Exalted Royal Highness, the Queen of Britannia, may choose to refresh native memories. Two centuries is a long time under the harsh Indian sun to retain evaporating lessons.
Long Live the Queen ! May Her Star Shine Forever Bright and May God Protect, the wretched Animals of Delhi. Us in this age of darkness and ignorance ; Kaliyug.
(Transcribed by your most obedient and humble servant,Amit Chaudhery, on behalf of non human beings of the ancient necropolis of Delhi).
Writer, naturalist, activist, entrepreneur, teacher, contrarian and freelance journalist ; by training and vocation, Amit Chaudhery is a communications and public affairs professional. He has worked extensively in public diplomacy and held leadership / senior management positions at the country CXO and CEO level in prominent Indian and international corporations. An avid folk and alternative historian/chronicler, Chaudhery is keenly associated with environmental and animal rights issues and is a Government of India nominee on institutional animal ethics committees for the ministries of Environment & Forests, Defense, Health, Science & Technology. He also serves as President, People For Animals, India’s largest animal rights and welfare NGO.