Dr Anju Pandey, Assistant Professor, School of Law, UPES, Dehradun &
G. N. Sinha, IFS (Retd.) Professor, School of Law, UPES, Dehradun
ABSTRACT
As per the report of Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organization (FIAPO) and All Creatures Great and Small (ACGS), 4, 93,910 animals fell victims to crimes committed by humans from 2010 to 2020. The nature of these crimes included beating, physical abuses, intentional violence, acid throwing, irreparable harm and unnatural sex.
These facts and figure pertain to a country where we personify animals as God in our ancient scriptures and succeeding civilizations and some of those traditions are still in practice symbolically. This reality raised a very fundamental question about our societies’ sensitivity towards living creatures. The core reason behind this sad reality is that humans have always undervalued non-human beings and never accorded them their intrinsic rights as available to themselves.
If we investigate Indian legal system, it has accommodated animals’ concerns in constitution and in statutes also. However, the spirit of these laws have not translated into actionable reality. Now the question is if laws are not working to bring a social change where all living creatures may become entitled to natural rights of their survival then what else could bring that change. In this context, there could be two reasons, whether the development of laws failed to keep pace with the imperative of rights based approach or implementation mechanisms are ineffective.
In this unfortunate reality, there is a pressing need to move towards the rights based approach to animals instead of doing welfare for animals that too for humans’ needs. . This transition requires revisiting the philosophies towards animals’ rights and to find workable means and methods to bring social change where non-humans and humans could live in harmony instead of conflict.
This research paper intends to revisit the traditional and modern philosophies towards rights of animals and to highlight the reasons behind the existing gaps between the legal and constitutional mandates towards animals’ rights and the existing status where violence against animals are very common. In addition, it seeks to suggest a set of workable solutions for the protection of rights of animals.
Keywords: Rights based approach, animal rights, animal laws, Indian traditions on animal protection
