AHIMSA, DOGS AND THE SOUL OF A NATION

By – Poojita Somayajula
Pune, 18 December 2025: Since time immemorial, dogs have lived alongside humans, not on the margins of our lives, but within them. They guarded homes, accompanied journeys, warned of danger, and offered companionship without condition. Across cultures, this bond has endured, but in India it carried a deeper meaning.

It was rooted in Ahimsa.

Ahimsa was never merely a spiritual slogan or a philosophical abstraction. It was a lived ethic, a way of being. It shaped how people related not only to other humans, but to all sentient life. Animals were not viewed as expendable or inferior. They were part of the household, the village, the ecosystem, and the moral imagination of the land.

This ethos was not confined to one religion or scripture. It was cultural. Anyone who has lived in India, regardless of faith, has been shaped by it in subtle but lasting ways.

Somewhere along the way, we drifted.

What we are witnessing today, rising hostility towards community animals, calls for removal, confinement, or elimination, is not progress or modernity. It is a profound disconnection from empathy, responsibility, and the foundations that once held our society together. This land once treated animals as family, not as inconveniences to be erased. Compassion was instinctive, not selective. Protection was understood as duty, not as an emotional indulgence.

False Solutions and Convenient Illusions

In moments of fear, societies often reach for quick fixes. In the context of community dogs, shelters are repeatedly presented as the solution. In reality, shelters at the scale required in India are not a solution at all. They are a symptom of systemic failure.

India is home to crores of community dogs. The idea that all of them can be removed from their territories and housed indefinitely is not only unrealistic, it is fundamentally dishonest.

Under Indian regulations linked to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, a dog housed in a kennel is entitled to a minimum space of three feet by four feet. This is often cited as a welfare standard, but an honest question must be asked. Is it humane, or even practical, to expect a sentient being to spend 15 to 17 years of its life confined to a space that small?

Even if one were to accept these dimensions as adequate, everything costs money. Land costs money. Construction costs money. Staffing, food, veterinary care, sanitation, electricity, water, and long-term maintenance all cost money. This is not abstract funding. This is taxpayer money, your money and mine.

If citizens are outraged by shoddy public services when it comes to roads, healthcare, sanitation, or education, how can they be indifferent when the same public funds are proposed to support large-scale confinement systems that are logistically unworkable and ethically questionable? How can a society that aspires to Western Europe, the United States, or Singapore-level civic infrastructure accept standards for animals that it would find unacceptable for humans?

The Cost Reality We Avoid Confronting

Recent reports, policy discussions, and court proceedings have cited a conservative estimate of forty rupees per dog per day as the cost of basic shelter care. Even at this minimal figure, the mathematics are staggering.

Multiply that daily cost across crores of dogs, and then across a lifespan of 12 to 17 years. The figures escalate into enormous daily and annual expenditures. Anyone who feeds dogs regularly knows that forty rupees barely covers a nutritious meal, let alone vaccinations, medical treatment, trained caregivers, sanitation, or infrastructure.

This again is taxpayer money.

For those who believe the issue of community dogs has nothing to do with them, it has everything to do with them. Public funds belong to everyone. When humans themselves continue to struggle with homelessness, food insecurity, inadequate healthcare, lack of education, and unsafe public spaces, it is unrealistic to expect that voiceless animals will receive dignified, lifelong care in mass confinement systems. In practice, such systems become overcrowded, opaque, and vulnerable to misappropriation, while suffering remains hidden behind walls.

What Actually Works: Sense and Science

The solution to human-animal coexistence challenges does not lie in cruelty disguised as efficiency or in utopian fantasies. It lies in approaches that are scientifically proven, economically sensible, and ethically sound.

Systematic and substantial daily feeding ensures dogs are calmer, healthier, and far less likely to forage, fight, or come into conflict with humans. When fed consistently, dogs integrate into communities and often act as natural deterrents to crime and intrusions.

Strict implementation of the Animal Birth Control programme is essential. Population management must address the root cause rather than the visible symptom. ABC programmes, when implemented honestly and consistently, are the only humane and effective long-term solution. Comprehensive vaccination is equally critical. This means not only anti-rabies, but full immunisation protocols such as 9-in-1 or 11-in-1 vaccines. Healthy, inoculated dogs contribute directly to safer and healthier communities.

Transparency and accountability must underpin all of this. Public funds must be traceable. Targets must be measurable. Progress must be verifiable. Without transparency, systems fail and suffering multiplies.

Shelters have a role, but a limited one. Short-term care for injured, abandoned, or terminally ill animals is necessary. Mass, lifelong confinement is not.

Fear, Data, and the Problem of Exaggeration

Public fear around dog bites has been significantly amplified by misreporting and flawed data interpretation. Many reported bites are later found to be caused by monkeys or rodents, not dogs at all. Among confirmed dog bite cases, a large proportion involve owned or pet dogs rather than community dogs.

There is also a serious statistical distortion at play. One bite on one person requires a course of five anti-rabies vaccine doses. These five doses are frequently recorded as five separate bite incidents, inflating numbers and creating a false narrative of escalation. This misrepresentation is unethical and dangerous. It fuels fear psychosis, particularly among elders, which is then passed down within families and communities.

Policy built on exaggerated or inaccurate data does not protect society. It destabilises it.

Violence Against Animals and the Real Threat to Society

There is a well-documented psychological and criminological link between violence against animals and violence against humans. Individuals who commit acts of cruelty against animals often display deep deficits in empathy, impulse control, and moral reasoning. Research across jurisdictions shows that animal abuse is frequently a precursor to violence against women, children, and other vulnerable groups.

How a person treats an animal speaks volumes about how they perceive power, consent, and vulnerability.

These individuals are the true threat to society, not community dogs.

Community dogs have, on countless occasions, prevented crimes, raised alarms, and protected women, children, and neighbourhoods from intruders and predators. Yet the response has increasingly been to confine or remove the very animals that serve as informal guardians, while overlooking the human perpetrators who pose demonstrable danger.

This contradiction becomes even more troubling when examined through the lens of law.

At present, there is no specific legal provision in India that criminalises bestiality against animals as a distinct and serious sexual offence. Individuals who rape or sexually abuse animals often face minimal consequences, allowing them to roam freely within society. Meanwhile, dogs that have committed no crime, and have often protected communities, are rounded up, confined, or destroyed.

This inversion of justice raises a disturbing question. How can a society claim to protect women and children while failing to address known patterns of violent behaviour in humans, yet punishing animals that lack agency or malice?

Children, Innocence, and Learned Cruelty

Children are not born fearing or hating animals. There is a natural affinity between children and animals, rooted in curiosity, gentleness, and mutual trust. This bond persists until it is corrupted by fear, prejudice, and misinformation projected by adults.

Children learn by example. If they witness cruelty normalised, whether towards animals or fellow humans, they are likely to internalise those behaviours. In a society where independent thought is rarely encouraged and conformity is rewarded, this becomes especially dangerous.

Instead of teaching empathy, responsibility, and coexistence, fear is passed down as wisdom. The result is not safety, but alienation.

This is not an argument against parenthood. It is a call for accountability in how values are transmitted. If India wishes to address violence, overpopulation, and social breakdown, it must examine how humans are raised, not scapegoat beings who cannot speak.

Progress Without Losing Our Soul

India often speaks of becoming Singapore, China, or the United States. But progress does not require surrendering conscience. Development without compassion is not growth. Efficiency without empathy is not civilisation.

Ahimsa is not weakness. It is discipline. It is restraint. It is the understanding that power carries responsibility.

A society is ultimately judged by how it treats its voiceless. This conversation is not only about dogs. It is about remembering who we are, and deciding who we wish to become.