A stray order

Time of India

2 days ago

When a court order can derail an age-old, science-backed, community based, man-animal cohabitation that's both healthy and humane…
(Update: At the time of publication of this article, the Supreme Court is reviewing the case and has reserved the judgement. CJI B.R. Gavai has referred the Delhi-NCR stray dog matter to a three-judge Supreme Court bench, the hearing was conducted on August 14, 2025 and the final verdict is now awaited.)
The recent Supreme Court order that aims to clear residential colonies of Delhi of stray dogs as they have been deemed a threat to public safety has drawn fierce discussion and a raging debate across social media. The common response from many who are trying to have it rescinded has been that there is no action plan for what will be in store for these dogs once they have been picked up. With no shelters, arrangements for Animal Birth Control drives, or meals and cover, or even space for that matter –many public advocates for strays claim that the order hasn't been thought through fully and will be impossible to implement. As valid as these questions are, and they are the most serious of concerns, at the very center of the issue is the relocation of strays – that incidentally, is, according to our constitution, illegal in itself.
When I hear the nth animal advocacy or rights activist on social media -whether on videos being circulated on whatsapp, or instagram and facebook- most of them taking a cue from the videos sent out from the former environment minister, Maneka Gandhi 's, office.. Videos that most rescuers and caregivers, myself included, look to at times like this for some measure of sanity, confidence and support. Two comments made by Mrs. Gandhi that have stood out in the querying that going on around the court order. In an interview with TelegraphOnline, she said, 'This is a judgement made out of anger.' and the second one, 'We were expecting something like this anyway'.
While Mrs. Gandhi rightfully points to the escalating anger of certain sections that have cumulatively led to this extreme court order on August 11, 2025, that has since, made some some dog hating sections of the public to go astray with hate commentary and hate polls in turn leading to the illegal picking up of dogs by unknown agencies. There have been vans roaming around in the captial in the dead of the night picking up stray dogs – many, safely asleep in the human-provided comfort of the nooks and corners they find for themselves or are allowed to, by kindly souls in colonies.
Inscrutable van drivers who don't have a driver's license or vehicle registration papers or don't belong to MCD at all, dog catchers who neither have id or even a copy of the actual court order to show the caregivers who try their best to stop the pick ups, standing by their colony dogs in the non-stop downpour lashing the capital since the last few weeks. We all know by now that since the court order hasn't been offically sent to the MCD by the Apex court, the rounding up of strays cannot be implemented and is therefore, illegal.
Looking at the randomness of the order – especially at its suo moto nature- one can't help but think that many of us who fight for the right to care for strays are often completely deluded. And naïve. I say this because the recurring response from all of us, including Mrs. Maneka Gandhi is: Where are the shelters for Delhi's ten lakh strays? Where will these dogs – picked up from east, west and southern areas of Delhi that have the maximum rescuers and caregivers, be housed once stolen from the streets that is their habitat? What will they be fed –moreover, who will feed them? And how will ten lakh dogs be vaccinated when the MCD claim that they have the wherewithal to vaccinate only 2500? How will ABC drives be conducted in such crowded so far non existent shelters that are yet to be built?
Most of all, where is the money, a staggering 500+ crores a month to just feed dogs, according to Maneka Gandhi that will be needed to run hundreds of such proposed, yet to be built, shelters with veterinary facilities and staff, requiring a non stop supply of water and covered spaces for these dogs to take shelter during Delhi's bitter cold winter and when it rains ? To all these questions there is literally no official answer and definitely no proposed plan of action yet there is one honest answer we know in our hearts as caregivers and rescuers. That the court that seems to represent the angry sections who have a grouse against Delhi's strays and such folk – both publicly and privately – simply do not care. Neither do the authorities care. And nor do the MCD for that matter. It's literally that simple.
The reasoning then is more sinister. It's no longer about where to send the dogs or how they will be kept alive but begs the question –how will they be culled. The why part of the question is already clear. Bear with me.
Deep rooted hatred and anger never go astray
There is a deep rooted hatred and envy of street dogs that has festered and been ignited in many sections of city life and society since the last two decades when the city has sprouted hundred of thousands of rescuers, foster, caregivers. Let's face it- as Delhiites we can visibly see (and indeed many haters even had a turn of heart and took part in community caregiving of strays during the Covid pandemic) on a daily basis a few significant changes in residential colonies across the capital.
Each colony has a 'pet / rescue / caregiving group', most colony RWAs have an empathetic official representative who has a pet or two and cares, or at least allows, for timely feeding spots for feeding or for ABC drives, camps or training sessions for the many in such a residential colony who are scared of strays or simply don't know enough to have an informed take, simply stepping away from the ones snoozing under an awning or a lift, passing them by but ignoring them.
Pretty much all Delhi's posh colonies have feeders and many run a van service sending out meals twice a day to outer areas or central Delhi localities to feed the dogs there. Not to mention that many pet owners have extended their pet family to include one or two- or even three- indie rescues adding to the existing pedigree dog. Usually the health of the pedigree improves vastly with the addition to the family of the hardy and relatively healthier stray that hasn't suffered a weaker immmunity thanks to extensive inbreeding that pedigrees are subjected to.
For every battalion of dog lovers who care there are those two or three or fifteen 'dog haters' – always a minority – who rant and rave about the 'menace' of these strays almost sounding over zealous in their mocking, nasty commentary about the 'cynophiles' hiring dog walkers to walk an adopted stray that is amusing and almost comic to them.
Or that such rescuers who have multiple dogs don't make such dog walkers 'pick up their poop' lamenting on colony whatsapp groups about how ensuring the rescues poop fills the streets is more critical to such animal lovers over and above the health and well being of the residents at large. To such residents, poop is visible everywhere they look, often even in places where they usually see garbage strewn routinely never doing anything about it. The barrage of messages one wakes up to some mornings about the 'highly toxic shit of dogs' when it is immediately deemed practical to ban them from gardens and green spaces when dog urine and faeces is actually the best urea for nature, espeically gardens and plants. This minority also post on colony whatsapp groups night and day about the menace of one particular dog they are convinced bites posting copiusly long texts filled with legalese about the antics of such a dangerous dog.
Incidents and accounts are pulled up of when said dog barked and 'bit' someone with many a delivery 'parcelwalla' claiming that 'mujhe woh kutte ne kaata tha'. Upon further interrogation, it is clear that the kutta he is talking about is not this big, well-fed and vaccinated, long-ago-neutered dog you are being told 'is dangerous' but another canine of his childhood days, lodged in the annals of his brain as a recent biting incident.
The fact is, Delhi has recorded less and less rabies cases over the last few years. The latest count its 49 cases and even those are presumptive – where the doctors assumed rabies risk not just from dogs but from rats, cows and crows and administrered vaccinations. During the hearing of the three member bench in court yesterday (August 14,20205), the judge even remarked that he has data showing zero rabies cases in Delhi as of 2025. So why fake the data?
Despite an absentee municipal corporation that could be out there spending the tax payer's money on animal birth control drives and vaccinations, it is Delhi's veritable army of fosters, caregivers, recuers who are doing the needful at their own cost often forgoing some goodies or extras to afford such care on their own with no help from even their local RWAs.
They are the same people who turn up dutifuly at rallies and vigils and walks when heinous crimes occur in the capital, when no one is around to defend the capital's vast nunbers of students fighting to keep partisan politics out of their campuses or the ones raising their voice and chanting slogans in support of their brothers and sisters in the north east, fighting genocide or holding all night vigils for the brilliant minds locked up behind bars but never forgotten like we-know-who – (you can fill in the blanks).
The same fighters who care and text each other in the middle of a freezing cold Delhi winter night to borrow a blanket for a dog down with fever, or an e-collar for one with a skin infection. Always the same bunch of people who are branded activists or snidely called zoophiles or cynophiles.
What the mind doesn't know the eye cannot see
One bright and sunny morning during the heart and heat of Covid, I was out attending to one of the few of my colony dogs I take care of in the south east corner of Delhi where our home is. The dog – Bella – had a bad wound that was refusing to dry up and since no visiting vets were being allowed into the colony which had closed its gates to all outisders including the helps, I did what all the other resourceful rescuers and caregivers to our many community dogs and cats (and birds and monkeys and even nilgai) did and still do – call one of the friendly vets we know personally, note down the advice, buy or order and apply the necessary medications ourselves.
I had been told to comb her coat well and once the wound dried, to bathe her after combing her down well, preferably with a wooden neem comb. Over the course of the few weeks it took to treat Bella, a neighbour or two, would pass by, mask on, their eyes burning behind spectacles piercingly looking at my very public ritual of applying ointment, combing, removing the thicj collection of fur on the sides of the comb into a thaila, taking down buckets to bathe the dog with the help of a hose borrowed from a ground floor neighbour who had offered to keep a tap flowing so that some piped water could speed up the bath.
And every single day that this scene would play out, one or the other neighbour would stop by at a distance to stare, one hand on a hip, or a foot tapping, saying, 'You are doing such a good deed. ' 'God will bless you' 'They must be so grateful for you.' 'I'm sure it is feeling much better with your care.' And even – '..you really have a lot of energy and time and heart, huh?'
To most, a dog is not even a being. It's an it; a four legged cursed thing the 'it' that fell short of good karma in some life time and got stuck with a snout and a tail. Poor it. And poor caregivers. They have two legs and hands, a human brain and capacity to think and yet they waste their time and money not holding down a proper job. to do due diligence by four leggeds. Something must be wrong. It is automatically assumed that if you devote a visible chunk of your day to caregiving, feeding strays outdoors you are either unmarried, unemployed or both. Or, worse, you have too much time and money.
Come to think of it – stray dogs are so inconsequential that their ilk go unnoticed especially during grand festivals like Diwali and Holi when it is not uncommon to see strays scurrying around the streets of Delhi searching madly for a place to hide amid the din the ruckus of the Diwali celebrations that's nothing but war zone level ear shattering noise. Many get lost and displaced in the bid to find a safe corner or space and keep running on empty until they find themsleves in a new part of the city alogether. But revellers drive around, blasting loud music from their cars, bursting crackers often setting a stray on fire or giving them burns.
What does all this tell us about ourselves. given that our relationship with karma seems to be quite transactional and quid pro quo? Bathe stray dog equals god's blessings et al. Essentially it comes down to pity. Joan Didion in her remarkable memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, repeatedly rakes up 'self pity.' An oft repeated line in her memoir almost used rhymically, to a beat : 'The question of self pity'. (You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The question of self-pity.) In the book she refers to her own unravelling mind seeking self-pity through unrealitisc thoughts that connected disparate and unconnected things in the year after the loss of her middle aged daughter Quintana Roo and her screenwriter husband, John Dunn. Both died in in the span of two years. Sharply critical and assessissing of her own self pity she queries herself almost deboning every feeling to uncover the real emotion that her body is too scared to grapple with. The. loss of two people central to her life. The question of self-pity.
Pity is that cheap, easy emotion most of us allow ourseves to wallow in when we can't channel the real deal – that authentic powerful emotion that asks us to self-assess, examine our own selves and look within instead of going outward. Like the time when we lose a loved one, or fail at something repeatedly, are treated shabbily by someone we care about. Pity comes up when we are angry at ourselves for allowing ourselves to feel at all when life happens not the way we wanted it or planned it. Pity is what we feel for stray dogs and the growing number of caregivers and rescuers, a tribe whose numbers are growing by the day in every corner and colony of Delhi. And why is that happening?
Human beings are wired to feel some pretty strong emotions and yet, also often not wired to deal with them well. Often when coping mechanisms fail (you get back to the grind after losing a family member only to discover that you're having a nervous breakdown) or becomes toxic (you lose your mother and start drinking or using heavily). But there is that stray around every corner that –unlike that busy colleague, or snarky friend who judges you- actually makes eye contact, runs up to like its life depended on it and alllows you to give it love, treat it, heal it while it loves you back unconditionally, healing you too. Let's face it for many especially those who cannot afford it, strays are a sole coping mechanism that actually works.
But pity is not empathy. While that colleague or relative or friend may pity your sorry state of affairs, that lost job, that dead and long gone family.. The strays give you that prized, single shot, megawatt injection of empathy. Empathy is like honey, rich and viscous and thick, healing and complex. It takes a lot of kicks and battering to grow empathy in one's clogged veins and artieries, not just a few break ups or your boss ignoring you and refusing your raise but an acute understanding of another being's emotional state (as opposed to state of mind).
I lost my twenty-two-year-old cat recently, and I would sit down at my desk to write, crying instead, and my adopted indie rescue would show up a minute before I would start to cry because his body could sense my convulsions coming on before even I knew. By now we all know that when humans lose their sense of empathy operating off the glacial tip of the iceberg feeling of 'pity', anger sits within like a dormant volcano waiting to burst at any minute. It's a pity that we humans don't realise that our indies are capable of even sensing that deep-seated anger, often withdrawing to stay away from the haters on their own automatically without any agencies of the state having to do anything.
The last scene in the season one finale of Paatalok has an unforgettable moment. That a scriptwriter wrote it into the show in itself nails the sentient and nuanced nature of this dystopian series with a heart. When the central character's (a television journalist, played by Neeraj Kabi- who has a bounty on his head and saved from imminent death when the killers observe that his wife rescues strays). When the wife (played by Swastika Mukherji) is told that her sleepless nights, staying up to care for a rescued pregnant stray is ennobling (and the good karma that she attracts is what, ostensibly, saved her husband ) she replies that it is she who is being rescued not the dog.
In J.M. Coetzee's Nobel prize winning 'Disgrace', the central character, David Lurie, thrust out of academics after an affair with one of his students into the far flung, outer reaches of South Africa… Laurie finds himself helping his daughter on a farm, daily culling hundreds of dogs to meet a chilling magic number set by the community of caregivers. The dogs need to die because the state won't have them. The dogs are healthy but dogs that the socio-culturally divided new African nation state isn't willing to accept as their own, so the answer lies in killing them all before the state gets to them anyway. If they can't be monetised, they can't be kept. Dead simple.
In the Iranian writer, Sadeq Hedayat's short story,The Stray Dog, a self-destructive society spiraling dangerously downwards towards self-inflicted dictatorial and patriarchial regime is depicted through the story of a lost pedigree dog of Scottish descent, 'Two human eyes shone in his woolly face. A human spirit could be seen in the depths of its eyes.'
In contrast the mean, sly pettiness the dog is surrounded by on a filthy, bare street lined with little shops that sell meat where even the sycamore is barely alive, 'For every groan the dog gave, he would be hit on the side with a stone..It was as if all the others were on the boys side craftily and slyly encouraging him and then doublng up with laughter.' The penultimate unraveling of human society. In November 2006, republication of Hedayat's work in uncensored form was banned in Iran, as part of a sweeping purge.
Should we even call cared for, healthy community animals 'strays'?
Calling all street dogs strays is contentious and wholly inaccurate. A dog that has lived in a neighbourhood for years, been fed by its residents, that defends the colony like its own and is vaccinated and treated routinely for health issues or concerns, and sterilised would have at some point graduated from being the stray that it was when it first arrived to becoming a community animal that has a one name, probably more names depending on who and how many feed it… Has a collar and patch of garden or garage to sleep in perhaps even a bed. It is no longer an it but a resident like any other with its own character and mannerisms and good and bad days.
We all have that one neighbour who barks at their spouse or kid one day and cooes to some kids playing in the park the next. Even Judge Pardiwalla would know of them. And that's when the canines presence melds with that of the humans it surrounds itself with guarding and protecting them the best way it can, by occasuonally biting a threatening presence or barking away in the dead of the night when an intruder or interloper lopes by.
To banish them to the gates of hell is a human flaw and failing in dealing with our own anger at the divided, highly polarised society we have created and are now struggling to survive in – even angry dogs calm down when their irrational fears are assuaged by an empathetic, trained human.
Ask the trainers, if not the Indian ones, try the ones in phoren countries where training canines is a prized profession in itself and actually saves human lives.
Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author's own.