NEW DELHI"I am again, in a battle for my life!" Indian minister of state for animal welfare Maneka Gandhi e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on May 24.
"We raided the premier AIDs research lab in India last week and found a chamber of horrors, rescued the animals, and took them away. We found starving monkeys with no fingers and teeth, bleeding from their bottoms, with maggots in any food they had. Now Health Minister C.P. Thakur and many scientists and journalists are denouncing me all over the place," Mrs. Gandhi elaborated.
"In this country, as in all the Third World," Mrs. Gandhi added, "'research' and 'scientist' are divine words. The fact that we have never filed a patent on any medicine, depending only on making cheaper versions of foreign medicines, is now all my fault, since I have purportedly stopped 'research.'
"There is a cabinet reshuffle coming up, and this is perfectly timed for that," Mrs. Gandhi noted, contemplating the possibility that she might be politically sacrificedin part because of her open opposition to animal sacrifice in the name of religion, as well as in the name of science.
Most Hindu religious scholars agree that animal sacrifice "is forbidden in the Hindu scriptures for the modern age," as Brahmin teacher Vasu Murti explained in a recent Internet denunciation of the practice. Yet sacrifices are still routinely performed by members of the relatively large and influential Kali cult, and by scattered rural communities.
"My next big battle, if I survive this one," Mrs. Gandhi pledged, "is to get animal sacrifices stopped all over India. Hindus alone hold more than 50,000 sacrificial events per year, and at each of them hundreds of animals are killed. If we can stop this, we can fairly criticise and restrain the Muslim slaughter of animals at the Feast of Atonement," the celebration of which often touches off riots in India, when rumors circulate that cows have been killed.
Mrs. Gandhi lost a round against animal sacrifice on March 29, asserted Azizur Rahman, Calcutta correspondent for the South China Morning Post and the Washington Times, in their editions of April 15. In a report replete with details apparently obtained only second or third hand, Rahman asserted that 10 horses were sacrificed 16 days earlier at a remote village in Orissa state.
Rahman alleged that Orissa chief minister Naveen Paitnak allowed the horse sacrifice to occur because his political party, Biju Janata Dal, "is a member of the ruling coalition in New Delhi, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party."
But as the May edition of ANIMAL PEOPLE pointed out while quoting Rahman, Mrs. Gandhi, elected as an independent, is also a member of the ruling coalition.
"There was no sacrifice," Mrs. Gandhi told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "Naveen Paitnak intervened, the district magistrate took quick action, and the horses were taken away. Some were singed by standing too close to the fire," in which Rahman had said their blood was sprinkled, "but all of them are all right now. This is a case of story building on story," explained Mrs. Gandhi, who is herself a former newspaper reporter, "because each paper was pinching from the other. The original report," Mrs. Gandhi said, "was filed by a Calcutta newspaper, and everyone took liberally from it."
Mrs. Gandhi faxed to ANIMAL PEOPLE the April 17 report of Naveen Patnaik that "No such sacrifice has taken place," and an account by Kendrapara district collector K.C. Mohanty of what did occur.
"The Dasaswamedha Yagna," as the event was called, "was organized by Girisyrya Sai Baba and Mata Swadi Pragnya Saraswati of Podana village," Mohanty wrote. "This kind of religious ritual is a common social feature in Orissa. It is a fact that 10 beach horses were hired and displayed as a ritual during the Yagna. I discussed this matter with Nirmala Ku Ratha, one of the organizers, and some of the local people. The suspicion that these animals were brought for sacrifice is not at all the fact. After the Yagna, the owner of the animals took them back. All of the animals were returned safely, and there were no casualties nor any sacrifice whatever."
Rahman quoted Hindu priest Bishwanath Acharya as stating that, "The horses were only burned a bit. Considering the immense luck the sacrifice will bring to all of us, we should not complain over such trifles."
This statement apparently involved a mistranslation of a word meaning "ritual" as a word meaning "sacrifice."
Rahman also quoted World Hindu Council leader Maharshi Girisurya Swami as saying that, "Some anti-Hindu elements tried their best to stop this whole ritual, but the god was on our side."
"The ritual went on," said Mrs. Gandhi, "but without the horses."
Horses may be at greater risk in connection with the resumed manufacture of snake antivenin at the Bengal Chemical complex in Calcutta. Authorization to start the process by injecting venom into 20 horses was issued in late May by the federal health department, three months after the facility was closed by order of the Supreme Court of India.
Horses, because of their great body mass, have a far higher tolerance than humans for absorbing snake venom into their bloodstreams, where the venom is neutralized by the production of antibodies. Blood drawn from a horse who has had a venom injection is used to make antivenin for the emergency treatment of human snakebite victims.
Horses who are healthy, fed and exercised properly, not overdosed, and not overbled may produce antivenin serum for many years without suffering serious effects.
The Supreme Court of India closed the Bengal Chemical facility and seven others in February 2002, on recommendation of a six-member investigative committee, which found violations of horse care requirements so severe as to jeopardize the quality of the antivenin produced.
"We found that of 85 horses owned by Bengal Chemical, 21 were not even fit for drawing blood. Some had difficulty standing," Compassionate Crusaders Trust founder Debasis Chakrabarty told Kaushik Ghosh of The Statesman.
Compassionate Crusaders took custody of the sick and injured horses, and was directed by the federal Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals to continue to monitor the conditons at Bengal Chemical.
The resumption of antivenin production after animal welfare and sanitation standards were met was anticipated by the Supreme Court order, and by Mrs. Gandhi in seeking it, but was nonetheless portrayed by some opposition newspapers as a defeat for Mrs. Gandhi in the increasingly heated national battle over laboratory supervision.
The Indian biomedical research industry was supervised until February 1996 by the national Institutional Animal Ethics Committee, appointed by the health minister. The director-general of the IAEC traditionally also chaired the CPCSEA, appointed by the Animal Welfare Board of India.
In February 1996, however, Mrs. Gandhi became chair of the CPCSEA , and began claiming independent regulatory authority. Experiments approved by the IAEC no longer win automatic CPCSEA approval.
The Times of India, aligned with the opposition Congress Party, in March 2002 amplified the complaints of researchers.
"Pharmaceutical companies have started looking for a more conducive environment in neighboring countries, say ministry sources. Federal health and family welfare minister C.P. Thakur says he says already mentioned the matter to the Prime Minister and will be taking it up at a formal meeting soon," the Times of India said.
Elaborated Times of India reporters Roli Srivastava and Manjari Mahajan, a few days later, "Research on monkeys at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, and the National Centre for Laboratory Animal Sciences in Hyderabad was stopped by the CPCSEA. The Institute for Research in Reproduction, in Mumbai, has been waiting for CPCSEA clearance for its projects on large animals for the past three years. The LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad has stopped all experiments on the eyes of animals."
Mrs. Gandhi responded that the CPCSEA had never stopped any scientific project, but "questioned the wasteful expenditure done on duplicative and irrelevant research, and for grants that are being misused in the name of science."
Mrs. Gandhi said that 590 laboratories had rectified deficiencies in animal care during her tenure as CPCSEA chair.
"Badly kept animals means invalid research, which is a waste of India's money and bad for human health," she emphasized.
The debate escalated further after Mrs. Gandhi on May 11 ordered the National Institute of Virology in Pune to halt animal experiments, one day after CPSEA member and PETA/India representative Anuradha Sawhney discovered during a surprise inspection that 37 monkeys appeared to be kept in darkness, in cages too small for them. The monkeys suffered from skin diseases and hair loss, and displayed stereotypical behavior, Sawhney reported. Birds also suffered from skin diseases, sheep had overgrown hooves and nasal discharge, the facilities were filthy, and there was no veterinarian on duty, Sawhney said. Her videotaped findings were later confirmed by an inspection by delegates from the Bombay Veterinary College.
NIV director A.C. Mishra said that this was all "a temporary situation," exascerbated by a power blackout while "all electrical connections were being transferred to a newly built facility" for the monkeys.
Housing 1,725 animals in all, NIV in July 2001 flunked an inspection by CPCSEA consultant Syed Qadri.
Fumed Mrs. Gandhi, "The authorities do not have a single health record, history of medical treatment, or even experimental history of many of the animals. What experiments were they doing? The NIV is supposed to be finding cures for HIV, hepatitis A, and influenza. However, the money given to the institute for these experiments has been completely misused and has disappeared."
Concluded Mrs. Gandhi, "Each battle starts with me being completely panic-stricken, as I look at the forces ranged against me, and yet each battle is won and I am still standing, looking older, fatter and more tired. This one frightens me more than most," she admitted. "The last one was waged only only by businesssmen. Now I am fighting businessmen posing as scientists."
But her recent record against big business has been rather successful, with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals again backing up the boycott of Indian leather long sought by Indian humane organizations, after a year-long hiatus. Leather is believed to be the most lucrative product of the largely illegal Indian slaughter industry.
Pressured by PETA, Daimler Chryslerthe third-largest carmaker in the worldannounced on May 21 that it will no longer use Indian leather, including in Mercedes-Benz models manufactured in India.
Other firms to drop Indian leather under threat of PETA boycott include Adidas-Salomon, Marks & Spencer, GAP, J. Crew, Clarks, Gucci, Nike, Reebok, Florsheim, Kenneth Cole, Foresta Internacional, Spiegel, Eddie Bauer, and Harley Davidson.
The Daimler Chrysler announcement came one day after a Mumbai demonstration against a federal Planning Commission advisory board recommendation that the Indian slaughter industry should be expanded.
According to the Times of India, the advisory board proposed lifting the national ban on beef exports, removing restrictions on buffalo slaughter, allowing bullocks to be killed at any age, weakening the federal Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, opening more authorized slaughterhouses, moving jurisdiction over slaughterhouse zoning from the local level to the state level, and forming a national Meat Board, with a mandate to double Indian per capita meat consumption.
Participating in the protest were People for Animals chapters from as far away as Bangalore, Beauty Without Cruelty-India, the Theosophical Society of India, the Bombay SPCA & Dinshaw Petit Hospital for Animals, the Mata Rukminidevi Ashram, the Viniyog Parivar Trust, and PETA-India.
Among them, they represented the spectrum of Indian advocacy organizations: the young and secular, those founded during the British occupation, and those rooted in traditional Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain teachings.
M.C.