Blood Sport : outlookindia.com

Blood Sport : outlookindia.com

What sort of perverts are these people? Killing for fun? For thrill? If these poor mute animals had in them the power to retaliate - would these guys still kill for fun ? What did these poor animals do to these stupid illiterate "high-class" people?

Time to chill....

I have to say that this is a very good and timely piece of journalism from Outlook. Maneka Gandhi apparently dissuaded Outlook from doing this piece as she thought that it would end up glamourizing hunting. I hope she isn't right.

Why do people hunt? I understand if somebody has to hunt for food. One's survival is more important than anything else in the world. So if one were starving to death, it would probably be all right to kill. However, with the beginning of agriculture, there was no need to hunt for food.

I suppose that then, the "noblemen" and royalty took up hunting as a sport. There are many references to hunting for sport in the Ramayana and Mahabharata. People at that time probably did not have much else to do. So they hunted - but I seem to think that they did not kill with such abandon (I may be mistaken here). Anyway, there were several more species in existence in India before the British came and decided to wipe them off.

On a different note, the act of enjoying the hunt smacks of something primal and basic in us. I think it is the same instinct that goads us to watch violent movies or kill enemy soldiers in video games. Even this is not conducive to a good mental makeup - but it is a lot better than killing animals in flesh and blood. (I had written in an earlier post on how doing this mentally is karmically close to doing the real thing)

For some people however, they want to kill animals physically. As this article mentions, these people must be really insecure or not have a thing to do in this world. What do you think Pataudi does every day? He has absolutely nothing to do! But he has to give vent to his feelings and he goes off hunting in his or his friend's Accord. Moreover, they want to hunt endangered species and species considered holy by certain tribes. (The blackbuck killed was both an endangered species as well as holy to the Bishnoi people)

Hunting purely for sport is depraved and unfair. I challenge the hunters who really want the thrill to fight a leopard or a tiger bare-handed and then kill it. But no! One has to have a powerful enough gun and be mounted in a safe place in a machan and then kill animals from some place far away where the animal cannot even see them. How fair is this?

As for Pataudi and his ilk of rich and inconsiderate brutes that have been interviewed in this article, they should be made to feel the anguish of a creature hunted. How will they feel if they are chased around till they are tired and then be subjected to the fear of death? These hunters might begin to understand then.

Instead of demanding a paltry fee of Rs 60,000 (which is peanuts for people like this) and simple imprisonment, a punishment that actually scares the heck out of these people would be much better. That way, these guys may begin to understand the value of life. If a similar act had been committed in the US, environmentalists would have raised such a hue and cry that the government would have to give a couple of 99 year life sentences to each of the accused.

May good sense prevail in the judges and may they throw the book at the offenders.