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Journalism of Courage
Activists at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar recently demanded that personhood status be given to animals. They said that it is ‘an unjust prejudice that deems humans superior to animals’. DiJ now takes the opinions of several animals regarding this matter. We start off with perhaps the most sagacious of them all — elephants.
DiJ: So would you like to be elevated to human status?
Elephant: What elevation are you talking about? I’m 10 feet tall and weigh 5 tons and could flick you across a football field. You better ask someone your size and then come back to me.
DiJ: Easy there; all right: tiger sahib what do you feel?
Tiger: I’ll snarl and you’ll go running to the washroom. Tell me who is superior?
DiJ: Ah, maybe apes and monkeys have different opinions…
Chimpanzee: Oye bachche, Mr Darwin got it all wrong. We and our gorilla and orangutan cousins evolved from you — not the other way around. You should be protesting for simian status! You should be going around waving placards and shouting, ‘gully, gully me shor hain, hum sab bandar hain!’
Dij: Let’s hear what the dogs have to say…
Dog: Arre you have already elevated us to your status — without the decency to ask us! Do you think we like being dollied around wearing bonnets and bowties and shades? You call yourselves ‘pet parents’; eww…how gross is that? And yet, we forgive you for all your sins: you yell at us as if we invented Monday mornings and we greet you when you get back home with tail wagging and licks. Do you do that to your own kind?
DiJ: Okay, here’s the thing. We humans pretty much control life on the planet. We’re in charge… we can make you go extinct…
Elephant: Yes and what a good job of that you’re doing. You are the only species that can make yourselves go extinct too and that bombs its own children wholesale… pinnacle of achievement!
DiJ: Ah, but males of many species kill the babies fathered by other males. Ask Tiger sahib that…
Tiger: That’s just a survival strategy. Besides we don’t go in for wholesale slaughter and think that makes us more powerful than every other living creature.
DiJ [slapping ear]: Ah, yes, Lady Anopheles, you’re wailing in my ear. Do you want to say something?
Lady Anopheles [sounding like a soprano dentist’s drill]: Listen bub, we’ve gotten rid of more of you than even you have managed in all your wars and conflicts and with all your terrible weapons. So don’t patronise us. And remember what that invisible virus called Covid-19 did to you guys?
DiJ: But see, if you are elevated to our status you may get seats in the UN General Assembly and Houses of Parliament and senates…
Elephant: Thank you, we don’t need to be members of any more zoos or circuses.
Bufello: [butting in]: If we are given personhood, will it mean you will stop raising us for meat?
Chicken [excitedly]: And us too, for KFC and eggs?
Dij: That may not be possible, but see even among your species some are vegan and some are not. Variety is the barbeque sauce of life!
Elephant: We still can’t see how personhood will elevate us. We don’t go to war, we don’t poison the air or befoul our waters, we don’t ravage forests, and, the carnivores only kill and eat what they need. We don’t throw anything away. Everything we deal with is recycled in some form or the other. Zero waste. We don’t say one thing and do the opposite…
If we have issues among ourselves, we sort them out then and there: sometimes with force, most times without. We don’t spend 30 years arguing in courts, viciously trolling one another anonymously, or entering nurseries and using machine guns and meat cleavers on toddlers and babies. We don’t sell homeless people to countries that are willing to buy them. Look at your report card in these matters!
Macaw: Have you read that book The Parrot in the Mirror? The author has said that if you were to be birds you would be us. He was complimenting us but really we feel quite insulted. We have none of your atrocious and appalling habits… so why should we want personhood status? You should want ‘parrothood’ status!
DiJ: But look at the technological advances we have made, and which you could be a part of if you were given personhood status. Like in medicine and space exploration… You could be great explorers and find new territories…
Elephant [nodding]: I was hoping you would bring that up. Despite all your medical and technological advances, you still can’t lift 850 times your own weight as some rhinoceros beetles can, you can’t sense the earth’s magnetic field and can’t find your way to a washroom without Google Maps. You can’t generate 600 volts of electricity as eels do or regenerate your limbs like sea stars do…need I go on?
As for space exploration our one demand if we are granted personhood status is this: That every last one of you; man, woman, child and anything in-between, leave Planet Earth forever, ASAP for the farthest inhabitable planet you can find, and swear never to return. We’ll be very happy here alone with our personhood status. And then we will let the Earth heal…
