Beast and Man in India / A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals in their Relations with the People

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beast and Man in India, by John Lockwood Kipling
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things.
Walt Whitman.



When, on the 21st March 1890, under the auspices of the Hon. Sir Andrew Scoble, the Legislative Council of India passed an Act (XI. of 1890) for the prevention of cruelty to animals, some surprise was expressed in England that legislation should be necessary for a people who have long been quoted as an example of mercy. It was hinted that Orientals must have learned cruelty, as they have learned drunkenness, from brutal Britons. Those who know India need not be told that this insinuation is groundless, since both vices have for ages been rooted in the life of Eastern as of all the nations under heaven. The general conclusion of cultivated Europe as to the temper of Orientals towards animals is expressed by Mr. Lecky, in a clause of the sentence with which he concludes a survey of a growth of consideration for animals as an element of public morals, in his History of European Morals from Constantine to Charlemagne , and runs thus: The Muhammadans and the Brahmans have in this sphere considerably surpassed the Christians.
There is enough truth in this statement to give interest to an examination of it. The gulf that must exist between religious prescriptions that have earned a world-wide reputation for mercy and a practice which has led a Government, strongly adverse to unnecessary legislation, to frame an enactment for the prevention of cruelty, deserves looking into. We ought, perhaps, to distrust most of the compendious phrases which presume to label our complex and paradoxical humanity with qualities and virtues, like drugs in a drawer. At all events, it is better not to try to make another rule but to offer a few general considerations and details of actual fact, leaving the Christian to frame his summary for himself.