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Birds Now Have The Fundamental Right To Not Be Caged, But Will Our Conscience Change?
More from Sushant Sudhakaran
In India, the Delhi High court on May 18th 2015 proclaimed that birds have the fundamental right to live with dignity, and that keeping them in cages is wrong. With this statement, that reconnects one’s belongingness with nature, the judgement has relieved animal lovers throughout the world and has opened the doors for the implementation of similar laws worldwide.
One of the biggest causes of strife between man and rest of the universe is the notion that he can own anything. We tend to have this idea that everything out there is created for us to enjoy and exploit, and this pitiable understanding is deepening the gap between man and nature. We really need to cultivate a spiritual understanding of all that is around us.
We need to look closely at this concept of ownership and realize that we are not born to own but to merge and mingle and be a tiny (yet important) part of a smoothly functioning methodology. We need to shed the false pretence attached to our so called intellect and really use the intellect to look at the world with a vision of equality.
The problem is that we have learned and also conditioned the generations that appeared after us, to believe in the supremacy of human existence. We have somehow drawn this conclusion that we exist to act as the centre of the Universe. We think of ourselves as the only being with an intellect that can process information into knowledge and in turn churn out wisdom leading to the ultimate truth.
But can’t we be utterly wrong? The notion of undermining everything and blindly believing in our own superiority doesn’t sound so wise. We can never experience or understand what the consciousness of everything else out there feels like. We can never understand the feelings generated in the hearts of birds, or the emotions dogs create, or the intellectual mechanism beneath the management and planning of ants. Maybe they all are at a stage higher than human consciousness. We cannot deny the possibility that they might be experiencing consciousness in a whole new dimension.
The freeing of birds and understanding that we are not the owners and controllers is a small yet significant step towards building a better connection with the Universe. For people with noses buried deep into political, sociological and economic issues, they might find this step insignificantly small to bring in any change. But I request you to look closer and realize that something which is rewriting the conditioning of the consciousness and is bringing back our understanding to its original, label-free, absolute idea, cannot be a small step.
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Pacific
While I concur with the judgement of the court, I think the author has used this opportunity to preach his moral viewpoints without being cognizant of how human nature has come to be. True, we do not have the right to own another living being, but to claim that humans do that deliberately or out of hubris is being ignorant and tad misanthropic. The observance of rights of another living being is the outcome of progress in human living standards and consequently our thinking.
As an argument I would like to know what you think of consumption of meat? Should this judgement also require us to stop eating chicken? Would you want others to stop consuming meat? Doesn’t consuming meat involves claiming ownership of another animal? I would like to think that those people who eat meat, including me, do not do so out of some misguided sense of superiority. We do it to survive. May be one day people will start synthesizing meat in labs or voluntarily give up eating meat and no animals would need to be killed. But such a day will only come when people have other means of sustenance and are educated enough. We can only be charitable when we can afford to be so.
From the text at the end of the article below the author’s name, I can understand why he feels this way. It’s a great ideology, but woefully unrealistic. You “take along souls willing to walk the same road”… you are banking on blind faith rather than reason. Such a road, however good the intention will lead to nowhere at best. It would be more fruitful to work towards the betterment of people’s lives than preach them morality. “Prosperity is the best protector of principle”.
I hope I wasn’t rambling!
Durga
Very well written. It’s high time we shifted the emphasis on our selves and opened ourselves to the world around.