'Adopt Stray Dogs & Keep Them In Your Homes': Author R Raj Rao’s Sharp Take Amid Controversy

As someone who is viciously chased by stray dogs each time I step out of the house and has narrowly escaped being attacked, I have been tempted to closely observe their behaviour. No so-called dog lover has been able to give me a satisfactory explanation as to why it is I am singled out by the barking, chasing canines. I have been told that I look different. I am too tall for the predatory beasts; they can read fear and hatred on my face. But other six-footers in the vicinity are spared by the loathsome creatures. I have failed to come to any scientific conclusion about why they pick on me alone. It has reached a point where, on what side of the road I walk depends entirely on the location of the dogs, even if I have to take a long detour to get to wherever I am going. At times, I have aborted my plans and returned home, all because the dogs have blocked my way. In such situations, I refuse to walk past the dogs, as I’m certain they’ll assault and bite me.

But I’m wrong in suggesting that the dogs pick on me alone. They chase rag-pickers, one of civil society’s most invisibilised groups. I have heard friends say that the dogs are right in chasing rag-pickers, who are really thieves with loot in their sacks. Yet our streets would be filthier than they are if it weren’t for the rag-pickers who clear them of litter left by us, all for a pittance. Besides, to call all rag-pickers thieves is the height of bourgeois arrogance.

Stray dog lovers are invariably men and women (usually the latter) who live in sheltered housing societies and never go anywhere on foot. They have SUVs to drive them around, even for short distances. They are in no position to understand the plight of less fortunate bike riders and cyclists who have fallen off their motorbikes and cycles, sometimes fatally, even as they are aggressively chased by stray dogs. Why do the dogs chase them? Oh, because other dogs have urinated on their tyres, or so we are told, and the scent of the urine leads the dogs to believe that the bikes are actually enemy dogs who have invaded their territory. And we are supposed to indulge the dogs for their folly! 

Then, an unsterilised bitch in heat also leads to bike crashes, as packs of male dogs dart across roads without warning in order to entwine themselves in her.

I have never failed to understand why those who love stray dogs impose them on us, the majority, who dislike them. Why don’t they adopt them and keep them in their homes? But that they’ll never do. I recall an Oprah Winfrey show on TV that urged Americans to adopt puppies in ‘puppy mills’ who, otherwise, would be put to sleep. Why can’t we make similar appeals here? If India aspires to become the third-largest economy in the world, mustn’t we have dog-free streets that befit a third-largest economy? 

But talking of putting dogs to sleep, I’m sure that given a choice, the dogs themselves would like to be put to sleep, rather than endure a dog’s life. My dictionary defines the phrase ‘dog’s life’ as “be troubled all the time.” And it defines the phrase ‘dog’s death’ as “die in shame or misery.”

Dogs, according to me, are a highly pampered species, only because, unlike cats and other animals, they wag their tails and lick us all over, as if to say they love us. But it’s really their food they love, which we generously give them. Why don’t we have the same misplaced compassion that we have for stray dogs, for, say, chickens, goats, pigs and cows, whom we gluttonously kill for food? Would that compassion vanish the day we acquire a taste for dog meat, as some cultures do? In saying this, I’m really paying a tribute to the 18th-century Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift, who in his satirical essay “A Modest Proposal” suggested that the poor could ease their woes by selling their kids as food to the rich.

(The writer is a well-known author and former head of the English Department at Savitribai Phule Pune University)