I was skimming through the newspaper when I read about how an Indian leopard was shot after it ventured into Punjab and injured two villagers. Now it is one thing to be a bystander to animal cruelty, it is completely another thing to stormily strike ache and wound a living creature, and then have the nerve to back your sadism with a very exasperating false impression of fanatical patriotism. Pakistan-India’s friendship has never gotten a partisan vote from me. In fact, I heartily believe that trying to be cordial with India at the expense of the dignity of your own country is nothing short of inviting disaster. But showing sheer negligence to a leopard, possibly just because it’s ‘Indian’ is hare-brained by any standard. Pakistan is a country where minimal value is attached to the life of a human. Therefore, it may seem inordinately ambitious of me to ask for the rights of an ‘Indian’ leopard but I will not let that discourage me from making an attempt. I asked a friend today about what comes to her mind when she thinks of a leopard. She replied,
“Physical attributes such as sharp teeth, fur and tail?”But there is one body part that we very conveniently choose to ignore – a beating heart. I request everyone to think about what this means. Does it mean that a leopard is not a living creature that rightly deserves some consideration for its life? I am concerned about the sort of mentality we are endorsing when we choose to limit this consideration to national borders. Don’t get me wrong. I am not prioritising the life of this leopard over any human life. I am not ignoring the injuries the leopard caused to those two people. What I am trying to point out is how the human race has not managed to draft a plan that stops these beings from harming us without us having to harm them. It is of utter concern to me how our supposedly progressive mind-set, having a pool of so many self-endowed platitudes, chooses to decide that the physical and mental inconsequential dissimilitude, between humans and animals, is substantial enough to facilitate animal cruelty. It may be worthy to point out that India’s leopards are on the brink of extinction. This, too, is largely accredited to us humans. The soaring demand for their skin in the black market coupled with imprudent poaching activities are two of the factors responsible for the possible leopard annihilation. It is about time we start taking pertinent measures to create awareness amongst people about the importance of safeguarding animal rights and reverse what we have ourselves started. Animals and not just leopards, like us humans have feelings too. They too, like us, can feel pain, both mentally and physically. What they cannot do is speak for themselves and hence, they need someone to speak for them. That is one thing they are dependent on us humans for and we should not let them down. Correction: Previously, the photo in this blog was captioned incorrectly and was not reflective of the incident depicted within the context of the post. The error is regretted and the mistake has now been corrected. We apologise for the inconvenience.