The Gauhati Excessive Court docket earlier this week reintroduced a ban on conventional buffalo and bulbul (songbird) fights throughout Magh Bihu Assam. The courtroom struck down a notification issued by the Assam authorities this January which had tried to revive these practices after practically a decade.
In doing so, the courtroom noticed that the Assam authorities had sought to override provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, the Wildlife Safety Act, 1972, and the Supreme Court docket’s 2014 judgement which outlawed using bulls as performing animals in jallikattu, kambala and bullock cart races.
What are these traditions? Why and the way did the Assam authorities attempt to revive them? Why did the Gauhati HC disallow them regardless of jallikattu, kambala and bullock cart races being permitted once more in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra respectively since 2023?
Lengthy-time traditions
The buffalo and bulbul fights are a part of the people tradition related to the Assamese winter harvest competition of Magh Bihu, which takes place in January.
Buffalo fights are held in numerous components of Assam throughout Magh Bihu, with Ahatguri in Nagaon district being the largest centre. There, the fights have been performed for a lot of a long time by the Ahatguri Anchalik Moh-jooj aru Bhogali Utsav Udjapan Samiti, drawing big crowds.
Bulbul fights, alternatively, are an attraction on the Hayagriv Madhab Mandir in Hajo, round 30 km from Guwahati. Individuals rear birds for round two weeks earlier than Bihu, earlier than they’re made to struggle till one emerges stronger. Temple authorities say this observe has been round for hundreds of years and was performed by regents of the Ahom dynasty (thirteenth to nineteenth century).
A nine-year-old ban
The fights had been stopped on the heels of the SC’s 2014 judgement, which had additionally directed the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) to make sure that “the particular person in cost or care of the animal shall not incite any animal to struggle towards a human being or one other animal.” Subsequently, the AWBI wrote to the Assam authorities in January 2015, in search of an finish to animal and hen fights throughout Bihu celebrations, following which the federal government directed district administrations to forestall them. This prohibition continued to be in place regardless of authorized challenges to the order.
Nonetheless, in Could 2023, the SC overruled its 2014 ban by upholding amendments made by Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and Karnataka governments to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 to permit jallikattu, kambala and bullock cart racing.
Subsequently, the Assam authorities framed and launched SOPs this January to conduct these fights, permissible solely in locations the place they’ve been “historically performed” for the final 25 years, and that moh juj (buffalo fights) will solely be allowed between January 15 and January 25. The SOPs aimed to have these fights practised with out “deliberate torture or cruelty” to the animals and included a prohibition on human-inflicted accidents, and a ban on using intoxicating or performance-enhancing medication, in addition to sharp devices to instigate the animals for the buffalo fights.
The bulbul struggle SOPs require the organisers to make sure that the birds are launched within the open “in excellent situation” on the finish of the sport. The SOPs state that any organisation violating the stipulations will face a ban for the subsequent 5 years.
Following the discharge of those SOPs, the 2024 Magh Bihu noticed each practices being held once more with Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma referring to this as an effort to “protect Assam’s timeless Bihu traditions.”
The problem
The Assam authorities’s notification and the SOPs had been challenged by PETA India within the Gauhati HC which sought a prohibition of those actions. In two linked petitions, they claimed that in their investigation of the occasions in each Ahatguri and Hajo this 12 months, they discovered that the buffalos had been subjected to ache and harm, and the bulbuls had been illegally captured and “incited, towards their pure instincts to struggle over meals.”
The counsel for the state authorities submitted that the allegations made within the petitions had been already addressed by the SOPs.
The courtroom noticed that beneath the 1972 Wildlife Safety Act, the definition of “searching” extends to “capturing, coursing, snaring, trapping, driving or baiting any wild or captive animal and each try to take action”.
Justice Devashis Baruah said that since bulbuls are protected beneath Schedule II of the Act, “regardless of regulated measures” the observe is opposite to the provisions of the Act.
The courtroom additionally discovered the state authorities’s notification opposite to Part 22 of the 1960 Safety of Animals Act learn with a 2011 gazetted notification by the Central authorities which prohibits exhibiting or coaching “bulls” as performing animals.
Justice Baruah noticed that the SC in 2023 had allowed the bull-taming sports activities in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Maharashtra because the states had made amendments to the 1960 Act which had obtained Presidential Assent.
“Within the prompt case it’s observed that the state of Assam, as an alternative of creating amendments to the 1960 Act as had been performed by Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, has resorted to beat the Safety of Animals Act of 1960 in addition to the Wildlife Safety Act of 1972 in addition to 2014 Supreme Court docket Judgement within the case of A Nagaraj by means of an govt instruction which within the opinion of this courtroom is just not permissible,” he said.
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