Book Review 'Jallikattu - New Symbol of Tamil Angst'

A compact assessment of Jallikattu controversy

Chennai: In this forthcoming new book scheduled for a January 2018 release, the veteran journalist and political analyst N Sathiya Moorthy delineates quite comprehensively the angst over Jallikattu.  However, just ahead of another ‘Pongal’ (harvest) festival season, which usually provides an expansive setting in Tamil Nadu’s southern districts in particular for the conduct of the traditional bull-taming sport, ‘Jallikattu’, the angst may be relatively less at ‘ground zero’ in the New Year.

The animal rights activists’ challenge to the January 2017 Tamil Nadu law that facilitated the conduct of ‘Jallikattu’ — after the unprecedented, largely youth, students and women-led ‘Marina revolution’ that was a demonstrable assertion of the Tamils ‘cultural rights’ and unique ‘animal husbandry ecology’ of the State’s farming community — has been recently posted by the Supreme Court before a Constitution bench. Still, the socio-political-legal soil is yet to firmly settle for ‘Vaadi Vaasals’ to open for all ‘Pongals’ to come. The Animal Welfare Board of India is already all set to come out with new guidelines for holding this sport.

It is this inherent anxiety that aptly explains the title of Sathiya Moorthy’s work, ‘Jallikattu — New Symbol of Tamil Angst’. The anger got intense first with the earlier Supreme Court verdict that said ‘Jallikattu’ was ‘not part of Tamil Culture’.  It was more than touching a raw nerve in a State identified with a robust anti-Hindi agitation in its second ‘avatar’ in the mid-1960s’, one of the factors that catapulted the DMK to power in Tamil Nadu in 1967 under Anna’s leadership.

However, as the author points out, the context of the January 2017 Marina protests — sadly ending on a violent note after being hailed even abroad for its peaceful demonstrations and exemplary fellowship of the human spirit cutting across caste, religious and even police barriers -  was entirely different.

The sinking feeling that the average Tamil Nadu citizen has of his voice being systematically ignored by both the Central and State governments, more so after the political uncertainties following the demise of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa in December 2016, and the ruling AIADMK’s excessive preoccupations with their own factional feuding, conjoined with the wishy-washy assurances of the Central government on clearing the bushes for holding ‘Jallikattu’.

This apart, a host of other factors including the recent setbacks that techies in Chennai, as one of the three Information Technology (IT) capitals in the country, have been going through, the common man’s economic disillusionment post-demonetisation, and last but not least the instant, dynamic communicative role of social media, catalysed the triumph of a new generational spirit on Marina sands.

These are as much hard facts as premisses for Sathya Moorthy’s new thematic text, which in a lucid, analytical style goes vastly beyond its presuppositions. The author, quite rightly, points out that the Establishment, whether it is in Chennai or in New Delhi, failed to ‘fully understand’ the underlying ‘Tamil angst’, and why the pro-Jallikattu protests were a “symbol of the pent-up Tamil sentiments”.

He makes useful comparisons with similar mass protests in recent years including the ‘Team Anna Hazare’ protests for creation of Lok Pal, and the ‘Nirbhaya protests’. But the ‘Marina protests’ of 2017 were in a different league, “in the unanticipated levels it reached and the short time it took to reach the zenith”. He feels that the message from Marina sands was much more than even the DMK’s anti-Hindi agitation, though the author has over-simplified the latter’s import.

That may be a journalistic licence that Sathya Moorthy may have taken. But the searching questions he raises about the possibility of a “hidden agenda” behind the “faceless leadership” of the pro-Jallikattu protests which really projected no one leader, or why a section of protesters did not disperse from the Marina even after the then Chief Minister, Mr. O. Pannerselvam’s “convincing measures to have the martial sport back soon enough” as he puts it, cannot be brushed aside. The author says that the Justice S Rajeshwaran Commission of Inquiry, whose term has been extended up to the end of January 2018, would throw some light on the rocking end to a peaceful saga, besides giving constructive suggestions for future.

The central argument of Sathya Moorthy’s work broadly runs like this: While all stakeholders are now anxious to know the Centre’s stand in the apex court and equally earnest about “which way the jury should vote” while deciding the petition against the Tamil Nadu’s 2017 law enabling ‘Jallikattu’, “the balance of arguments would seem to back the common call and cause for continuing with Jallikattu, but with minimal hurt and injury to the animal. “ Discretion is the better part of valour, the author notes and hopes wiser counsels will prevail.

However, while retaining this core thesis for ‘Jallikattu’, around it the author has sought to weave in a tapestry of popular Hindu folklore, sociology, classical Tamil and Sanskrit literature, historical narratives from diverse sources and economics of agriculture produce/animal husbandry, besides widely shared myths and religious beliefs, not to leave out local anecdotes, which have made ‘Jallikattu’ a semi-autonomous, colourful, powerful narrative of human valour versus nature.  

Any serious search for the roots of ‘Jallikattu’ does throw up such a vast canvas - the author quotes from the well known Tamil writer Ti. Su. Chellappa’s Novelette, ‘Vaadi Vaasal’ to drive home that the bull-tamer might get hurt “but not a drop of animal blood should (even be seen)-.” So there is no comparison at all with the Spanish bullfight.

Nonetheless, linking the historicity of ‘Jallikattu’ with narratives in the ‘Srimad Bhagavtham’ - how Lord Krishna tamed not one bull, but seven bulls and so on - and flagging the issue whether the pastoral ‘Yadava’ community people were the original flag-bearers of this sport, with the ‘Thevars’ or ‘Mukkalthors’ in Tamil Nadu possibly inheriting that martial sport tradition later, bristle with contentious issues of methodology and interpretations of history.

Even as the author acknowledges that “the Hindutva-driven approach to animal protection is not helping matters,” Sathya Moorthy has also interestingly packed in a lot of contemporary political happenings, though some of it is repetitive. Some printing errors like Gopalakrishna Ghokale using religious and community congregations like Ganesh festival in the national freedom struggle - a feat credited to Bal Gangadhar Tilak - will hopefully be set right in the next edition.