On this day in vegan history · May 7, 2014
India's Supreme Court Bans Jallikattu
The country's top court sided with animal welfare groups and outlawed bull-taming outright, and the backlash brought the sport roaring back within three years.
The facts
- Ruling
- Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraja, Supreme Court of India, May 7, 2014
- Petitioners
- Animal Welfare Board of India and PETA India
- Reversal
- Tamil Nadu ordinance issued January 21, 2017; exempting Act passed by the legislature January 23, 2017
- Final word (so far)
- Supreme Court Constitution Bench upheld jallikattu's legality, May 18, 2023
On May 7, 2014, the Supreme Court of India ruled in Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraja, a case brought by the Board and PETA India against Tamil Nadu's law permitting jallikattu, the festival practice of young men grabbing and wrestling bulls turned loose into a crowd. The court struck down the state law and banned the events nationwide, finding that bulls were being made to suffer for sport. It also told the national government to rewrite India's animal cruelty law to explicitly cover bulls. The ruling held for less than three years: after protests filled Chennai's Marina Beach in January 2017, Tamil Nadu's governor issued an ordinance reviving jallikattu, and the state legislature wrote it into law days later. The case eventually reached a Supreme Court Constitution Bench, which upheld the practice in 2023.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
cruelty is inherent in these events, as bulls are not anatomically suited for such activities and making them participate is subjecting them to unnecessary pain and suffering
Supreme Court of India, ruling in Animal Welfare Board of India v. A. Nagaraja, May 7, 2014
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
It was the biggest animal-welfare win an Indian court had ever handed down, and it showed just as clearly how fast a legal victory for animals can be unwound when a tradition has enough political weight behind it. Nine years later the Supreme Court itself closed the loop, and jallikattu is legal again.
Sources
This history is still being written.
Every morning the brief covers what moved veganism forward, and every day one more verified piece of that story joins this almanac. Free, and tomorrow’s lands in your inbox.
Free, every morning. No guilt. No preaching.