India Writes Down What Counts as Cruelty

On 26 December 1960, India's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act received presidential assent as Act No. 59 of 1960, consolidating scattered colonial-era cruelty laws into one national statute. Its long title stated the goal plainly: to prevent the infliction of unnecessary pain or suffering on animals. The Act defined an animal broadly, as any living creature other than a human being, and set out offenses covering neglect, mutilation, abandonment, and cruel transport or slaughter of work and companion animals alike. Two years later, in 1962, the government used the Act's Section 4 to create the Animal Welfare Board of India, the country's first national body dedicated to animal protection, chaired by the dancer and Rajya Sabha member Rukmini Devi Arundale. It was a modest, bureaucratic beginning for a fight that is still being had in Indian courts and slaughterhouses today.