Indian Parents the Demigods/Dummygods

To disown their parents is the biggest sin. To do so means the kid is the most immoral, selfish, foul mannered being. And the society looks down on them. I have never heard anyone questioning on what the parent did for the kid to disown them. Our society keeps reiterating that, parent’s love is the most pure and selfless love, try selling it to a kid who gets molested by one of the parents, or a kid who was sold for money, or sent out of the house because the kid started identifying with the non biological gender. We all have been exposed to selfless love from my friends, sibling, my wife, and many others at various times in our lives. Till I learnt it, I believed I had the best parents. After learning, it I started judging the way they treated me from the beginning. The answers were inconsistent with what the society made me believe. Just like the many conditioning the society have on our values, ethics and faith, belief on parents is also conditioned for the parent’s benefits.

To question parental love is considered so gross, that the society doesn’t want to talk about. After all our society has a huge list of tabooed topics which we are expected to know , understand to stay away from, exhibit courtesy in discussions, but not talk about openly.

My argument is – not all parents are truthful to their kids and committed to their kids happiness at any cost. How many times have we blamed the kids of an elderly person who is left in the home for elderly. How many times have we blamed the kids of parents whom they never visits or take care. Behind an abandoned parent, there could be a cruel, selfish, sadistic, control freaky, manipulative parent. I am not advocating for the innocence of all kids. I don’t want the society to preach all parents are pure and selfless either.

To complain about a parent ones he/she has grown old, is considered an immoral act. Why ?? because they gave you life. !! So, just because they gave you life, do they have the right to make it miserable? The complain is not because the parents have grown older, but because the kids have grown enough to understand the dynamics of that relationship. Many cannot conceive they fact that a parent could take sadistic pleasure in their kids pain. Just as the societal moral compass is inclined toward women and children. The compass is loaded high on the side of a elderly parent, against the kids. Its okay to see the parents for what they are. As individuals, we have the choice to stay with whom we want, marry whom we want, have kids or not. Parents are no exceptions. Just be dutiful in supporting their ends meet.

For peace and happy life, stay away from negative people, don’t keep manipulative please close to you, don’t get used by people, don’t keep people close, if demean you and spoil the happiness. Parents are no exception. Don’t be ashamed of staying away or giving up on that relationship. After all, no good relationship is hard to sustain. If its hard, its not a good one. As a duty , support their sustenance. That’s all they did to you.

Marital (Dilemma) Rape

Bodily integrity is the inviolability of the physical body and emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy and the self-determination of human beings over their own bodies. All men and women have this right. When all women have it, who are we to deprive the married women of this right?

Indian Penal Code Section 375 gives unambiguous conditions as to which action is to be considered as rape. In general, non-consensual sexual intercourse or sexual assault is considered as rape. Even consensual intercourse with a minor girl is considered rape. But this section gives an exception clause. The exception goes as follows

(Exception) —Sexual intercourse by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape.

Is this exception justifiable? Why are wives always expected to give a consensus?  It is her absolute prerogative to decide by virtue of being a human being to decide what she does. Yet IPC gives an exception thus making all husbands immune to the otherwise heinous crime.  Here we are debating if wives deserve this right. Let us see arguments from both the sides.

Arguments in favour of making marital rape a criminal offence :

1. It takes away the right of a woman to say NO. Her being married, divorced, widowed, nothing can take away her right.
2. Marriage is a partnership of consensus between two equal individuals. Therefore giving husbands a privilege to coerce her is not right for any reason.
3. Women face extreme violence in this pretext. Men do not know it is a crime. State because of its inaction is an accomplice in this crime.
4. Our Constitution prescribes all men to respect women.

Arguments against criminalising marital rape :

1. There is a huge possibility of misuse of this law. Prevention of Dowry Act is one such example. The conviction rate is dowry cases is less than 30%, which means the law is being misused by the wife and her family.
2. Instances of marital rape cannot be denied completely, but such cases are very rare. If a law is necessary for such small number of cases, then there must be an equivalent law for protecting men too.
3. Existing law for Prevention of Domestic Violence can be amended to include provisions for such cases. Making it a heinous crime is not an appropriate remedy. Because considering it a rape will destroy the family ones for all.

Let’s see what other countries have done about these cases. Many might argue such laws can suit modern western societies but not Indian setup which is based on the institution of the family. It is surprising to see Nepal, Ghana and Indonesia have enacted laws criminalising marital rapes. These are not western or modern societies. Moreover, any social crime is difficult to tackle. It is difficult to tackle because of the inherent characteristics they have. They are not considered as a crime by most of the society. Even though the society will pity the women being sexually assaulted by her husband, it won’t raise a voice. Because the society is conditioned to such crimes. It is true that a single law won’t change anything. The societal mindset has to be changed to actually change the reality. This was true in the case of Dowry Act. The act did not change anything substantially, dowry still prevails. It is wrong to say that the law won’t change anything. Dowry Act is a success in the sense that it has brought this issue to the conscience of the whole society. Now all people know that its a crime, and if caught they will go to jail. That is the 1st step in social change.

Cases of misuse must not be ignored. It is the keystone philosophy of Indian Jurisprudence that “no innocent must be punished”. To have checks at various levels and have a robust, foolproof law must be the goal. The lessons learnt from the dowry act misuse can be put to effective use. Let us resolve to bring about a change and not wait for a change to happen.

Jai Hind

Freewill – A convincing argument from Spinoza

For those who don’t know what the freewill problem is. Consider this, the atoms in your body could have been in a rose petal a few 100 years ago. The water molecule which just entered your mouth could have been above the Pacific ocean a few months ago. There is no reason why you were born in this age and this place. We have no significance in this universe. Just like any other rock lying on the Mars over which the Opportunity rover is moving now, you are a dust. It is just a matter of chance being able to breathe and think. Things are the way they are and no one is responsible for it. This could be extended further to our experience. Your instincts, habits, addictions, passions, desires etc. are just matters of chance which just happened. It is with this you have been living. And these have influenced all your decision and choices till now. In that case, you never had a chance to choose anything freely. They are the choices you made because you had to make them. 🙂 How free are you ?? FREEWILL my foot !!

A philosopher named Spinoza who lived in the 18th Century has given an argument on freewill.

Like Shankaracharya, Spinoza said, there is only one reality called NATURE or GOD. This nature has infinite attributes but we humans being limited in knowledge and capability can only know two attributes of it ie Mater and Mind. All the individual things in nature, man, animal, rock, mountain, moon, sun, etc are part of the one and only unity. This unity is the NATURE. These individual things are the modification of the unity. This modification gives them individuality. Since everything is NATURE and nature is EVERYTHING. All phenomenon, actions and events are determined by natural law. These Natural laws are certain. This may give a notion that there is no freewill in us because everything is determined by natural law and there is no alternative to anything.

Let us keep this notion aside for the time. Every individual has a natural law to preserve its existence. This attitude of self-preservation in the root cause of our instincts. Fear, anger, pleasure, ownership, lust, these are just manifestation of our self-preservation attitude. Thus is it the natural law that is programmed inside us to run away from danger, love things that give us pleasure and so on. This again gives a notion that we don’t have freewill.

Let us keep this notion also aside for the time. Looking beyond our individuality, we are all part of the same UNITY ( Nature). So another individual shares the same root as you. A beautiful parrot shares the same root as a terrifying cobra. At the core, we are all the same. In that case, will there be a reason for one individual to be afraid of the other? NO. Should I fear from myself? NO.  At this level of understanding, when there is no notion of individuality, will there be a reason to preserve itself? NO. This level of understanding comes from a deep level of intellectual living. This is called the rational living.

To explain it conceptually.

1. NATURE is the only reality. At this level, everything in the world is the nature itself. The governing principle at this level is RATIONALITY or PURE INTELLIGENCE. This is the natural law. At this level, there is no necessity for self-preservation. Therefore there is no role for instincts, desires, attachments, emotions, etc.
2. Individuals are modifications in nature that tries to preserve this modification in order to continue to exist as modifications. At this level, the natural law is self-preservation by instinct, fear, emotions, pleasure, etc.

Our freewill lies in the level of understanding we are in. The freewill is in choosing which natural law one must allow dictating one’s actions. For instance, you may be distracted by a beautiful girl sitting beside you while studying. The instincts in you will direct your attention towards her and enjoy her beauty. But your intellect will direct you to focus on the task you are at. Your freewill is to choose between them. 🙂 Thus the notion of not having freewill, which we left aside for the time being actually exists.

Jai Hind

 

 

 

Scandal of Rebirth

Rebirth – a concept, which is universally accepted by almost all Indian philosophies except the famous Charvaka.
Just because everyone accepts doesnt make it true. For example, everyone believed that the Sun was revolving around the Earth. It turned out to be false. There is one essential notion to be noted in this example why did people believe in Earth centric system?
Because human beings try to place them at the centre of everything they want to explain. Same is the case with God. God is watching you. Why should God be watching you, because you have placed urself at the centre.
Man wanted to survive, so he hunted, invented agriculture, politics and religion and philosophies. Through these he ensured that he survived. So he liked the idea of not dying. He explained the concept of rebirth and gave it a lot of thought that made no question untacklable. This made the concept so strong and logical. We must understand that whatever is indefeatable in a debate need not be true. But we have a conception that the one who wins the debate is right. No it is not. !!
Rebirth Concept also had another utility. It explain karma and the consequent fruits of karma. This defended the inequality that prevailed in the society. (still prevailing).
Why am I born in a low caste family? Because of your previous karma.
What should I do about it? Do your duties without complaining about it.
Clever isn’t it? It worked. Very well in fact.
To summarise:
The upper class did not have any problem with their survival, they had lot of time to think. They hated the idea of death. They invented a fictional concept. Nice. But they also wanted to stay in the upper level of hierarchy and make the others stay low in their level. But human beings are curious being, so the lower castes questioned their position and oppressive traditions. The upper caste used the fictional concept tweeked a little bit and explained to the lower caste people. That they are responsible for their own suffering. This was a satisfying answer, and it inflicted a sense of guilt into the lower caste people. That sealed the issue once for all.
So the concept of Rebirth is a scandal. Just like Caste system is.

To substantiate : Plato who was a greek philosopher at Athens proposed that man is reborn and his previous lives decides his condition in this life. Athens was a hierarchical society and he wanted to preserve this hierarchy.

 

WOW WORDS

List of beautiful english words

The Philosophy of my life

Going through a failure, mishap, loss of loved one, breakup in relationship, betrayal, loss of limb in an accident, lossing eye sight, surviving cancer are a few tests that life gives us. A few of it may have happened by choice while others hit us with no warning or reason. How can we respond and move on despite those misfortunes? How long will those incidents hurt us? Such questions can haunt us while we are going through them. These questions can not be answered objectively. There are some guiding lesson from people who have gone through difficulties and led a successful life with no regrets. I have compiled such ideas and adopted them to be my philosophy of life.

There are equal number of good outcomes of a mishap as there are bad ones. We focus more on what we are losing because of a tragedy than what we are to gain from it. This happens because we compare our time with how it would have been without that tragic incident. Pain is caused by comparison. If we dont want pain we must stop comparing between the way we want things and the way things are. The way things are now is the only possibility from which our lives can move on. This is called ACCEPTING THE REALITY. The moment we accept and convince ourselves of what has happened, life starts to move on.We are put into this world in some situation, time and environment. We cant do anthing about it. What we can do is to understand the situation and take necessary action to thrive and live happily. Make the best use of the situation, get as much help as possible from the environment and launch you mission. This can happen when weHAVE A VISION. If wehave a goal in life, all the obstables are just challenges to overcome. wewont regret ourcurrent disability, we will see the resources around us. Take responsibility for your actions. We can either keep crying about our fate or take a responsible decisions. Our desires and emotions must be given attention but not given control over us. A man/woman is not what s/he is or what he has been, it is what he is going to be. We can change the way we have been living right ‘NOW’, this very moment.

That is my first philosophy of my life, taking responsibility for your acts. This is close the ideas of a great western philosopher Heidegger.

My second philosophy of life is BEING AWARE OF DEATH. Ours in a small life. So small that most of you reading this have already completed almost 50% of your life time. Your shame or embaracements of your college and school days dont mater anymore. No one remembers you. So will it be in the future. You have the liberty to fail collosally and still be forgotten. What people thought about you doesnt matter now, what people think of you wont matter in the future. So take risk and feel free to fail. This attitude give you immense energy and courage to try new things and succeed without social pressure.

SPEAKING THE TRUTH is the best of all the options you have. One who speaks the truth is not put into situation which he cant handle. By lying you may gain a lot of things but you cant buy freedom with it. The more you lie the more bound you are. So everytime you lie about things be aware that you are losing your freedom to gain something else. Lying is not uncommon, when you sit to analyse a day of your life, you would have survived it with number of lies which is more than what you actually think you have spoken. Lying has become an unconscious habit in our life. This is the reason we feel resitricted. Be true and be free. This is what Mahatma Gandhi has taught us during and after his life.

WHAT RISES FAST FALLS FAST. This can guide you during emotional situations. Most of the emotions anger, lust, etc rises fast. It can come down fast too. We must know this. Some people stick to anger long enough that they end up losing days together in negativity. Anger is just an emotion, it has no base and it can’t help any situation in life. We must all understand one thing, you can threaten a person without anger. You can punish a person without anger. I remember a saying in buddhism “Being angry is like having poison yourself and expecting the other one to die”.  There are also other emotions which takes time to build up, for example love, attachment, obessession, etc. These things take time to come down. We must be patient to take control of them.You cant expect to be fine with a breakup within a week. You might have spent years to build a relationship. Similarly one cannot come out of an addiction easily. It will atleast take months to dismember it and start afresh. A famous Thitukkural (Ethical literature in TAMIL) says use emotions like salt, to add taste to life. Too little and life becomes bland , too much of it and life becomes unbearable.

These are the guiding thoughts that are adopted in my life. There are instances where I have defied these guidelines. But being aware of them makes my choices simple. They have helped me in choosing my battles in life and ignoring the unwanted.

Jai Hind

Is it right to say Western Philosophy is largely rational and Eastern Philosophy is largely mystical ?

The purpose of the article is to make a convincing case to the above mentioned question. This article assumes no prior knowledge of the reader. Prima facie the Indian Philosophies largely goes like this.

1. There is a soul
2. It is bonded due to ignorance
3. One must practice and lead a life of utter simplicity both externally and internally to be rid of that bondage by removal of the ignorance.
4. One can expect to be liberated from bondage.
5. A liberated soul of the individual and the SUPER SOUL (sometimes called GOD, REALITY, ULTIMATE TRUTH, etc) are related.

The ignorance is believed to be beginningless and it is because of this ignorance an individual is born again and again. The practice of a life of simplicity is done by many ways. Yoga, Meditation, Ascetics, Self Control, etc are some ways of practicing the life simple life.  A liberated soul will have immense knowledge of everything which is beyond time and space i.e one can know everything in the past present and future and also from anywhere in the universe. This power of a liberated soul is seen on par with the Ultimate Soul( not always called GOD).

This seems like a fantasy world. How can a rational human being accept this story of beginningless ignorance and meditation and super powers? This seems like a story propagated by religious people to make the masses have faith in God. This seems like a strategy to infuse ethical behaviour for the sake of imaginary super power after liberation.

On the other side of the world, Philosophies actually meant to understand the existing world and a better understanding of human intelligence. Western Philosophers raised rational questions like.

1. How do we learn about the world?
2. What is the basic truth of this world? Is it matter or human?
3. What is a human?
4. What is the universe made of?
5. Is our knowledge gained from experience or Are they already present inside us?
6. Is the external world actually existent or is it an illusion inside our mind?
7. What is mind? Is it the thoughts or something else?

These questions sound practical and reasonable. This seems to be a genuine attempt in finding out the truth about the nature of being, and nature itself. It is evident from this why Western Philosophy is regarded highly and Indian Philosophy is kept low in importance.

Western Philosophies which starts apparently with Socrates begins with the question of knowledge. That is, Is knowledge of the world present in our mind or do we acquire them.? Some said, its present apriori (before experience) some said it is posterior (after experience). This seems a valuable question which Indian Philosophers never attempted to answer. But this would be an immature conclusion because the West concluded it as follows, some knowledge is innate in mind, some are acquired. It is another way of saying we can’t answer this question.

After this, the West raised the question of existence. That is, Are the object we see are present outside us?(Realism) or Are they only images inside our mind?(Idealism). This raised further questions if they are in our mind, then are the ideas in our mind especially about God also real? These are the basic questions which Indian philosophy again seemed to miss and dogmatically agree that we live in an illusion and we must attain liberation to see the truth. Well, the west also has taken this stand. Immanuel Kant, for example, has said, we cannot know all the concepts. We are capable of knowing the physical concept and there are many other concepts which we can only have faith on. Faith which the Indian Philosophies had accepted long before the west.

Next question which the West took upon was, what can we aspire to become? Some said man must become rational, some said man must respect emotions, some reconciled the both. David Hume is a remarkable person he said, man must become more RATIONAL. His RATIONALITY is not the normal rationality. He said humanity has to reach higher level through evolution. This evolution will make humans realize what is true. This sounds similar to the Brahman of Vedanta.

It may be argued that Indian Philosophies were very imaginative in creating a set of doctrine which is vague enough to cover up any shortcomings. On the contrary, we see that the West despite starting to find a rational, clear, simple truth and moved towards accepting the vagueness which the East seems to have taken for granted. In a nutshell, as it is famously said: “Rationality has never stood the test of time”. It is illogical to argue that Western thoughts are genuine attempt to understand human being and the world while the Eastern thoughts focused on mysticism. Indian philosophy has started where the Western Philosophy ends. Indian philosophy might have traveled the same path the west has traveled. To agree to the criticism that Indian Philosophy is dogmatic in its approach is wrong.

 

Interesting Thoughts !!

Desires are desires, there is nothing good or bad.Treat them all equally

Its ironic that we can build a lie using truth !!!! Is the reverse possible?

What if trees are cultivating us to supply carbon di oxide, kills us and uses the dead as manure?

What if oxygen is a slow poison, and it takes a long time to kill us?

What if human beings are an experiment by earth gone terribly wrong?

What if rocks are liberated souls, which are indifferent to all forces acting on them?

What if it is all a simulation?

What if the animals have a language?

What if nature hired mosquitos to kill humans?

What if Morality is an illusion?

 

 

Constitution – The layman explanation

This article is for those who don’t have the slightest idea about the constitution. The questions that will be answered at the end of this article are as follows

1. What is a constitution, that every time news readers and debater keep talking about in news channels?
2. Why do we need it?
3. How it has helped in the progress of our nation(India)?

Let us find the answer to the first two questions with a textbook example. Imagine yourself as a higher secondary student. Let it be the 1st day of the academic year. You have new teachers, a new class teacher and a new classroom. It is not unusual for the class teacher to appoint a class monitor(class representative). The monitor helps the class teacher in keeping an eye on the class during his absence and maintains discipline. Normally it the 1st rank holder is appointed as the monitor. You might have seen different Monitors in your school days. Some might have been strict, some very friendly, some might have been your enemy who gets you in trouble, some might do all the mischiefs and escape punishment, and more kinds. You and your friends might have liked someone to continue as monitor or disliked and never wanted them to be your monitor. You yourself might have wished to become a monitor. But this was not possible because you were not lucky to get 1st rank. You might have wondered, who made this 1st rank holder becomes the monitor rule. You might have even wanted to change this rule. Worse is, the class teacher of your adjacent class does not appoint the 1st rank holder. He asks the class’s opinion and then appoints the monitor.

Let us see what are the activities the monitor is in-charge of. Is he free to make his own rules and punish the rule breakers? Can he ask you to do his home works and in return offers you a favour. How can the monitor be held accountable for his actions?

Assume that the school administration has taken interest in Monitor Appointments and issues certain guidelines. The guidelines say a few basic rules which cannot be ignored. Let us have some imaginary yet rational rules. They be  1. The person appointed as a monitor must have secured a rank from 1 to 10 in that class. 2. He must not indulge in unfair activities. 3. He cannot continue to be a monitor if more than 50 % of the class does not like him/her.

These rules seem to express the aspirations of the class students. The Constitution can be seen as a similar kind of compilation of basic rules. The set of rules should justly express the aspirations of the society, treat everyone equally and establish rule of law. The above example should have answered the 1st two questions convincingly. Let us now go to the 3rd question, Has the Constitution of India served the purpose well? How good is our constitution ? or Is it a document which stands short of its desired performance like most other Indian product.

An Evaluation of Indian Constitution:

1. India from 1946 onwards started experiencing worst form of communalism. The Hindus and Muslims grew extremely suspicious of each other. When in 1947, the partition took place India and Pakistan saw communal riots of the scale which was never seen till then and since. It was during this time our leaders were engaged in writing The Constitution of India. They could have easily been carried away by their religious, regional and other sectarian feelings. But they raised above the time and situation to write one of the best constitutions of the world. Now except for a few sporadic incidents, (albeit condemnable) the Hindus and Muslims live in peace and in  harmony. This is owed to the rights given to religious minorities in the constitution. These provisions gave a sense of confidence to all minorities and restrained the aggressors.
2. India was a largely an illiterate nation at the time of independence. Till then democracy existed only in developed nations with very high literacy rate. It was widely accepted by western democratic experts of the time that Universal Adult Franchise ( ie right to vote for all adults ) won’t suit Indian conditions of the time. It was even predicted that India’s democratic experiment will be a gargantuan failure. Our leaders trusted the culture that national movement had cultivated among the masses and choose democracy right from the beginning. India has remained a stable democracy since then. You can appreciate this achievement only by comparing with other countries which gained independence around the same time. Pakistan, Ghana, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and many more countries chose democracy along with us, they have all been under military rule at least for more than a decade. India stands alone with pride. This is definitely owed to our constitution.
3. No country in the world has diversity to the level that India has. No country in the world has these many religions, these many languages, these many cultures. Yet we all share the same identity as Indians. This might be taken for granted today. Just imagine, how would you make people of such varied diversity converge on One Idea? This personally is the greatest wonder that India built. This is owed to the constitution not to forget the leaders of the national movement.

Now that we have enough reasons to be proud of our constitution let us see what the constitution contains in it. Though it impossible to write all the articles in a blog article, it is possible to give an idea of what and how the constitution deals with the day to day governance.

Let us again continue with the example. The basic rules for selecting the monitor were so basic that we can make different interpretations from it. To elucidate let us consider the rule “Monitor must have got a rank from 1 to 10”. The class teacher may still continue to appoint the 1st rank holder. By doing so he would not violate the rule. You may think what if 50% of the class is against the monitor, then the teacher is bound to change the monitor. What if the teacher doesn’t ask for the class’s opinion in the first place. The rule about the opinion but does not say how and when the opinion has to be taken. The teacher may take the opinion on the last day of the year and still claim to not have broken the rule. Therefore in order to not give room for ambiguity, the rules must be spelt out very precisely. Apart from this the institutions to conduct such proceedings like the opinion pole in the class must also be mentioned and protected by the rules. To give you a perspective, the could be a parents-teachers association which could conduct take the opinion of the class on starting of the 2nd week of the academic year. Now one would appreciate the lenght of the Indian Constitution. We have more than 400 articles (rules and sub rules) today spread in 22 parts of the constitution. It clears charts the rules, measures to prevent violations, Institution to conduct the major events like the election, protections for the institution, remedy for the violation of rules like the judiciary, etc.

Put together, Indian Constitution, apart from declaring the basic rules of governance has dictated on administrative structures too. The list given below tries to cover the main features of it.

1.  Defines the territory
2.  Rights of the citizens and foreigners.
3.  Structure of government ( Centre, State and Panchayat)
4.  Legislative procedures to enact a law.
5.  Implementing authority ( ie Executive)
6.  Judicial Setup
7.  Elections, Finances, Recruitment of key posts.
8.  Foreign Policy
9.  Commissions for aiding in the betterment of underprivileged
10.   Tax divisions.
11.  Official languages
12.  Provision for amendment of constitution if need arises, etc

Such a detailed account leaves very little scope for confusion. It must be noted that Indian constitution has considered all the best practices of fellow nations and adopted the best features from them directly or with the suitable changes to fit Indian needs. Without this well thought of governance doctrine, India wouldn’t have survived as a single State, India wouldn’t have remained a democracy in which we have the power to elect our rulers. Our leaders, despite controversies, were dedicated to building a stable India.

Jai Hind

 

One Stop for Jallikattu

If you are reading this post, you probably know about the latest developments taking place in Tamil Nadu. It is probable that you also know about the traditional sport, the Jallikattu.

The next 12 points give the chronology of legal battle from 2009 to 2017: (Skip these 12 points if you don’t want to know about the legal proceeding).

Like any other sport, Jallikattu also needed regulation.

1. In 2009 Tamil Nadu Jallikattu Regulation (TNJR) Act regulated the sport.

2. July 11, 2011, Ministry of Environment and Forest issues a notification banning the use of various animals including bulls as performing animals. This marks the start of the legal battle in Supreme Court.

3. Meanwhile, there are some cases filed against the MoEF notification in various states. On these cases, Bombay High Court and Madras High Court has given their verdicts. Bombay HC has said, banning the use of animals is correct. Madras HC said banning is not right and that TNJR is valid and the sport can be conducted.

4. Against Madras HC’s verdict, someone appeals in the Supreme Court(SC). SC hears the case, considers all the developments that took place since the notification in 2011.

5. May 7, 2014: Supreme Court delivers judgment in the case Animal Welfare Board of India v. A Nagaraja and Others [2014) 7 SCC 547]. It upholds the validity of the notification issued by the Central government holding that Jallikattu, Bullock-cart Race and such events violate Sections 3, 11(1)(a) and 11(1)(m)(ii) of Prevention of Cruelty Act. The court also holds that the TNRJ Act, 2009, is repugnant to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and it, consequently, strikes it down as unconstitutional and void. Thus, the Bombay High Court judgment is upheld while the Madras High Court judgment is set aside.

6. Owing to protest and political pressure from various states, January 7, 2016: Central government issues a new notification in the suppression of its 2011 notification. The new notification carves out an exception for Jallikkattu and bullock cart races by dictating a few conditions to keep the animals away from unnecessary pain.

7. January 12, 2016: A batch of petitions challenging the said notification comes up for hearing before Supreme Court. Justice Dipak Misra which issues notice to the Centre and stays the notification. Tamil Nadu pursues the case to review the judgment.