Feeding Stray Dogs Not a Crime

A couple of years ago two people in Mumbai, India, were arrested, hand-cuffed and paraded around their housing community for the “crime” of feeding a stray dog who then bit somebody. According to the Mumbai Mirror, the charges have only just been dropped with the court declaring that “feeding stray dogs is not a crime”.

This fairly extreme case highlights growing tensions in Mumbai communities over how to deal with strays with a vociferous majority arguing against feeding them on the grounds that it will result in an increased population. For many housing societies the aim is dog-free streets and people who dare to feed them face fines and victimisation.

It seems that the traditional village dog does not sit comfortably in modern urban India even though some people still readily accept them. I suspect that this is also the general trend in many other cities and I just hope that the attitude does not spread to more rural areas where the traditional relationship between people and unowned village dogs remains intact.

This particular case of the breakdown of the human-village dog relationship perhaps suggests an even more serious social breakdown whereby a relatively minor dispute requires the involvement of the police followed by humiliation of the “offenders” and then the courts.