1

Sep

From Orwell to India’s Dog Days: The New “Animal Farm” of 2025

image

Amitabh Srivastava

A person wearing a blue hat and glasses AI-generated content may be incorrect.

New Delhi | Monday | 1 September 2025

Exactly 90 years after George Orwell’s Animal Farm made the world rethink democracy and power, India in 2025 seems so obsessed with animals that the scenario has taken on a surreal edge.

In recent weeks, newspapers and TV channels gave front-page coverage not to the Prime Minister or to economic policy, but to a Supreme Court order on the fate of stray dogs. What would normally be a minor story was elevated to the nation’s top headline after India’s highest court was compelled to amend an earlier ruling on the treatment of strays.

It began when the Supreme Court, responding to rising cases of dog bites—mostly affecting children, women, and senior citizens—ruled that stray dogs should be confined to shelters. A three-judge bench reasoned that these animals had no business roaming freely and endangering human life.

For context, the killing of stray dogs was banned decades ago after PETA successfully argued that dog catchers targeted weaker animals rather than the truly ferocious. Instead, the Court mandated sterilisation to control the population. On paper, it seemed humane. In practice, states failed to implement it effectively. The canine population grew unchecked, while sterilisation squads continued to draw their salaries and increments.

Faced with this reality, the Court ordered that strays be removed from residential areas and housed in shelters until sterilisation could be completed.

That is when India’s animal rights brigade erupted. Unexpectedly, Rahul Gandhi and his estranged aunt Maneka Gandhi—normally on opposite sides of the political divide—found themselves united in opposition to the Court’s ruling. They condemned it as unkind to man’s “most loyal” companion.

Their protest worked. Within weeks, a new Bench led by the Chief Justice reversed the earlier order. Dogs, the Court ruled, could return to their original habitats after sterilisation. Only ferocious species were to be compulsorily housed in shelters.

Meanwhile, real tragedies unfolded. In Ghaziabad, a young policewoman died when her scooter crashed while she swerved to avoid a stray dog. Her grieving parents lacked the means to petition the Supreme Court for compensation. Nor could they verify whether the dog was sterilised or “ferocious.”

Yet the nation remained transfixed—not on her death, nor on rabies vaccines being in short supply, but on the spectacle of the Gandhi family standing together in defence of dogs. Ironically, the same family could not unite since 2014 on issues like saving the Constitution or democratic values.

Not everyone was pleased. Critics pointed out the “selective kindness” being displayed. If strays deserve protection, why not extend the same compassion to cows abandoned on highways and fields? A senior advocate working with an NGO noted dryly, “Supporting cows is harder—they need fodder, bathing, and daily walks to stay healthy. Stray dogs are easier to defend.”

The absurdity of the debate inevitably recalls Orwell’s Animal Farm. The 1945 novel, written as an allegory of totalitarian regimes, described pigs overthrowing humans, promising justice and equality, only to gradually morph into the very oppressors they replaced. Its most famous line—“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”—has long stood as a warning against power’s corrupting tendencies.

In 2025 India, however, the pigs have been replaced by dogs.

Unlike Orwell’s pigs, today’s pigs are hardly menacing. In fact, they have become beloved cartoon characters for children, led by the globally famous Peppa Pig and family. Pink, well-dressed, and endlessly cheerful, they are far from Orwell’s scheming revolutionaries.

Dogs, on the other hand, have moved centre stage in India’s political theatre. Unlike Orwell’s animals who merely began walking upright like humans, India’s dogs now march ahead of humans—without leashes, without fear, and with judicial sanction. Humans, meanwhile, must learn to stay out of their way to survive.

The irony could not be sharper. At a time when the nation faces challenges of unemployment, economic inequality, and constitutional questions, the Supreme Court and the political class have spent weeks debating canine rights. As a side show, BJP’s Vijay Goel even led a rally of dog-bite victims, though he is known for his offbeat, “out-of-syllabus” activism.

The spectacle raises uncomfortable parallels with Orwell’s vision. When Parliament’s new flats for MPs were recently inaugurated—with five-room sets, air-conditioning, and modern facilities—it was hard not to recall Orwell’s line about some animals being “more equal” than others.

Ninety years later, Orwell’s allegory is being re-enacted in unexpected ways. Only this time, it is not pigs but dogs who symbolise power, privilege, and selective compassion. And in this new Indian Animal Farm, it is humans who must learn to tiptoe carefully, lest they offend the new rulers of the street.( The author is a senior journalist, writer and poet )

========

  • Share:

About Us

We must explain to you how all seds this mistakens idea off denouncing pleasures and praising pain was born and I will give you a completed accounts..

Contact Us

Contact Info

  • 70, Gyan Khand- 4, Indirapuram, Ghaziabad. Uttar Pradesh.
  • +91-9810533682
  • info@mediamap.co.in
  • Week Days: 09.00 to 18.00 Sunday: Closed