A FEW (three out of 54) agitated readers responded to my last column written on the subject of the Gandhian saying “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated” by admonishing me for not having written on the obsessive possibility of an armed conflict between two of the largest countries of the world (population-wise), our own and India.

There is a certain limited amount of comment, suggestion or rant that can be made, and at this stage of the game there is now little new to be rattled out. It has all been more than adequately covered by the press of the two nations. As is usual in such situations, insanity prevails over sanity. Our foreign minister, the suave Shah Mahmood Qureshi, has on several occasions exhorted us to hope for the best but to prepare for the worst. What exactly this message conveys is up to individual interpretation.

On the matter of sanity, a friend of mine in England forwarded to an old friend of his in India a typical column from the Pakistani press dealing with the Mumbai incident. The Indian, after reading the column, emailed him

“It seems to me to be no more than paranoid ranting, especially the bit about `surgical strikes`, and going to war — and the bit about India looking for a `final solution` to the Pakistani problem would be hilarious if it wasn`t so insidiously provocative to his local readers.

“If the guy took a break from his hysterical ranting and read Indian papers and watched Indian TV he would see very easily that the weight of opinion in India, both Hindu and Muslim, is — 1) Forget surgical strikes; we are not the US; they may be capable of it, we are certainly not. 2) The US can make them because (a) they have the UAVs which we don`t, and (b) Pakistan cannot `retaliate` across thousands of miles of continents and ocean — which they can on India. 3) All important government officials, from the PM on, are on repeated record both in print and on TV, proclaiming that `war` is not an option anyone wants to take, or should go around tom-tomming. 4) As for the `final solution` of overrunning and absorbing Pakistan — that`s the biggest joke; the way most Indians see it is, we have enough problems of our own, why on earth would we want to take on a basket case like Pakistan?

“But you know when I was running GRIT in Mumbai and we had trainees attending from all over, including Pakistan, I did find one or two, quite friendly and highly intelligent otherwise, who truly believed that a full takeover of Pakistan by India was in fact India`s long-term endgame!

“It hasn`t happened in 60 years of course — but as with the Bushites` stand on WMDs in Iraq — the fact that it hasn`t happened yet is conclusive evidence that it is just waiting to happen! As someone said — against the truly ignorant, even the gods are helpless.

“But a rebuttal of inflammatory stupidity is always worthwhile. Who knows, if there had been enough of that in 1930s Germany there might have been no Holocaust; or enough in post-9/11 America may have prevented Iraq and even Afghanistan?”

What has given me hope is the other type of responses received on the attitude towards animals in our great democratic Republic, three of which, from Muslims living in Pakistan, I reproduce. The first raises a topic which I was unable to cover due to lack of space

“Your column of Dec 21, 2008 was really an eye-opener as I realised that our nation has become besotted with the gory scenes involving brutal treatment of animals.

“I am a young girl from Multan. I regularly write for Young World on different social and environmental issues. Due to my performance, my name has been nominated for the Presidential Award 2008. Taking the opportunity, I would like to draw your benign attention towards the recent arrival of the Gulf dignitaries for the licensed killing of endangered houbara bustard.

“I am deeply aghast over this flagrant violation of the wild life acts and other related laws. Moreover, it has been reported by Dawn that these killings are always more than numbers specified by the Wild Life Department. Nobody questions these dignitaries who arrive each year for this killing spree. On the contrary, not a single Pakistani can ever think of going to any Gulf country for the similar purpose.

“I shall feel highly indebted if you may write about this issue in your upcoming columns. Thanking you in anticipation.”

From Lahore “A wonderful column this Sunday and of course rather sad what we do to our animals. We are barbarians with due apologies to all barbarians.

“I was on the Lahore Zoo Committee for 2 years along 2-3 other people and we struggled to get animals some rights, privacy and care but ran into a bunch of heartless business persons who were merely interested in using the animals for making money — we fought for dozens of things and spectacularly failed since we were three only — but we managed some breakthroughs.”

From Karachi “Many thanks for highlighting this serious issue. For this we need extensive coaching and moral teachings to understand how to behave with speechless animals. It would be better to teach our next generation about our ex-mayor Jamshed Nasarwanji who built drinking-water places for the city animals. Such an act of kindness towards animals can create a sense of animal love and protection.”

And finally, to quote Peter Singer, from Animal Liberation

“The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or bombs. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that we really are the selfish tyrants that the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said we are? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognise that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it.”

arfc@cyber.net.pk