There is adrenaline in the air. In a crowded maidan in a village somewhere near Madurai in central Tamil Nadu, hundreds of strapping young men look impatiently towards a small gate they call vaadi vaasal. Suddenly, the man at the microphone raises his pitch to feverish excitement, there is a deafening roar from the crowd as the gate opens and a bull with blood-shot eyes, a heaving ton of muscle and rage, charges out and ploughs into the mass of men. The most daring among them twitches through the flaying horns and threshing hooves and hangs on to its hump as the animal completes a short lap of 50 metres. In the wake, lie a clutch of men bloodied and writhing in agony.
For the Tamils, Jallikattu is veera vilayattu or warrior sport, where a man matches wit and sinew with a raging bull and grabs a small bag of coins or Jalli, tied to its horns. In the days gone, he would also win the daughter of the owner of the bull in marriage. It is about courage, masculinity, and above all, cultural ethos.
And, as it happens in many other parts of the world, cultural ethos conflicted with modern ethics and jurisprudence. The former bull-taming championship, which had mellowed into a sport through the centuries in a land where kingdoms rose and fell, was banned by the Supreme Court in 2014. The debate over the merit of that order continues to play out on television screens.
“Banning of Jallikattu will result in an increase of cultural and traditional insecurities of the Tamil people, which is detrimental to the Indian society as a whole. Jallikattu issue has already transgressed into other issues of concern,” says Tamil historian AR Venkatachalapathy. So emotive is the issue in the state, that the entire spectrum of political parties, from saffron to red, have lined up only on one side.
Jallikattu faced its first hurdle in 2004 when PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and AWBI (Animal Welfare Board of India) came together against it. On November 27, 2010, the Supreme Court allowed the sport to be played for a period of five months in a year under controlled conditions and in accordance with the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act passed in 2009. Five years later it was completely banned.
Through The Ages
Nobody knows when Jallikattu began. Scholars who argue on a Dravidian origin to the Indus Valley civilisation argue that one of the sealstones discovered from the site (2500 BC) actually depicts Eruthazhuval, a more traditional name for the sport. Numerous references have been found in Tamil Sangam literature (200 BC-200CE). In later days, Tamil kings used Eruthazhuval as a competition to recruit for their armies. And it is widely believed that the ancient southern kingdom of Pandyans, which had one of its headquarters in Madurai, took its name from Pandi, the Tamil word for a bull.
Hence, this is a debate in which many Tamils would refuse to see the other side. For them, it is all about culture, built around a veneration for the animal and held on the day of Maattu Pongal, a festival dedicated to cattle. Owning a prize bull is a badge of honour in the village. The male of the species, which would have otherwise quietly made it to slaughter houses in an age where tractors replaced draught animals, is proudly preserved and even strutted around.
Animal rights activists see it otherwise. "The animals endure extreme bullying when they are chased by a mob of grown men who pounce on them, bite their tails, force-feed them alcohol, jab them with sticks and terrify them until they fall and even break their bones or sometimes die," says Sachin Bangera of PETA India.
Stats reveal this bloody trail, though the casualties seem more loaded on the side of man.
Venkatachalapathy argues that stricter regulations, like the ones in force in, say, boxing, can control the gore to a large extent. “Boxing as a sport is regulated with rules like boxers having to wear gloves and protective headgear and a referee who can stop the match if a boxer is injured to a great extent,” he says. How far such regulations work in the outreaches of Tamil Nadu is debatable.