The Supreme Court's initial order of August 11, 2025, in the matter of Delhi's stray dogs, was more than a misguided policy directive; it was a judicial performance of a deep societal blindness. While the order was wisely modified on August 22, its initial logic, which cites arguments of “immense pain and suffering” leading to a “very painful death”, exposes the fragile and violent foundation of our social world: an artificial wall built to separate human from animal. The court's reasoning was not an anomaly. It was a perfect reflection of a story we have told ourselves for centuries, one that defines humanity by aggressively disowning our own animality.
The Fortress of Human Identity
This story is, at its heart, a project of identity. To be ‘human' has meant to be ‘not animal'. Imagine a fortress built to protect a specific idea of civilisation. To know who is safely inside, you must first define who is outside. The walls of this fortress are built from concepts like reason, culture, and law, while everything beyond is branded as chaos, instinct, and nature. This constant need to police the boundary between human and animal produces a form of cultivated blindness, a societal ‘agnosia' to the suffering of those we have cast outside our walls. The court's August 11 order is a masterclass in this fortress mentality. By dismissing scientifically backed sterilisation programs with condescending language, suggesting they might “somehow” work, the court refused to see animals as part of a complex urban ecosystem. Instead, it saw only a chaotic threat, a monolith of danger. This is perfectly captured when the order states, “We are not casting aspersions, but there is no way one can identify or classify between a rabies-carrying dog and others.” This single sentence performs the work of agnosia: it erases the individuality of lakhs of beings, reducing each one to an indistinguishable and potential threat, thereby justifying their indiscriminate removal.
The Performance of Judicial Power
The law is the chief architect of this fortress. It is the institution that turns the philosophical idea of human superiority into a concrete reality. It achieves this through a simple but devastating legal trick: it defines animals as property. Once a sentient being is legally classified as a ‘thing', its suffering is rendered secondary. It becomes an object to be managed for human convenience, not a subject with interests of its own. The court's order vividly performs this legal dehumanisation. It frames the issue as a zero-sum conflict between the “fundamental rights of human beings” and an invented, monstrous right of dogs to “attack human beings and create public nuisance". To solidify this false conflict, the court then launches a direct rhetorical attack on those who would challenge it. It declares, “We do not ascribe to the virtue signalling of all those who share love and concern for the animals.” The court creates what it calls a “virtual divide” between ‘animal lovers' and others, and then proceeds to “condemn those who, beneath the cloak of ‘love and care' for the voiceless, pursue the warmth of self-congratulation”. This is a powerful legal manoeuvre. By dismissing advocates' motives as performative and insincere, the court sidesteps the substance of their arguments and positions itself as the only neutral party whose “heart pains equally for everyone.”
Maintaining this fortress, however, comes at a steep cost. To sustain the belief that a vast world of sentient life is beneath our moral concern requires a constant numbing of our own empathy. In its order, the court legitimises its intervention by framing it as a solemn duty, declaring that “Now is not the time for any resistance or hesitation born of complacency. It is a time for decisive and collective action.” This is a performance of what the court believes is rational governance, a necessary response to a “systematic failure” of public safety. Most ironically, the court claims its role is not to “echo the passions of the moment but to uphold the enduring principles of justice, conscience and equity”. It presents itself as a “sentinel on the qui vive”, possessing the courage to “remind the people of truths that they may not like”. Yet, its initial order, driven by alarming language and a narrative of fear, does precisely what it claims it must not: it echoes the most primal and panicked sentiments of the time, rather than upholding a deeper, more challenging principle of compassion for all living beings.
A Path Beyond the Walls
This is why the court's subsequent modifying order on August 22 is so crucial. It marked a moment of institutional self-correction, where the judiciary retreated from the precipice of its own exclusionary logic. The court abandoned the simplistic narrative of a zero-sum war, and in doing so, made space for a more complex and truthful understanding of coexistence. This order offers a glimpse of what is possible if we dare to question the walls we have built. The real, long-term solution to our conflicts with animals is not to build bigger shelters, which are just prisons. It is to begin the difficult work of renegotiating the basic rules of our society. It requires us to understand that our own humanity is not a fortress to be defended against the animal world, but a quality that is enriched and made whole only when we recognise our shared existence. The challenge, then, is to meet the gaze of the dog on our street not with the fear and suspicion of a fortress guard, but with the recognition of a fellow being.
(Vivek Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor of Law at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR) Hyderabad and Faculty Coordinator of the Animal Law Centre.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
