India’s new draft on animal experiment rules top a decade of selective retreat from compassion
Animal protection is being redefined to serve Hindutva politics by allowing trade and diluting the rights of some creatures while the cow is ranked above all.
Black News 
Three developments occurred in India this October that I have been unable to think about separately.
On October 6, the Centre notified the draft Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Control and Supervision of Experiment, Breeding and Trading of Laboratory Animals) Rules, 2026 and gave the public 30 days to respond.
Through the same weeks, tens of thousands of people were on the streets against the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, an exercise through which, by the Election Commission’s own count, more than 13 crore names have been struck off the draft rolls – women, the poor and Muslims disproportionately among them.
Then, on October 26, a sessions court in Kalol, Gujarat, sentenced three Muslim men to life imprisonment for cow slaughter, citing the Manusmriti and the Rigveda and warning that if such men went unpunished, the cow would one day vanish from the Earth.
Many in the animal rights movement, like some of our friends working on child rights, education, health and the environment, have always drawn strength from staying focused on the work ahead. But how long can we keep telling ourselves, while the country burns, that we will hold on to our tunnel focus on animal protection, and keep engaging the ministry, the courts and the consultation process as if their independence had never...
