IT IS tough talking to Maneka Gandhi on animal rights unless you agree with her views on the matter or ask questions on the chatterati who have chipped in for the cause. The compulsion works all the more when the lady launches a campaign of fashion and love for animals at the Leela Palace, which she did last week. She and People for Animals (PFA) helped bring together some of the finest designers in the country to make art out of ahimsa shawls she hopes people will snap up.

The conversation with Ms. Gandhi is pretty volatile. It has to be if you began by asking whether she thought animals were more important than humans. "Everything is important. A certain balance between human beings and animals has to be maintained." What about vaccine trials? Could one try them on healthy, happy human beings? Or even dying ones, with their consent? "Ninety-five per cent of tests conducted on animals provide no indication whether they can act on human beings. Penicillin was tested on animals but did not work. When tested on humans, it became a forerunner of the antibiotic movement." She holds that trials conducted on animals will not translate into results on human beings and that laboratories conducting such trials in the country are the worst in the world.

India, she says, does not have a single patent in the 51 years of research on animals. She also points out that tests in case of ailments such as AIDS will not work. "Scientists are trying out AIDS vaccines on rats. But do animals ever contact AIDS? Sometimes such research is purposeless."

The conversation intensifies when we move on to dog bites by strays. I point out that residents in Bangalore are wary of walks beyond 11 p.m. thanks to ferocious stray dogs. "You have a phobia and your phobia is not a fact." What about the stray that attacked the late writer, A.N. Murthy Rao, at 103 years of age, resulting in a fall and broken hip just before he passed away? "The dog must have been doing its job of guarding. It must have growled first. Many times people play with the dogs." What about the pack of strays that fatally mauled a child watching a football match in Kannur district, Kerala? "That is not true. Show me proof. In any case, if dogs were to kill, they would kill out of hunger. How come they don't attack the many baby cows (sic) we find on the street? Moreover, most bites are from pet dogs," Ms. Gandhi riposted. But does this mean that human beings are necessarily safe? She frowns and is not willing to go any further on the question.

We move on to the fashionable shawls. How comfortable is she advocating the pashmina shawl made out of goat's hair? A small tuft of hair is drawn from under the goat's neck to weave the shawl, which is almost identical in quality to the prized shahtoosh shawl. Shahtoosh is extracted from the Tibetan antelope, which lives in temperatures under minus 40 degrees, in the most horrendous manner. The pregnant antelope is beaten till it aborts and the foetus is flayed for the coveted wool.

According to Ms. Gandhi, it takes three antelopes and a year to make a shahtoosh shawl. "There are only 25,000 such antelopes left." That is why the animal rights movement decided to promote pashmina, which involves no killing.

Ms. Gandhi researches a particular area extensively before launching a campaign and her collection of 20,000 books on animals is fair evidence. "I have to work very hard because I cannot make statements that are wrong and that can be disproved. This will put the movement in jeopardy."

It is never nice to see a horse whipped. But in a world populated by hundreds of thousands of humans without access to water, health, education, what would one campaign for? The rights of animals? Or of human beings not treated well by civil society and state?

The incident in Haryana is worth remembering. Five Dalits were lynched — in the 21st Century — based on an allegation that some cows had been skinned for their hides. Who would one fight for — the cows or the Dalits? Ms. Gandhi is annoyed at the question being asked time and again.

We go right back to stray dogs. "If there is danger to a human being by a stray dog, the dog goes. Why should I hang around if there are too many dogs around me?" She points out that killing more dogs would not bring down dog bites and that PFA's anti-rabies campaign is instructive. "After much research, we realised that sterilisation of dogs makes a lot of difference. When rabies comes down, dog bites also come down." Dog bites in cities such as Jaipur, Darjeeling, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Mumbai have come down, she says, and PFA has won five court cases in this regard. "Of course, we realise it is better to give one anti-rabies injection to a dog than 14 to a human being."

She has another argument to make: maintain the predator-prey balance. If you don't have dogs and cats, you may end up with rats. "The plague in Surat was a direct result of this." When the rats surface, they go for the poor, because the poor go where the rats go for food — garbage dumps.

Ms. Gandhi, who shelters 19 dogs from the street in her house, finally concedes that the question of which among the mammals one must prioritise is indeed a serious one.

Something to crow about

THE PEOPLE For Animals (PFA) has been effecting changes in policy and perceptions on animals in the recent past.

Owing to its initiatives, camels are no longer found on beaches for rides, horses on the Marina beach have been banned, bull-fighting has disappeared in Goa, and horse whipping has come to an end in races.

The PFA has been campaigning against ritual animal sacrifice in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and parts of the North-East. It has succeeded in getting the Governments of Tamil Nadu, Goa, Delhi, and Punjab to adopt the Animal Birth Control Programme. Ms. Gandhi says that this metro-based programme will move to the rural areas too. It was adopted in the Andamans last week.

PFA has set up 17 hospitals for animals, including the only wildlife hospital in South India at Kengeri, in Bangalore. Funds for these have been generated by exhibitions and events it has conducted over the years.

The PFA, which has 175 units, has 60 ambulances that are on call 24 hours a day.

Ms. Gandhi is now set to launch her ahimsa silk project in which cocoons are no longer boiled alive.

"Compassion with out action is fruitless. Fight for the rights of animal life, protecting the earth from polution, reckless cutting of trees and destroying of natural resourses."

----Mrs. Menaka Ghandhi