In his book, Cancer Ward, on the Stalinist period, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had asked, “If we stop loving animals, aren’t we bound to stop loving humans too?” Since affection for animals denotes softness, it is sometimes derided in “hard” societies such as the former Soviet Union or in Mao Zedong’s China where gongs and cymbals were beaten to prevent sparrows and other birds from settling in trees till they fell out of the sky in exhaustion. Among adolescents, too, the cultivation of manly traits under peer pressure is associated, falsely, of course, with being insensitive towards the suffering of animals.
Unfortunately, such an attitude sometimes continues till later life, which perhaps explains why cruelty towards animals, though punishable by law, does not evoke the kind of revulsion it should. Even law-enforcing agencies are not all that eager to intervene in cases of cruelty, such as the ill-treatment of buffaloes as they pull overloaded carts, apparently because they do not want to display “softness”. It is customary, therefore, for them to explain the apathy by saying that their hands are full with the more urgent task of preventing crimes against humans.
An article, “From Animal Cruelty to Serial Murder”, says that “since the late 1970s, the FBI has considered animal cruelty to be a positive indicator of future serial murder”. Another article on “Childhood Cruelty to Animals and Subsequent Violence against Humans” says that “offenders who commit violent crimes as adults were significantly more likely than adult non-violent offenders as children to have committed acts of cruelty towards animals in general and pets and stray animals in particular”. The link is evident. Violence against animals fosters an attitude of criminality among the young, which includes the sadistic feeling of deriving pleasure from the infliction of pain on a helpless victim.
