Delhi’s recent turmoil over street dogs—protests, petitions, and court directives—keeps reiterating the same dilemma: How do we keep people safe without denying animals the most basic right to live?
On public health, the evidence is unequivocal. It’s true that dogs are responsible for ~99% of human rabies deaths. The way to stop transmission isn’t mass culling; it’s vaccinating dogs, paired with bite management and prompt post-exposure care for people. Concerns about attacks and rabies have pushed other countries toward harsh measures. Türkiye had moved to round up strays, with provisions allowing euthanasia for dogs deemed dangerous or unfit for adoption—a policy that triggered nationwide protests and international criticism. The controversy is a cautionary tale: heavy-handed approaches invite backlash, strain shelters, and often fail on their own terms.
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Beneath the policy tug-of-war lies a deeper moral question: How do we treat beings weaker than us, especially when their very presence sometimes frightens us? Many traditions place humans above other creatures. The Bible grants humans “dominion” over living things. Aristotle insisted, “nature has made all animals for the sake of man.” Aquinas argued that, lacking reason, animals exist for human use. In this view, animals are tools or companions, rarely moral subjects.
Hindu philosophy complicates that story. Ahimsa sometimes extends beyond our species. As the Bh?gavata Pur??a urges: “One should treat animals such as deer, camels, asses, monkeys, mice, snakes, birds and flies exactly like one’s own son. How little difference there actually is between children and these innocent animals.” This seems like a radically inclusive ethic. It doesn’t erase human needs; it asks us to see sentience before status.
Philosopher Peter Singer called this bias speciesism: discrimination by species, akin in structure to racism or sexism. He asks: if high intelligence doesn’t license one human to exploit another, why would it license humans to exploit non-humans? Long before Singer, Jeremy Bentham stated: “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” This statement, from his 1789 work “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,” argues that an animal’s capacity for suffering, not their ability to reason or speak, is the crucial factor in determining its moral consideration and right to protection.
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Neuroscience has been quietly dismantling the “animals as automata” idea that Descartes once advanced. Dogs have well-developed limbic systems for fear, joy, and attachment. Mutual eye contact with humans can raise oxytocin in both species—the same “bonding hormone” that knits human relationships. Our so-called mirror-neuron system likely lights up when we see an animal in distress; that’s why a chained dog’s pleading look can feel like a tug on the nerves. Consciousness, at minimum, means the capacity to feel pain, comfort, relief, delight. Stones don’t feel. Dogs do. Plants show astonishing biology, but not the converging neuro-behavioral signs of felt experience we see in animals.
Years ago, a stray appeared at my door every night when I set food out. It ignored others but came to me, without fail, until one day it didn’t. Perhaps it moved, perhaps it died. I waited. It never returned. Absence can teach as loudly as presence. Another time, I unhooked a chained dog because I couldn’t bear its gaze. It bolted; getting it back was chaos. But the moment mattered. This wasn’t “automata” behavior; this was a someone, not a something.
How we think about animals spills into how we treat humans. When we mentally demote others—by caste, creed, or language—empathy collapses. History shows what follows: slavery, persecutions, genocides justified by “less-than-human” rhetoric. Seeing animals as sentient doesn’t just help them; it trains our moral attention for one another. Critics of animal rights often argue that humans’ greater intelligence justifies overriding animals’ interests. Yet this reasoning collapses when we consider infants, people with profound cognitive disabilities, or elders with dementia—none of whom lose their moral standing because of limited rationality. As Peter Singer argues in Animal Liberation, it is the capacity to suffer, not intelligence or reasoning ability, that grounds moral concern.
To close on a hopeful note: when done properly, the humane path turns out to be the most practical one. It means scaling catch–neuter–vaccinate–return (with deworming), tagging animals for easy tracking, and returning them to the neighborhoods they already know. Set quiet, designated feeding spots away from school gates and building entrances, keep streets clean and food waste in check, and make sure clinics are ready—plus a round-the-clock helpline for when things go wrong. For dogs that are aggressive or ill, hold them in separate shelter space and assess before any return. Teach children basic “dog sense,” keep gentle public reminders running through the year, and bring in independent audits so standards don’t slip.
We already live with a quiet kind of speciesism: coddling some animals, eating others, dismissing the rest. Rejecting speciesism doesn’t mean erasing every boundary; it simply means refusing needless harm. I felt that on a Saturday march in Toronto: the arguments came later, the compassion came first. If our cities choose evidence over panic, and kindness over performative crackdowns, we can keep children safe and make the streets better for everyone.