Message From 'The Marina'

The jallikattu ban was only a trigger for the protest around Pongal on Chennai’s Marina beach. Lakhs of people, most of them youths, gathered spontaneously on the sands in a carnival atmosphere as a collective response to the anti-people policies of the state.

- Ilangovan Rajasekaran and R.Vijayasankar

IN AN UNPRECEDENTED SHOW OF UNITY, strength and non-violence, several lakh students and youths of Chennai gathered on the Marina beach and elsewhere across the State for a week to reclaim for the people of Tamil Nadu jallikattu (bull-taming), a sport that was part of the Tamil tradition for centuries but had been banned by the Supreme Court a few years ago.

They came together against what they believed was insincere attempts by the Central and State governments to take on legally animal rights activist groups (mainly PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI, a statutory advisory body set up in 1962 by the government of India under Section 4 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 (No.59 of 1960)), who have taken upthe cudgels on behalf of the bull, and have the more than five-year-old ban overturned. As it turned out, the scope of the protest went beyond jallikattu and encompassed issues arising out of what the protesters perceived as injustice to Tamils, the failure of governments to address the livelihood and other concerns of people, major political parties’ obsession with capturing power and sharing its spoils, the attempts at cultural homogenisation, and multinational companies’ operations that went against the interests of the country. And the protesters refused to be swayed by “outsiders”, including political parties.