No More Horsing Around.

It has been a long year for Jai and Veeru, a year since they almost lost their lives. Thanks to the Bai Sakerbai Petit Hospital for Animals the two tall, fair, blue eyed beauties are now hail and hearty and are waiting to be adopted.
Jai and Veeru are among the few horses who have survived tragic car accidents in the fast paced city of Mumbai. A year ago this duo that pulled a ‘taanga’ at the Gateway of India, had a head on collision with a taxi, leaving them with deeply wounded torsos. Lt. Col. J.C. Khanna, the overall in charge of the SPCA says, “When we brought the horses in, their wounds were so deep that you could fit half your hand in them, no one was willing to take responsibility or take up expenses for their treatment. So we did. Nobody thought they would survive, but these two are real fighters.”
The 133 year old Animal Hospital in Parel looks after these injured, otherwise commercially used, horses after they have been abandoned by their owners. The owners usually being, ‘taanga waalas’ cannot afford to take up medical expenses for these horses. Moreover it is a huge loss of time and money if a horse is injured; they prefer to simply bring in new, healthy ones. Some injuries include, fractured legs, broken ribs, blindness in one or both eyes etc. “We even had a very old horse, which had gone blind in both eyes, left at our gate one night”, says Kailash More the care taker of the horses at the SPCA.
On the other hand Gajrang, a taanga waala from Almeida Park Bandra says, “These horses are our bread and butter (Yeh hamari roji roti hain), we take good care of them. When they fall ill we have doctors from SPCA and outside come in to treat them. We take up their medical and other expenses; we don’t get any kind of support from the government”.
Dr. Rajendra Prasad Dwivedi, who practices privately, is one of the few animal doctors who treats not only small but also large animals at his clinic in Kalyan east. He says, “We treat horses very often, and many of these horses are used commercially. Sometimes the treatment turns out to be heavy on the owner’s pocket. Here I’m talking about owners who are not so well-to-do. Some owners don’t pay the full amount and some don’t pay at all. In that case we take up the expenses, but we cannot afford to do so every time. It is not fair to use these animals and then not take care of them. Maybe the situation would improve if the government provided some financial aid.”
The question arises, should such commercial use of horses be legal? There is a law against cruelty toward animals, however there is no law against the commercial use of horses, the government gives out licenses that are renewed from time to time for the use of these innocent animals, and many are used illegally.
Is an overcrowded concrete jungle like Mumbai really a place for them?
Jaya Simha the Campaign Manager for PETA says, “We believe that the use of horses is pre-historic, whether for ‘taanga’s’ or carriage of industrial goods. There is no place for them in a city like Mumbai, it is time for the Municipal Corporation to put a complete ban on the use of these horses and get them all off the street.”
PETA has carried out investigations on the ‘tabelaas’ from Kamathipura to Thane and they have found that the conditions of not only the ‘tabelaas’ but also the horses are very poor. Peta was able to rescue one horse near the Free Press building at Colaba, which was tied down with chains near rocks. It was found weak and sick.
It is now under the care of the SPCA, which looks after all its expenses as it does for the other horses recovering there.
The horses are put up for adoption and are given away only to suitable aspirants. However it is rare to see these horses get adopted, nobody wants injured horses, neither do the original owners come back to claim them.
However there is always a silver lining and many horses like Jai and Veeru are looking for it. Whether it is in the form of government support to the taanga’s so that they have a better standard of living in this city or putting an end to the commercial use of horses altogether, it is time for us to give them that hope, to give them their silver lining.


Trisha Roy.