Animal Enthusiasms

Life Beyond Cage and Leash in Rural Pakistan

Muhammad A. Kavesh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000329964
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Animal Enthusiasms explores how human–animal relationships are conceived, developed, and carried out in rural Pakistani Muslim society through an examination of practices such as pigeon flying, cockfighting, and dogfighting.

Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork carried between 2008 and 2018 in rural South Punjab, the book examines the crucial cultural concept of shauq (enthusiasm) and provides critical insight into changing ways of life in contemporary Pakistan. It tracks the relationships between men mediated by non-human animals and discusses how such relationships in rural areas are coded in complex ways. The chapters draw on debates around transformations of animal activities over time, the changing forms of human–animal intimacy and their impact on familial relationships, and rural Punjabi values attached to the performance of masculine honour.

The book will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, multi-species ethnography, gender and masculinity studies, and South Asian studies.

1 Decolonising passions

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, pigeon flying, cockfighting, and dogfighting were all practised predominantly by the ruling classes in India. Over time, the elites (nawabs, princely chiefs, rajas, village landlords) refined these practices and their popularity grew among the common people who took on these pursuits as shauq. From their height to their transformation, these activities also demonstrated different types of masculinities. Masculinity, as Connell (1995) suggests, should not only be defined in relation to male domination of women but also male hegemony over other men. She emphasises the plurality of masculinities across a spectrum that includes hegemonic, subordinate, complicit, and marginalised masculinities, ranked hierarchically under the hegemonic model (1995, 76–80).¹ Connell’s paradigm of the multiplicity of masculinities is particularly useful for analysing the transformation of recreational activities like pigeon flying, cockfighting, and dogfighting over time in the Indian subcontinent.

In the pre-colonial period, various animal practices (hunting, elephant fighting, cheetah fighting, and so on) were used by men in power to display dominant masculine traits such as courage, fearlessness, and strength. Among the Mughal kings, such practices were also a part of their everyday courtly recreation and leisure (O’Hanlon 1997, 12; Pandian 2001, 90). Thorstein Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1912) defines the concept of leisure as “non-productive consumption of time” (1912, 43). Leisure, in his view, is time that people spend in non-industrial (or labour) work. This, he says, serves two functions: (a) to assert the unworthiness of labour, and (b) as evidence of pecuniary ability to afford such a lifestyle. However, an important function of leisure activities that Veblen overlooks, later highlighted by Bourdieu (1984), is its ability to acquire symbolic gains, or its capacity to help a person achieve non-material goals, such as honour, prestige, status, and a position of distinction. For instance, the imperial practice of hunting tigers, usually carried out as a recreational pursuit from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, served the Mughal kings (and later to the East India Company sportsmen) as a means of displaying their martial qualities as well as to assert the legitimacy of rule by offering protection to the Indian subjects (see Pandian 2001; cf. Orwell 1958). Similarly, as I will show in this chapter, the practices of pigeon flying, cockfighting, and dogfighting originally appeared as recreational pursuits, largely adopted by the Indian elites (sometime in collaboration with the British) to achieve symbolic gains and to reproduce traits of dominant masculinity.

Rosalind O’Hanlon (1997), a social historian, expands on the concept of masculinity to highlight the dimension of sociality. She views masculinity as “that aspect of a man’s social being which is gendered: which defines him as a man and links him to other men, and conditions other aspects of his identity, such as class, occupation, race and ethnicity” (1997, 3). Masculinity for O’Hanlon is a social fact, linking one man to other men, and shaping his identity in a particular cultural setting. As I will show in the following chapters, the animal keepers of South Punjab strive to perform their masculinity by winning animal competitions and by accumulating status and izzat (honour). The masculinity of the animal keepers, therefore, is not only maintained by showing ascendency over other gendered identities but it also requires the recognition of other men (see O’Hanlon 1997, 3). However, an important feature of studying masculinities, as both O’Hanlon (1997, 3–4) and Connell (1995, 185) point out, is their evolution and transformation through history. This is one of the major concerns of the chapter: to explore the historical development of these three animal-related practices and explain how they canvas a plurality of masculinities that evolved since pre-colonial times, and in doing so to trace their transformation from a predominantly elite passion to a shauq of the rural people in contemporary Pakistan.

This chapter discusses the multiple forms of overlapping and contesting masculinities associated with all three animal activities in pre-colonial India. Pigeon flying was a passion of Indian kings, nawabs, and rajas, while the Indian elites and early colonial officials both practised cockfighting enthusiastically, dogfighting was introduced by the British to display their imperial masculine traits. All these practices were also effective social lubricants for Indian elites and the British and helped them develop social relationships. However, after the War of 1857,² relations between the rulers and the ruled were altered, and this had an effect on human–animal relationships in India.³ These animal-related activities started losing their appeal to the British and consequently to the Indian elites in the late nineteenth century. This led to pigeon flying, cockfighting, and dogfighting entering the lives of the rural people and allowing them to compete for izzat among peers. The colonial legacy, however, still continues in post-colonial Pakistan in the form of the century-old Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act which, even after some recent amendments, serves as a relic of colonialism.

Animal activities in pre-colonial India

Pigeon flying was practised among the people of India before the Mughals; however, the early Mughals elevated its status (Pearson 1984, 339). They exchanged birds to build political alliances and to develop and maintain friendships with the nearby states. The Mughal Emperor Muhammad Akbar (1542–1605) was particularly famous for keeping and flying pigeons, a passion he cultivated from his childhood. In the book Ain-i-Akbari (Akbar’s Regulations), written by Akbar’s court historian Abul Fazl,⁴ an entire chapter is devoted to the king’s passion for flying pigeons (Fazl 1873, 298–303). Akbar cherished the company of his birds, and referred to the practice as ‘ishqbāzī (love-play) rather than kabūtar bāzī (pigeon fancying)—the more common term used to describe the practice in modern times. The Arabic word ‘ishq means “to love passionately” or “be passionately in love”; however, it also means to “interjoin closely,” and to “connect” (Wehr 1979, 719). Because of the word’s lexical richness, it is used by many Persian and Indian Sufis to hint at their union with God (Lumbard 2007, 373). Akbar, too, took his ‘ishqbāzī to mystical heights, as an appreciation of the wonders of the Divine Creator, as Fazl notes:

The amusement which His Majesty derives from the tumbling and flying of the pigeons reminds of the ecstacy [sic] and transport of enthusiastic dervishes: he praises God for the wonders of creation. It is therefore from higher motives that he pays so much attention to this amusement.

(1873, 298)

The number of pigeons at Akbar’s court was staggering. It is estimated that he had more than 20,000 pigeons and almost 800 kilos of grain required to feed them each day (1873, 302). Many enthusiasts still refer to Akbar’s practice of feeding pigeons with seven types of grain to keep the bird healthy and active. Moreover, he employed many servants whose only job was to care for pigeons, and they were paid a salary equivalent to trained soldiers (1873, 303). Such allowances demonstrate the importance of the bird, which was not only kept as a form of entertainment but also for strategic purposes.

Throughout his reign, Akbar took personal interest in the birds and used selective breeding. He gave them personalised names and trained them to fly at night. He is also said to have been the first bird trainer to fly a cluster of more than 100 pigeons at once. In addition, Akbar introduced new methods for evaluating pigeons (for instance, the colour of the bird’s eye, its claws, and sides of its beak), and developed the typology of pigeons based on their thirty colours and fifteen patterns (1873, 301). Fazl describes Akbar’s 500 selected pigeons, known for performing remarkable manoeuvres such as doing seventy tumbles in the air. However, these feats were not only designed to amuse the king because Akbar deployed the bird strategically to facilitate matters of state. According to Fazl, pigeons were commonly used to impress his subjects and foreign visitors. The king would astonish merchants and diplomats coming from Iran and Turan with the remarkable displays of skill of his pigeons (1873, 289–299).

As a court historian, Fazl always found crucial functional justification for the king’s pursuits. For instance, while discussing the game of chaugān (Indian form of polo), Fazl suggests that it was not merely a form of amusement, but that the king saw it as a training practice for the Mughal cavalry (1873, 297). Again, in his discussion of the king’s hunting expeditions, Fazl claims that for Akbar it extended well beyond recreation, as it allowed him to increase his knowledge about the state, military, and Indian subjects (1873, 282). This was equally true of pigeon keeping, which Fazl claimed was an important affair:

This occupation affords the ordinary run of people a dull kind of amusement; but His Majesty, in his wisdom, makes it a study. He even uses the occupation as a way of reducing unsettled, worldly-minded men to obedience, and avails himself of it as a means productive of harmony and friendship.

(1873, 298)

Keeping an extremely large number of pigeons at court not only displayed Akbar’s power and wealth, it also depicted the king’s ability to control, tame, and domesticate the wild birds through his care and attention. This symbolic care of the birds, Fazl’s description indicates, was analogous to the king’s care of his subjects and visitors who, like pigeons, were carefully nurtured.

Two centuries after Akbar, pigeon flying continues to be associated with the ruling elites of India. Mughal miniaturists illustrate the bird, and different literary works affectionately depict pigeons. One such artwork, Kabūtar-nāmah (The Book of the Pigeon), appear in the mid-eighteenth century, written by a late Mughal author, Vālih Mūsavī, containing colourful illustrations, evocative poetry, and vivid prose concerning pigeons (Sims-Williams 2013).⁵ After its metrical introduction, the prose in the second section of the book details breeding, training, and flying techniques, and elaborates on the various colours and patterns, characteristics, and descriptions of the bird.⁶

Pigeon flying remained popular among the Indian kings, nawabs, rajas, and elites until the mid-nineteenth century. The last Mughal king, Bahadur Shah (1775–1862), was also said to have been fond of pigeons.⁷ Legend has it that when the king went out in procession, almost 200 pigeons flew overhead to provide shade from the scorching summer sun of Delhi (Sharar 1975, 127). The rulers of Oudh, from Shujaud Daula (r. 1754–1775) to Nasirud din Haidar (r. 1827–1837) were all pigeon enthusiasts, and the passion reached its peak during the reign of the last nawab of Lucknow, Wajid Ali Shah (r. 1847–1856). There are important similarities worth noticing in the passion of pigeon keeping between Nawab Wajid Ali Shah and Emperor Akbar. Both kept more than 20,000 pigeons at their courts and employed around 300 caretakers for the birds. Like Akbar, Wajid Ali Shah had a large and impressive menagerie (Sharar 1975, 128).⁸ However, unlike Akbar whose enthusiasm for pigeons has been described as a “study,” for achieving “higher motives,” and for reducing “worldly-minded men to obedience”; Wajid Ali Shah’s shauq is usually depicted as an extravagance and a wasteful practice. Colonial accounts note that he once paid 25,000 Rupees for a silk-winged pigeon and spent 2000 Rupees on producing a pigeon with one black and one white wing (see Oldenburg 1984, 15–16). The shifting status of pigeon keeping—from being a demonstrative of higher status to a mark of wastefulness and extravagance—was in line with many other traditional pursuits which the British rulers dismissed as frivolous and inefficient. This is poignantly depicted in Satyajit Ray’s critically acclaimed film “The Chess Player” where the British Resident of Oudh is shown to be extremely impatient and dismissive of the local nawab’s love of poetry, dancing, pigeon flying, and kite flying.

By the first half of the nineteenth century, the ideals of imperial rule and notions of masculinity circulated within a wider discourse that championed ideas of productivity, order, and authority. The “wasteful use” of resources, energies, and time by the local elites on activities such as pigeon flying was seen as yet another indication of their indolent and effeminate character. The idea of waste and more specifically of moral waste, as geographer Vinay Gidwani (1992, 44) has described, served as a metaphor for the idle behaviour of the Indians and to some degree became a political tool for legitimating colonial rule in India. Nevertheless, keeping and flying pigeons was practised in some parts of England from the sixteenth century onwards. For example, a small community of the silk weavers of Spitalfields kept and bred pigeons for many generations.⁹ However, the passion of this artisan community was never considered a gentleman’s pursuit. Charles Darwin, who used to visit the place to discuss pigeon breeding, described the locals as “little men” and “odd specimens of the Human species” (Feeley-Harnik 2007, 161–162). As the practice was out of step with Georgian gentlemanly traits, it remained marginal, far removed from the newly assumed authority that the British Raj sought to establish in its colonies.

In short, unlike the British colonial officials who considered it an indolent pursuit, in India pigeon flying was a culturally meaningful activity, associated with elite masculinity that demonstrated high culture, authority, and financial display. Contemporary Indian social theorist and political psychologist, Ashis Nandy (1983, 10), suggested that the conception of masculinity in pre-colonial India was quite different from the European imagination of gender. What the Europeans considered “effeminate” behaviour, such as the self-denying ascetic Brahman, a poet prince, a nawab listening to court music, or a king flying pigeons or kites, was not strictly identified as such in India. Some forms of creativity like poetry, song, and dance did not involve the display of aggressive behavioural traits, yet the Indians considered them vital for the cultivation of an ideal elite male. Similarly, pigeon keeping presented a notion of masculinity that, without the outright pursuit of power and domination, required years of study, care, and attention in mastering the craft. This was not comprehensible to the British who usually associated it with inefficiency, effeminacy, and idleness.

Cockfighting, however, was an activity that the British enjoyed and practise along with the Indian rajas and nawabs, and even wagered enthusiastically on fighting roosters. Unlike pigeon flying, cockfighting—for both Mughals and the British—was a portrayal of courage, bravery, and strength. The gamecock, like a soldier in the battlefield, was expected to fight with strength and courage to the last and not to surrender or flee from the battle. In fact, cockfights were purposely shown to soldiers before an armed engagement to raise their spirits and inspire them to fight like a cock, to their last breath.¹⁰

In many societies, roosters were a vital part of mythology and magic, considered a symbol of beauty...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on translation and transliteration
• Introduction
• 1 Decolonising passions
• 2 Living with pigeons: Rooftop intimacies
• 3 The seduction of cockfighting: Forbidden dangers
• 4 The spectacle of dogfighting: Amplified masculinity
• 5 A life with shauqeen: Familial relations in a multi-species household
• 6 Threats to genuine shauq
• Epilogue: Life beyond cage and leash
• References
• Index