Peacock Feathers Come From Murdered Birds

SR No.: 269734
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Publisher: New Delhi Times
Publication Year: 2016
Total Pages: 3
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 143 KB

Page 1

Peacock Feathers Come from Murdered Birds
By Smt. Maneka Sanjay Gandhi
Published on December 5, 2016 New Delhi Times - International Edition
It is extraordinary that a religion claiming to be completely based on ahimsa should be the reason for the extinction of our national bird, the peacock. The peacock is the only bird whose feathers are allowed to be sold, and this became a part of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972-solely because the Jains put so much pressure on the Congress party and Smt. Indira Gandhi. So, shops came up selling feathers and other people started buying the easily available feathers. Subsequently, every study and raid by wildlife departments showed that these feathers could only have come from the bird being killed.
A demand rose for this exception in the Act to be removed. During Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee's time, the Act came to Parliament for this amendment. I sat for a long time with the Prime Minister who was an eminently sensitive human being. I showed him the data on peacocks disappearing from most of India and what the various raids had uncovered. He agreed to ban the sale of feathers. Shri Pramod Mahajan entered the room. In a very loud voice he insisted that the party would lose the entire Jain vote because the Digambara monks were very upset at the idea of peacock feathers being banned.
The Prime Minister ordered the amendment to be withdrawn. A third try was made in 2013 during Shri Jairam Ramesh's time. Again it failed because the Jain community sent a million threatening messages and, as usual, the politicians backed off.
Photo Credit : Shutterstock
Better to lose the national bird than to lose a single vote - even if it is the vote of monks who do not vote. The Jains are not stupid or ignorant - far from it. They know that silk is made of dead butterflies and silver varakh, till July 2016, was made with the intestines of cows and buffaloes. But they continue to use both.
They will eat vegetarian food - but none of them is vegan even though they know that the cow is forced to give milk, suffers when she loses her own baby to slaughter and two years later is killed herself.