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Rethinking Anekantaväda and Animality... 133 of peace the creature has felt in months. By this, you know that this is not a Jain sanctuary. Indeed, it has no religious affiliation at all. However, to their credit, many of its board members are Jain, including the brilliant, prestigious and compassionate founder of Jaipur Foot, Dr. Mehta. He and his fellow board members, along with the doctors, janitors, cooks and researchers at the facility, are perfect examples of gambling in the direction of creaturely relation and ahimsa from the perspective of the other jiva.
Let us take a less complex example, that of cohabitation with other jivas. According to both. Umäsväti in the Tattvärtha Sutra" and Kundakunda in the Samayasara," one is not allowed to cohabitate with dogs, birds, cats or other creatures. While their appreciation for the power structures definitely at work in the domestication and confinement of other animals, most Jain animal rescues also do not account for the desires of those dogs who would actually wish to join you in your home, eat by your side, walk and play with you, maybe even sleep in your bed. In Jain doctrine, the desires of the Other are subjugated to the belief that such interactions, such
blatent co-habitation, accrues karma. The result is that Jaina sanctuaries catch, neuter, vaccinate and then release dogs and other animals often into circumstances the dog might not choose.
In contrast, upon driving up to the entrance of Help and Suffering Sanctuary, you will almost certainly be greeted by a multitude of four-legged bodies that have chosen to stay after their treatment was finished. Tails wagging, they follow you all around the compound, enjoying your company and communicating with you in all kinds of interspecies ways. In fact, you can hardly escape their care and desire for affection, even if you try. In addition to the possey on the compound, this sanctuary adopts dogs out, as well. While we cannot ever know perfectly whether any given dog prefers the freedom of the street or the companionship and safety of a particular home, we must act according to what we have perceived their perspective to be and according to how they might see us: if they have not left the compound and enjoy human company and sleeping in the safety of a warm place, why choose to place them on the streets, instead of into a home? One may be the perception of the Omniscients and the other the perception of the dog; so why not gamble in the direction of the dog's perceived desires, even as you know there is still some kind of miscalculation involved? Would you give food to a blind woman, heal a sick child and then drop them off back in the leper colony?
The way the magistrate acts in our story is directly in keeping with privileging the perspective of the Other over your own certainty. This is precisely what needs to be done in order for Jains to respond adequately to the increasingly complex situations of institutionalized violence. Jainism needs to be able to say something more adequate to the tiger or hawk that requires other flesh and for those very reasons, cannot be kept in a Jain Sanctuary; to the birds in the Delhi Bird Hospital that languish for weeks on their way to certain death; to the subaltern mother, whose womb bears fruit her hands cannot feed; to the cows that wish not to be milked; to the dogs, whose lives are enriched by interspecies pack contact and might prefer a domestic life with humans than a life on the streets.
