Introduction: human-animal relations at the Margins

The above quote is from Baluta by Daya Pawar, arguably one of the first Dalit autobiographies in Marathi. Pawar recalls his childhood memories, remembering how his mother would forage in the jungle for food, often after paying off the forest guards, and how people from his community were forced to survive on whatever they found edible in the forests or even on the grains left behind in the fields after harvest. Pawar's powerful narrative is a testament to Dalit lives and how they relate to their environment. Meanings of and attitudes to nature, animals and the environment vary across communities and cultures. They also generate different ideas and feelings depending on the condition of the humans that relate to them. Human relations with animals have always been multifaceted; animals are worshipped, considered kin and also slaughtered as spiritual offerings.2 Even more complex is our relations with animals in the contemporary world, where animals may be employed as performers in circuses, displayed in zoological parks, recruited as research subjects in laboratories and kept as companions and pets in homes. Ideas of morality are often attached to some animals, which are idealised, venerated and ‘used as models of order and morality’.