Pranab Mukherjee legalizes bull sport Kambala, amid opposition from PETA & Co.

July 3, 2017

Despite the ongoing debate on whether sports involving animals should be allowed in India, the President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee signed an ordinance today legalizing the sport of Kambala from Karnataka.

An official communication from the Office of the President of India read, “President has approved the promulgation of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Karnataka Amendment) Ordinance, 2017. Now, Kambala is officially legal in Karnataka”.

After public outrage regarding the Jallikattu and Kambala issues, the respective state Governments of Tamil Nadu and KArnataka took the ordinance route to get approval from the President of Indian to legaize these sports by removing them from the restricted sports list of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

Kambala is a type of bullock cart race in Karnataka, where generally, one bull drags a two wheeled cart in a muddy terrain. The sport is particularly famous in the Karkala and Mangaluru region of Karnataka.

Earlier, Kambala and several other sports such as Jallikattu were banned following allegations that these sports were “cruel towards animals”. Several activists, especially in South India have had their eyes upon a few traditional Indian sports like Jallikattu and Kambala, and found a convenient reason to end this age old culture by citing the well being of the bulls.

However, they seem to have forgotten that these bulls are very much a part households and in fact these sports promote growing bulls which are otherwise abandoned because they produce no milk.

This move comes as a two fold lesson to all Indians. Firstly that no outsider organisation like PETA or alike can even dare to stop our culture and tradition and secondly, that the public has the power to force the whole political system in India to act how they want them to.