Kathmandu, Oct. 25 -- As befitting a country whose patron deity is The Lord of Animals, Nepal's autumn festival cycle is about offering buffaloes, goats and fowl to the goddesses, and worshipping cows, dogs and even crows.
But our reverence for animals does not carry over into our day-to-day treatment of the animals in our midst. Owners are unmindful of how firecrackers frighten pets, municipalities lynch dogs, abandoned cattle roam the highways, buffalo calves die of suffocation in the backs of lorries, and the ultimate in cruelty: Gadimai Mela. How a country treats its animals tells us a lot about its culture.
All this fatalistic brutality hardens us as a society, and translates into abuse of fellow human beings. State neglect condemns...