| Summary/Abstract |
In October 2016, protests erupted across southern India opposing a Supreme Court judgement banning an annual agricultural festival featuring jousts between men and bulls. The Court ruled the contests as infringing animal rights. Rural constituencies rallied behind the festival as a customary practice and symbol of agrarian culture. This essay suggests that the conflict between the two constituencies turns on whether animals are legal subjects or social persons. I analyse this festival-complex in Maharashtra to show that the ritual imagines animals not as rights-bearing species, but as members of the agricultural community. The rite does not disavow violence, rather it embeds its symbolisation within familial and productive relations between people and bullocks.
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