Ram Gopal Varma Slams ‘Dumb’ Dog Lovers, Questions Foreign Breed Craze Over Real Pet Care

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma is once again a controversial actor, with his out-of-the-box statement on dog bites and hypocrisy of some dog lovers. In a row of taunt remarks, he described some animal lovers as naive by treating dog bites as love bites, following the recent incident of stray dogs attacks. Varma claimed that this biased empathy is a significant problem because it puts the rights of strays before the security of humans at risk, especially children of the poor who are the most vulnerable.

He proceeded to draw a parallel between a perceived class divide saying that the same people who preach the virtues of strays out of their air-conditioned residences, are the same people who are purchasing high end, foreign breeds exploiting a kind of dueling standard.

Ram Gopal Varma Calls Out Misguided Dog Lovers

In his analysis, Ram Gopal Varma identifies an ironic attitude of a part of the community of dog lovers. Although they enthusiastically protect the rights of stray dogs, their own homes are oftentimes cluttered with fancy and high maintenance foreign breeds. This, Varma shows, proves that their supposedly love towards dogs is not universal but instead is predetermined by taste in some particular breeds and social prestige they give.

This point breaks the idea that they practice what they preach. The filmmaker poses the question, why, since they all care alike about all dogs, are they not adopting those strays they speak so loudly in support of, versus paying to have said strays imported.

Ram Gopal Exposes Hypocrisy Among Dog Lovers

Ram Gopal Varma also shone light on the hard class distinction of the dog-human relationship in India. The so-called dog menace is not an issue to the affluent residing in gated houses or communities but a constant menace to the poor as they dwell in the street and in slums without any safeguards. 

He proposed that the well-to-do can afford to shower pets with love, whilst the underprivileged are unaware of the dangers of a stray attack. This gap in experience, as he sees it, invites an essential difference of attitude and therefore the expressions of compassion that are preached by some of the dog lovers appear to him irrelevant and unsympathetic to the real world.

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