Kukur Tihar and Diwali: The precarious in-betweenness of dogs
Kukur Tihar, Diwali: While Nepal honours its dogs with marigold garlands and ritual offerings, India's Diwali celebrations expose a troubling contradiction. Illegal firecrackers leave dogs, cats and birds terrified, raising questions about animal welfare and whether compassion extends beyond religious rituals.
For one morning a year, the dogs of Nepal are royalty. Strays that spend most days nosing through rubbish heaps wear marigold garlands as thick as scarves. Pet spaniels in Lalitpur sit, slightly bewildered, with a smear of red tika on their foreheads. Plates of rice, boiled eggs, milk and meat appear on doorsteps, in alleys and outside temple gates.
This is Kukur Tihar, the day the country sets aside to worship its dogs. This year it fell on Sunday, 8 November, and by a quirk of the lunar calendar, it has fallen on the same day as Laxmi Puja and Diwali. Families garlanded dogs in the morning and lit oil lamps for the goddess of wealth after dark. Kukur Tihar is the second day of Tihar, Nepal's five-day festival of lights. Each day honours a different creature: crows first, then dogs, then cows, then oxen, before the festival closes with Bhai Tika, when sisters bless their brothers.
The thread running through the first days is Yama, the god of death. Crows carry his messages. Dogs guard his gates. In the Rig Veda, Yama keeps two four-eyed hounds, Shyama and Sabala, who watch the road the dead must travel. To feed and honour a dog, the thinking goes, is to stay on good terms with the one who decides your passage.
Other stories feed the devotion. The dog is the mount of Bhairav, the fierce form of Shiva. In the Mahabharata, Yudhishthira refuses to enter heaven without the stray that followed him up the mountain. The dog turns out to be Dharma in disguise. The ritual is simple. People give the dog a garland, a tika of vermilion, rice and yoghurt, and the best meal it will eat all year. Some families light a lamp beside it. Nobody shoos it away.
The most photographed ceremony takes place at police kennels. Nepal Police honours its sniffer and tracking dogs with garlands and tika, a public thank-you to animals that search rubble after earthquakes and check luggage at the airport.
This year the state went digital too. The Nepal Tourism Board launched its first Kukur Tihar reel contest, offering Rs 100,000 for the best English-language video posted to Instagram or Facebook by 21 November. The board says the aim is to sell the festival abroad as a celebration of coexistence with animals, not just a religious rite. For animal-welfare workers, the festival is a mixed blessing. The garlands are real, but so is the gap between one day of reverence and a year of neglect. Kathmandu's streets hold tens of thousands of strays. Many go unvaccinated and unsterilised, and rabies remains a public-health concern in parts of the country.
Groups such as the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre use the festival's goodwill to push sterilisation and vaccination drives. Their argument is blunt: a dog fed lavishly on Sunday may still be kicked, poisoned or hit by a microbus on Monday. Rich festival food can also upset stomachs used to scraps. Moreover, how many people actually differentiate between what is good and what is poisonous for the poor animal? None of this undermines the devotional aspect or makes it hollow. But it does make the festival a yearly test of whether a one-day ritual can shift everyday habits.
The contrast this year was hard to miss. Kukur Tihar fell on the same Sunday as Diwali and Kali Puja in India, and in Kolkata the night belonged to the chocolate bomb. Banned high-decibel crackers went off long past the permitted 8pm–10pm window and into the small hours, from Garia and Kasba to Ultadanga and Lake Town. Residents reported dogs and cats bolting and birds scattering after midnight. Noise outside Dr BC Roy Children's Hospital touched about 100 decibels. By Monday morning, police had arrested 205 people for noisy crackers and seized 238.6 kg of them.
Days earlier, more than 100 members of the West Bengal Animal Rights Activists' Front, led by actor Sreelekha Mitra, had marched from the Academy of Fine Arts to Rashbehari More against illegal crackers. Vets describe a familiar post-Diwali caseload in Indian cities: burns, panic, dogs run over as they flee, and deliberate cruelty. In Bengaluru last year, rescuers found dogs with firecrackers tied to their legs.
On the same night, our neighbours garlanded its strays and the city of joy sent them running helter-skelter, panicking and even out of their territories. And while Nepal is far from performative, a part of social media has even already branded it performative. It at least performs the idea that the dog in the street is owed something.
