Abstract This article uses the “pariah” dog to investigate the junction of speciesism and racism in colonial India. Using postcolonial theory and animal studies to make its case, it asserts that British colonialism put Indian dogs in a racialized order by calling them “pariahs” or “pests.” The government justified their murder by this classification, which also helped to maintain a colonial “cyno-racism,” an approach of compulsive analogy of native dogs with lower caste Indians, and thus perceived them as racially lower and “killable.” The article investigates the ways in which colonial policies, legislation, and practices, including dog taxation and lethal chambers, perpetuated this racialized distinction. Moreover, it examines how colonial modernism upset Indian views on dogs, which straddles respect and disgust. The article emphasizes the need of decolonizing animal welfare policies since it exposes the continuation of colonial-era sentiments about street dogs in postindependence India.
Aryama Ghosh (2026) studied this question.