The Bull Sport Tied to This Season, Banned and Then Restored

Jallikattu, a traditional Tamil sport in which participants attempt to grab and hold onto the hump of a charging bull, has long been associated with the Mattu Pongal period honouring cattle, and it became the centre of a sustained legal and cultural conflict after India's Supreme Court banned the practice nationally in 2014 on animal welfare grounds, ruling that the treatment of the bulls involved caused unacceptable suffering under India's animal cruelty law.

Large public protests across Tamil Nadu in January 2017, drawing support across the political spectrum and defended by supporters as an attack on Tamil cultural identity rather than a straightforward animal welfare matter, led the Tamil Nadu state government to pass legislation that year specifically permitting jallikattu to continue under new safety and welfare conditions, a legislative response the Supreme Court later upheld; the underlying disagreement between animal welfare advocates who continue to document injuries to bulls and participants at jallikattu events and defenders who regard the sport as an inseparable part of Tamil Pongal-season tradition remains active and unresolved even after the legal question of its permissibility was settled.