Humans claim ownership of a piece of land. We create the fence, burn the trees, break the rocks and declare it to be our property, build our fields and pastures and homes and industries and clubs and temples and offices over it.
Humans claim ownership of a piece of land. We create the fence, burn the trees, break the rocks and declare it to be our property, build our fields and pastures and homes and industries and clubs and temples and offices over it. Who will challenge the human? Not the animal, not the plant, not the rock or the river. When we talk about human rights, we automatically assume its superiority over animal rights and plant rights. 
Illustration/Devdutt pattanaik
I always think of the bullocks that pull carts and ploughs. No human being took a bull's permission to castrate it and turn it into a bull. Humans just assumed the right to neuter and domesticate the bull. Humans simply assumed they had the right to domesticate the wild horse and the wild ass and camel. We uprooted forests to establish our fields and diverted rivers to provide ourselves power.
Animals do not have property. They have territory. The big cat fights other big cats over territory. Dogs fight over territory. The alpha male claims ownership over foraging grounds. But an animal cannot bequeath its property to its children. The child has to fight for his own rights. There is no notion of inheritance in the animal kingdom. Might is right. Survival of the fittest.
But in human society, the meek have rights. The court restrains the alpha males, rules are created to share, or rather divide. Thus, we have property. What is mine is mine, not yours. Property is a man-made construct. A subjective truth, not an objective scientific truth. Property is the greatest myth of man, based on which we have intricate inheritance laws and courts to settle property disputes.
We speak of rights over land.u00a0 Who gave us this right? God? Or did humans give it to each other? Or was it a conqueror who claimed the land or a trader who silenced opponents with gold? Come to think of it, the first owner is usually the first bully.
In Vedic times, kings claimed all land over which their royal horses and armies traversed unchallenged. European imperial forces who travelled the sea claimed lands in the name of God, queen and country. Who is the owner of American lands, I wonder? Those who moved to the continent after the 15th century, or those who moved there a thousand years earlier? Is the one who lives longest on a piece of land its rightful owner? Nature's rules are different from human ones.
Is there any logical way to claim that a particular piece of land belongs to a particular human being? Nature existed long before humans walked the earth, and will exist long after human society destroys itself. Of all living creatures, only humans have constructed the notion of property. So much so that today we are convinced that property is a natural phenomenon, rather than a cultural delusion.
In the Ramayana, the monkey brothers, Vali and Sugriva, fight over Kishkinda while human brothers, Ram and Bharat, were willing to give the other their property.
What is animal and what is human? Fighting over territory, or laying claim to property? He who does not depend on property for identity is divine, says the Ramayana. This is why, the epic's protagonist is as much at peace within his father's city as he is in the forest.
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Devdutt Pattanaik is a Mumbai-based mythologist who makes sacred stories, symbols and rituals relevant to modern times. Reach him at devdutt@devdutt.com
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