The Weight Of Tradition

In a state that has the country’s largest population of captive elephants—702 is the official figure—there has recently been a spate of instances of desperate elephants violently, and repeatedly, retaliating against ill-treatment by their handlers and owners, or venting their frustration on the public.

Last month, four people were killed in such incidents. Three of them were mahouts. An elephant that goes by the name of Mullakal Balakrishnan and belongs to the Travancore Devaswom Board, a quasi-government body, vent his fury on his own mahout and killed him after another tusker spiked Balakrishnan and bolted during a temple parade in the southern Kerala district of Kollam. Alarmingly, this was not Balakrishnan’s first kill. It gored a mahout to death in 1999 and, again, in 2004. Last year, he killed a woman who tried to feed him at a temple in Alapuzha.

On February 14, another elephant, Palakkad Kesavan, killed a pedestrian at Chelakkara in Thrissur. And just a week later, Rajeev, a partly blind tusker, killed its two mahouts in Ranni. Two days later, it was Chirakkadavu Neelakandan’s turn to run amok during a festival parade in Kottayam. While there were no fatalities this time, this elephant is another “history-sheeter”, having killed three people in the past six years.

In the same month, the passengers of a car in Kollam had a miraculous escape when the partly blind Avittathur Ganapathy crushed their vehicle. Ganapathy’s other victims were not so lucky: the tusker has done to death three mahouts in the past five years.

The irony is that these gory tragedies are being enacted in a state where elephants enjoy a special status in tradition, folklore and even cinema.  At a huge kraal at Punnathur, in Thrissur district, live 66 elephants, looked after by the Guruvayur Temple Board. Three elephants accompany priests for daily ritualistic offerings at the Guruvayur temple. The largest annual elephant procession in the state, at the historic Arattupuzha temple pooram in Thrissur, stars as many as 61 elephants. Several Malayalam films star elephants; Kannan, a famous elephant owned by Malayalam film star Jayaram, has acted in more than 33 films. And perhaps no other state has witnessed a hartal, as one Kerala village did, last year, over the death of an elephant.

However, the tuskers are also abused by the very society that claims to idolise them. Owned by 250-odd individuals and temples, captive elephants are on paper protected by stringent rules. For instance, rules say fireworks are not to be set off near elephants and that elephants must be transported with proper cover from the elements. But the reality is that the elephants, rented out for 10,000-odd festivals every year, have to endure long, noisy parades, hear firecrackers explode in their midst and travel long distances on their feet or in shoddy transport.

It is no secret, moreover, that they are ill-treated by mahouts who are a far cry from the idealised keepers shown on screen—one even learning Hindi to speak to an elephant, in a popular Malayalam film. In real life, many are brutal, and notoriously fond of drinking. V.K. Venkitachalam, secretary of Kerala’s Elephant Lovers Association, which campaigns against the exploitation of captive elephants, says, “These intelligent, social and sensitive beings are ordered about, and forever under threat of being beaten with hooks.” According to their own statistics, which are considerably different from the official figures, in the last 12 years, 1,139 elephants have died in captivity while 212 people, including 189 mahouts and seven owners, have fallen victim to elephantine fury.

K.K. Srivastava, Kerala’s principal chief conservator of forests, who is also its chief wildlife warden, argues that these figures need to be verified. But he does not deny there is an urgent need for mahouts, owners, temple committees and others to clean up their act.
Apart from status and tradition, big money fuels the increasing and indiscriminate use of elephants, not just by temples, but also political parties and even companies. Last year, Guruvayur Padmanabhan, the state’s most sought after celebrity elephant, fetched more than Rs 2 lakh for a single day’s appearance at a temple festival.

Elephants become violent during the period of ‘musth’, which coincides with Kerala’s season of festivals, from January to May. With testosterone levels in musth bull elephants rising as much as 60-fold, even the most placid elephant may try to kill humans during this phase. But instead of keeping them away from festivities, vets are known to drug the animals to suppress these symptoms, which can have a deleterious effect.

But that alone does not explain why elephants are killing frequently and repeatedly. Dr K.N. Muraleedharan Nair, a veterinary surgeon, says, “Making the animals work for longer hours without giving them adequate rest, frequent change of mahouts and poor training, both for the mahouts and animals, have contributed to the rise in mishaps.”

Sugathakumari, a well-known poet-activist who is also on the Animal Welfare Board of India, urges Malayalis to change their ways. She says, “For God’s sake, please stop this practice of parading elephants in temples. No Vedas prescribe this. Set up proper shelters for captive elephants near temples. These animals are by nature meant to roam the forests and those of us who want to see them should go to their habitat rather than alienate them.”