The captive elephant is the Malayli devotee's preferred sacrificial goat. It is treated as a dangerous wild animal when any court of law in the country deals with civil or criminal cases involving the killing of humans by an over-worked captive elephant during religious festivals. In a major judgment in 2012 granting compensation to the family of a person killed when an elephant ran amok in 1984 during Thrissur Pooram, the High Court stated that the state had no Act or Rule to fix accountability of a person in deaths involving captive elephant. The state had not laid down any criteria for the compensation amount either. The court had then directed the state government to formulate such an Act and Rule. But the direction of the High Court has still not been heeded. It is not as if the Acts passed by the State had changed anything on the ground. For instance, the High Court eventually had to direct the state to implement the Rules and Regulations regarding the parading of elephants that the state itself had formulated. The Court wanted it implemented from March 18, 2008.
These Rules state that elephants should not be paraded under scorching sunlight during day time, between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. During the rest of the time, festival organisers can parade only three elephants inside the temple complex surrounded by a compound wall. The parade should also be limited to 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. It says that every elephant paraded for the period of 4 hours must have rest for next 12 hours. There were restrictions on the transportation of elephants, too. Elephants cannot be transported in lorries when the intensity of the heat is at the highest, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The maximum weight of persons sitting atop the elephant, elephant ornaments and chains must not exceed 1000 kilograms. A minimum of 500 kilograms of leaves and 250 litres of water must be given for the consumption of each elephant every day. At festival places, the elephant must be placed under shade during the rest period. Minimum space between each elephant at festival place must be kept at 3 meters. The minimum space between the crowd and elephant must be 3 meters.
The veterinarian should perform two tests before issuing a fitness certificate to the elephant to participate in any festival. First he must ensure that the elephant is free from any wounds. Then the doctor will have to verify the elephant’s response to its mahout who, as the rules say, should not have any kind of weapon with him. If the elephant can be persuaded to do certain postures by a non-violent mahout, the veterinarian can infer not just that the beast and its minder are friendly but also that the elephant is not in ‘musth’. The fitness certificate will have a validity only for 12 hours. It means that if such a certificate is signed at 5 a.m., to parade that elephant after 5 p.m. the same day, another certificate is required. Fact is, most of these rules are followed in the breach. The Supreme Court was convinced that these stipulations were blatantly violated even during the conduct of Thrissur Pooram, and had in August 2015 directed the State Government to implement these rules in its letter and spirit. The apex court also wanted the state to initiate criminal proceedings against the offenders invoking non-bailable provisions of Wildlife Protection Act 1972.
Many elephants having wounds all over the body are lined up for parades with their festering bruises masked by black powder mixed with oil. Mahouts use sharp edged ‘ankush’ (a banned weapon with claw-like ends to tear into the beast’s body) and ‘valiya kolu’ (another banned weapon nine feet in length and sharp-edged on one side and broad edged on the other) to torture the elephants. Since an elephant in ‘musth’ is not allowed to participate in festivals, mahouts, at the insistence of owners, force chemicals into the elephant to suppress the condition. This is done by giving the elephant bread soaked in such chemicals.
After consuming the chemical food the elephant will stand at the festival ground in a drowsy state, without even moving its ears. Such elephants will show no tendency to urinate or to drink water or to eat leaves. But many such elephants have demonstrated a tendency to attack mahouts, and to run wild in the midst of a procession. Though many officials like veterinarians are aware of such heinous practices, they keep silent in return for the favours extended by festival organisers and elephant contractors. Only three district collectors, of Thrissur, Palakkad and Alappuzha have conducted the monthly meeting of district elephant monitoring committee appointed by Supreme Court of India to prevent cruelty to elephants at festival places.
Eternally doomed in God’s Own Country
The fate of the elephant Nandilath Gopalakrishnan is demonstrative of the fact that even meticulous safeguards are not enough protect the state’s most revered animal. Gopalakrishnan was paraded during the annual festival at Tripunithura Poornathreysha temple in Ernakulam district on November 23. The temple, under Kochi Devaswom Board, conducted this year’s festival with utmost caution. A new committee was constituted as the committee that organised the festival for past eight years was thrown out by the Kerala High Court.
Nandilath Gopalakrishnan. (Photo courtesy YouTube.com)
All the employees of the Kochi Devaswam Board had contributed their one day salary for the conduct of this festival. Moreover, to keep unscrupulous elements at bay, the court had handpicked a veterinary surgeon to issue fitness certificate for elephants. Despite all such precautions, an elephant named Nandilath Gopalakrishnan with a record of roguish behaviour (it had killed two persons before) and exhibiting tell-tale signs of ‘musth’ was employed to carry the golden idol and the silver umbrella, and was selected as the main elephant to be paraded at the centre of other 14 elephants.
At a crucial moment of the ritual, Gopalakrishnan refused to obey the orders of the mahout. As if deciding enough was enough, the elephant suddenly cut away from the procession and ran through the eastern ‘gopuram’ of the temple. Before it was tranquilised the mahout had used an ‘ankush’ to pierce the skin and flesh of the elephant near the sensitive part between the genitals and the right side of the hind leg to stop it from running. Then, in a further violation, the elephant was put in a lorry and transported to Thrissur under scorching heat. It is now known that Gopalakrishnan has difficulty urinating.
(The author is the general secretary of Heritage Animal Task Force, the state's foremost elephant NGO)
