Kerala’s Elephantine Paradox

Iyer boldly names the leaders and officials who turn blind to the torture, the veterinarians who issue fake certificates, the appalling conditions at the celebrated Guruvayur Captive Elephant Centre or the state-run Rehabilitation centres. She explains how no religious scripture calls for or endorses the use of elephants for festivals. The book is also Iyer’s personal journey and discovery. She draws a striking parallel to the plight of elephants with her own personal trauma as a girl child, sexually abused and socially silenced by Kerala’s patriarchal traditions.

Kerala’s sad saga of elephant torture has crossed all limits with the state’s recent economic prosperity fuelled by Gulf money. This has caused a rise in the number of festivals (of all religions) and their extravagance. There are as many as 3000 Hindu temple festivals every year now. “Jumbo Parade” has become a prestigious rule and temples compete for the highest number with many dignified animals made to stand with the names of the sponsors hanging from necks. This has spawned a ruthless and crassly profitable elephant industry. Owning, contracting, and renting elephants is a money-spinner with owners of famed tuskers making as much as Rs 7 lakhs a day. Elephant Owners' associations thrive with political and religious patronage and smother every voice of protest.
 

This writer remembers the hostile reaction to a TV series on the torture of captive elephants made a couple of years ago inspired by long conversations with Iyer and watching her “Gods In Shackles”. We were showered with choicest abuses, called us anti-Hindu and the elephant owner-contractor lobby organised a protest march before our office and even presented us with a token of death. (Wonder how a lone and relentless activist like Venkitachalam survives in Thrissur’s killing fields!)

Iyer’s book has been released when Kerala celebrated this year’s Thrissur Pooram, the state’s most extravagant elephant show, after a two year break caused by Covid-19. It has a particular chapter on Pooram-“The Abomination That is Thrissur Pooram.” The cruelty and primitivism perpetrated on hundreds of elephants during the Pooram are narrated in shocking detail. Wonder how would posterity assess this barbaric show conducted as Malayali’s greatest festival at the expense of extreme agony and suffering for the elephants. It is the most traumatic experience in an elephant’s life on account of milling crowds, long hours of standing on its sensitive foot carrying heavy weight on its tender spine, suffering what it hates most- the summer heat, deafened and blinded by the horrendous noise from the drums, the fireworks, and lights while the gentle animal abhors.

A two-year break in holding Pooram made Malayali throw to winds every word of caution and restraint from courts, officials, health experts, environmentalists, or animal lovers on its conduct. The media too, driven by the commercial potential, forgot the dangers it used to point out until a few years ago. Gone were the days when a media organisation boldly ran a campaign citing Sree Narayana Guru’s call, “Kariyum Venda Karimarunnum Venda” in the aftermath of the fireworks accident at the Puttingal temple in Kollam which killed 111 in 2016. Instead, today channels mired for days together in Pooram passion, did live for hours blanking out all important news and their loquacious commentators frothed over the childish and tacky Kudamattam. Even the rising fundamentalism lurking in the shadows was evident this time with Savarkar’s picture adorning a Varnakkuda even when Narayana Guru or Ayyankali was conspicuously absent.