More at http://www.sanctuaryasia.com | Conservation Action
The author is Executive Director, Wildlife
Trust of India and Senior Advisor to the
President, IFAW.A PROCESSION OF RIGHTS
In the nation of our dreams, elephants must move as they
did roughly three million years ago, when they entered the
borders of a land that many millennia later would be known
as India. Unfortunately, in the India of today, elephants move
in a pantomime of dance and death. Sanctuary Asia’s award
this year to a photographer who has captured the wretched
retreat of a mother and calf set afl ame by an angry mob (see
page 96), is an acclaim for rendering onto fi lm the poignancy
of an everyday tragedy. Something has to be done, now, for
this senseless confl ict to stop.
If I were an elephant, I would start to march. A steady,
regular-footed, determined onwards march as of soldiers in
battle. I would march to bring order to the chaos of confl ict.
I would march to bring a sense of normalcy to the unit that
has eaten, slept and walked together till the mobs came in.
I would march to bring to the attention of the other (so-
called) intelligent species sharing my space, the plight of my
kith and kin. I would march in protest. Inherit the language
of protest from humanity and start a dharna, a hartal or a
procession of rights. March to meet policy makers and the
public, showcasing the utter banality of their actions towards
my species. March through the very corridors that elephants
have used for three millennia and that have been choked by
incursive human activities. March in silent defi ance, or perhaps
set to a cacophony of anguished trumpets.
But, I am not an elephant. I am a fellow denizen of this
country and of this Earth that I and the elephants that I love
call home. I must act. For this, through the Wildlife Trust of
India I am organising a Gaj Yatra. As I cannot appropriate the
outrage of a species, this is not a march of defi ance. It is not
a march of elephants to reclaim their home, but a march to
reclaim the national consciousness.
The National Heritage Animal of India, the creature that
has inspired the worship of Lord Ganesha of the Hindus
and which appeared to Maya of the Shakyas predicting the
greatness of the Buddha, sadly needs an image makeover.
And the Gaj Yatra, run in collaboration with Project Elephant,
Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, and
the International Fund for Animal Welfare, is a national
celebration of this magnifi cent and ancient Indian being.
It brings art, literature, science and innovation together to
highlight the plight of elephants and point to solutions that
would aff ord them their Right of Passage. It brings Bollywood
stars, children, corporate India, musicians, media magnates,
sports stars, artists, conservationists and politicians together
to try and celebrate the National Heritage Animal of India.
And while doing this it focuses the attention of policy makers
and those that can make a diff erence to the future of
elephants. The Gaj Yatra is backed by the technical depth of
the Right of Passage publication that has detailed all the
101 corridors that elephants need to move between their
habitats in India.
I am unsure how long this journey will take. It has started
on World Elephant Day on August 12 this year from Teen
Murti Bhawan in New Delhi. It has received the blessings of
Lord Ganesha the next day at the Siddhi Vinayaka Temple
in Prabhadevi in a Mumbai launch. It has already called in to
Bengaluru at a concert at the Vidhana Soudha, at the 100
Drums Wangala festival of the Garos, at the 20th International
Children’s Film Festival at Hyderabad, and at the Ziro Festival
of Music in Arunachal Pradesh. While this is happening,
however, the elephant still suff ers across its range.
There is no simple answer to a complex problem. I can
only quote Lawrence Anthony in The Elephant
Whisperer: “Perhaps the most important lesson I
learned is that there are no walls between humans
and the elephants except those that
we put up ourselves, and that until we allow
not only elephants, but all living creatures
their place in the sun, we can never be
whole ourselves.” Eeeehant
esson I
n humansow B. C. C
HOUDHURYIncreasing water scarcity in the region leaves elephants with little
choice other than entering villages such as Hediyala near the Bandipur
Tiger Reserve in Karnataka.