Authorities in India face a massive task – managing the weight of obese elephants kept in temples. In parts of India, people keep elephants in temples for religious reasons – taking part in ceremonies and festivals.
Officials in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu are making efforts to get these over-pampered tusked animals to slim down, they told the BBC. Almost all the elephants that temples keep in the state have been found to be obese. Accordingly, temple officials are reconfiguring the diets of their elephants on the advice of veterinary surgeons.
“The female temple elephant – 15-year-old Parvathi – is overweight by 500kg (80 stone) and we are making efforts to reduce it,” said Pon Jayaraman, executive officer of the Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple told the BBC Tamil service. Another elephant in the Kallazagar Temple weighs 700kg more than the optimum for its age, according to Ravindran, the “Mahout” – or custodian – of the 48-year-old female elephant, Madhuravalli.
But veterinary surgeons point out that obesity and captivity go hand in hand. Elephants eat up to 200 different varieties of food in the jungle, including fruits, flowers, roots, and branches, but in captivity their diets often lack variety.
The experts also point out that the elephants in the wilderness are never exposed to foods such as rice, millets, salt, and jaggery (an unrefined sugar set into blocks). Wild elephants wander, trek uphill, cross streams, and walk on a variety of terrain. They also compete with other wild animals for resources.
A senior forest veterinary officer in the state observed: “In captivity, elephants eat constantly, and that coupled with lack of exercise makes the animals obese.” But temple officials say they take the elephants for walks of at least 5km each day based on vet advice. But research has shown that in the wilderness an elephant has to walk at least 20 sq km (eight sq miles) to find its daily food intake of about 250kg of plant matter.
Dr AJT John Singh, former director of the Wildlife Institute of India, called the practice a “grave sin”. “It’s like confining a solitary person in… the middle of the forest,” he said. “Elephants are social animals and have amazing social bonds with one another. Breaking that and keeping the animal alone is like solitary confinement, the greatest form of punishment to a human being.”
Temple authorities claim that they have created a near-natural environment for the elephants. But animal rights activists strongly dispute this. Studies have shown that many of the temple elephants throughout India – including 37 in the state of Tamil Nadu – live in appalling conditions.
Superstitions add to the discomfort of the elephants. For example, astrologers suggest that feeding elephants will ward off evil.
The reasonable option, according to Dr John Singh, would be for several temples to join together to buy a patch of land with natural cover, water, and food so that the animals can wander and be brought to the temple on festive occasions.
Activists have long pointed out that keeping an elephant in a temple itself constitutes abuse and a gross violation of animal rights.
People employed elephants as war machines in India in ancient times, and a detailed account in the 2,000-year-old book Gajasastra even defines the methods for keeping an elephant healthy. Vets point out that even feeding the temple elephants food other than what they eat in their natural habitat indirectly amounts to abuse.
Content contributed by Siva Parameswaran, reported from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India, sourced by bbc.com
