Lounge
Our messy association with elephants
Summary
The story of human interactions with elephants in India is that of a love-hate relationship. But do we really care to understand the inner lives of these sensitive giants
The fog was burning off the top of the trees as the sun rose in Corbett Tiger Reserve. In front of us lay one of the most exciting things in the world: a path winding through the forest in soft light. We were in elephant country, and we kept the pace of our vehicle slow and measured, a way to ensure we didn’t surprise any animals. As we edged forward, a series of sounds broke through the bushes. Little snorts—the expressive expelling of air through long noses. There were elephants ahead.
We cut the engine and waited. On the bush-lined road, the vegetation moved on the right. An elephant appeared. We gasped and became absolutely still; it always feels like the fabric of reality is shifting when a wild elephant becomes visible. We watched as another one came, and then another, rapidly, crossing the road in haste, the herd rushing to dissolve into the folds of the forest.
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Soon, there was a little one in the stream of grey trunks flowing past. He was a fuzzy grey, and the greenness of his expression marked him as a new entrant in the world. Just behind him, a large elephant emerged. Instead of going forward like the others, she paused. She didn’t cross. She had a certain experience in her bearing—like she had done this many times before. It cast a resolute stillness. She looked at her herd and then at us. There was a pause in the jungle, a rift in time. Another elephant came, passing her. Still, the leader was unmoving, but finally she huffed, her ears flaring—a warning not to follow her family. That pause of hers was significant; it burnt itself into my brain. She had waited to hold the metaphoric door so her herd could cross safely. Till that crossing commenced, she would stay rooted to the spot. It demonstrated what we often attribute to be a wholly human quality—the aspect of care which goes beyond one’s own welfare.
Today, elephants are in the news. As many as 10 elephants died in Bandhavgarh in Madhya Pradesh at the end of October. As per the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly, they died because they ate millet crops which had fungus on them. What was left behind was a calf, crying out for hours, which was rescued later. In August, a female elephant was killed as people threw burning rods on her in Jhargram, West Bengal. In the same state in Jalpaiguri on 16 November, a young elephant—the same shape and size of the Corbett calf—died after falling into a trench near a tea garden. Conservationist Avijan Saha documented how for hours the mother paced the area, refusing to let anyone touch her youngling. And on 18 November, two adult elephants and a calf were found electrocuted in Odisha, in what might have been a trap set for wild animals. The news tells us two things. Firstly, unnatural elephant deaths are fairly common. Two, elephants often die together. And if an elephant is left behind in life, it stays near the dead members, distressed, wanting to be with its brethren again.
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Recent scholarship on elephants throws fresh light on them. Perspectives towards pachyderms are like a braid with different feelings, textures and strands. Sometimes, the braid is knotted with fury towards the animal (around 550 people die in conflict with elephants each year), sometimes it is smoothened by a certain affection.
In a paper published this year by Rashmi Singh et al, a study of attitudes towards elephants in Valparai, Tamil Nadu, shows various nuances. The authors find that meanings of loss caused by elephants can vary. A worker on a tea or coffee estate considers conflict to be damage to houses, injury and death. For estate managers however, the mere breaking of flowerpots constitutes damage. Women fear elephants more than men, perhaps because more women were working in the estates; and people hold negative attitudes if they have memories of adverse interactions in the past. However, respondents largely like elephants. Thus, the authors describe the human-elephant relationship as an entanglement. The association is messy—it has the crossing of boundaries in a manner that is wilful, and it sometimes has a push and pull for domination from both sides. It is perhaps close to what one feels towards a relative: I hate her/ No, I love her.
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Indian Forest Service officer Parveen Kaswan and researcher Akashdeep Roy have documented that Indian elephants bury their dead. This was something known to some field trackers, but wasn’t documented before. What does a burial mean? It has an element of ceremony to it, an aspect of solemnity. It grants a closure which comes only when that ceremony is followed. It is a shrine-creation, a memorialising act that makes the landscape a little bit more elephantine than it is.
In these paths of memory and memorialisation, we learn that these deeply bonded animals shape the landscape just like we do. Singh’s paper stresses “elephants have lifeworlds of their own". For these magnificent beasts that groove the earth and the world with their deeply bonded lives, there are so many things we need to do better.
Through many studies, ecologists know what elephants need. They need adequate food for their needs. We must clear areas of invasive species like Lantana camara and plant species that elephants can use and feed on. Elephants can’t traverse steep slopes. So, we must make ramps in crossing areas, and build underpasses for elephants on highways, regardless of the cost. Effective early warning systems on railways must be rolled out at scale. We must urgently alter planning so elephant areas and corridors don’t get ravaged by mining.
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I was in the Western Ghats recently. At a particular bend in the undulating road, a hill rose on one side, and campus walls loomed on another. What remained was a trickle of flat land, and this area was claimed by the state highway. That narrow grey ribbon was also the space elephants walked in when they came to the area. The road then transformed into a pathway, a liminal space which swung from being a course for vehicles and a walkway for giants. Not far away was a river strewn with rocks. The rocky, uneven breadth of the river was not suitable for the elephants to cross in all its stretches. At a few points, the elephants could clamber through. In order to pass through the area, they would walk on the busy highway, and then squeeze their presence towards the rocks of the river. The process is rather less graceful than it seems: It is mediated by car horns and punctured by impatience.
As I walked the road, I imagined seeing a herd there. The young ones would be sniffing the air in an exploratory way. The matriarch would be standing her ground: Waiting, holding the door. Waiting with patience; waiting, for our understanding.
Neha Sinha is a conservation biologist and author of Wild and Wilful: Tales of 15 Iconic Indian Species.
