~*~ Lord Ganesha * "Elephantine Irony" by Nanditha Krishna ~*~

[Guest guest]

~*~ Beloved Lord Ganesha! How can the cruel humans be stopped!? ~*~

 

 

~*~*~*~ "Elephantine Irony" by Nanditha Krishna ~*~*~*~

 

 

 

Ganesh Chaturthi is back, and with it the most lovable deity of

contemporary Hinduism, larger and more beautiful year after year. The

public celebration of the festival has spread to the whole country.

 

 

Huge Ganesha images are installed on street corners, highways and in

remote villages. ?All obstacles, whatever they may be, are rooted out

by worshipping Ganesha,? is the blessing necessary to any society.

 

 

Ganesha derives all his qualities from the elephant. The elephant is

huge and strong yet gentle, qualities of Ganesha. The elephant is known

to be wise: Ganesha symbolises wisdom and knowledge. The elephant?s

sharp hearing translates into Ganesha?s ability to listen and acquire

knowledge.

 

 

The elephant has a long trunk (nose) and a keen sense of smell: Lord

Ganesha?s

trunk can sniff out good and evil. The trunk can hold objects, making

Ganesha a great scribe. His mouse vehicle represents the speed with

which the elephant can move. The elephant clears every obstacle, making

him Vighneswara, dispeller of obstacles. The elephant is attached to

his mother

till he is a teenager: Ganesha is always a young boy (Tamil: pillai),

attached to his mother Parvati.

 

 

Ganesha is not the only revered elephant revered as deity.. The eight

directions are guarded

by eight elephants: Airavata, Anjana, Sarvabhauma and Vamana in the

east, west, north and south respectively, and Supatrika, Pushpadanta,

Pundarika

and Kumuda in the northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest

respectively. The Gajashastra has an elaborate story of how elephants c

could once fly, but lost the ability when they disturbed the penance

of Varana rishi

and were cursed by the sage to be grounded. Airavata is also the

vehicle of Indra, king of the heavens.

 

 

Admiration for the elephant's size and strength led to its association

with royalty. There is a story that a wild elephant bowed low before

Chandragupta Maurya, confirming his destiny as emperor. Chandragupta

mounted it and won several battles, guided by its wisdom. The elephant?s

love of water led to the custom of elephants pouring coronation water over

the king. Elephants pouring water also flank Gaja Lakshmi. To invoke rain,

the elephant was anointed with sandal paste and taken in procession.

 

 

The elephant symbolised the birth of the Buddha, representing both

Maya?s dream

of an elephant entering her womb and the royal prince who renounced the

world. Elephants appear frequently in art and were the symbols of several

dynasties, including of Ashoka. The elephant was probably domesticated

by the Indus Valley period, where it appears on the seals. In

Mamallapuram,

the elephant appears as a monolith and in Arjuna?s Penance; it adorns

Konarak.

 

 

Indian has much admiration for the elephant. Ganesha is the Son Of

Lord Shiva, and is adored and worshipped all over India and elsewhwere

as the giver of great blessings and the remover of obstacles... Yet

this is not matched by our treatment of elephants. Few animals are as

brutalised and illtreated as the elephant. Today they are used by the

logging industry, in temples and by government departments of forests a

and tourism. The cruelty starts with the capture and training. Wild

elephants

are separated from their herds by nooses thrown from the back of a

trained elephant or concealed on the ground, by pits into which they

fall in fear and shock, to their death or incur terrible injuries

(a favourite of poachers) or by frightening them with fire into

stockades,

a public jamboree called khedda.

 

 

Beautiful wild elephants, which once roamed free,

are imprisoned in kraals (cages), tortured, brutally beaten, poked

with sharp metal rods and harassed with starvation and loneliness till

they finally submit. This is how elephants are ?trained? into submission.

Is this the treatment for Ganesha ?

 

The mahouts control their charges by poking the goad into sensitive

spots behind the ears, causing great pain. Mahouts, according to a

document of

the Ministry of Environment and Forests, ?ill-treat their elephants...

deprove them of proper bath, water and food in time, and neglect to

take the desired precautionary measures which at times lead to serious

troubles

including killing of human beings?. There are several private

individuals who own elephants and use them for begging, advertising,

and rent them out.

 

 

In recent years there have been several instances of elephants running

amuck on the roads or during festivals and killing their mahouts, a

well-deserved end for the mahouts! In zoos they are chained and live

all alone.

The elephants are forced to give joyrides in forests and elsewhere.

The worst off are circus elephants,

who are burnt and tortured till they ride a cycle or stand on

their heads for the enjoyment of human imbeciles.

 

 

Gifting an elephant to a temple is the greatest cruelty and should be

banned. They are chained, with festering sores on their legs. They are

made to stand in the hot sun and beg for hours, or walked on hot tar

streets as an amusement prop for begging.

People give fruits and money to the human begger, imagining they are

feeding Ganesha.

 

 

The fruits are sold by the mahout, who uses the money on himself. An

elephant needs at least 250 kg of food a day.

Temple and privately-owned elephants get a few balls of

cooked rice and starve... this little tiny bit of cooked rice is not

the right food for elephants either who naturally graze in the

countryside for growing plants and leaves and barks and berries and seeds.

 

 

Even cash-rich temples like those of Madurai Meenakshi and

Vaitheesvarankovil have sick and wounded elephants, with painful open

sores and calloused ankles where the chains bind them. The state of

elephants in other temples is equally bad. The government owns most

temples, so nobody bothers about the elephants. There are no veterinary

check-ups or supervision of feeding.

 

>From time to time, Forest Departments of the southern or northeastern

states are asked to part with an elephant to be gifted to a foreign zoo

or to a temple. Have you seen the heart-rending sight of a calf

separated from its lamenting and loving mother, both crying and

wailing for each other in grief in elephant camps ?

The calf is roped and bundled into a lorry, irrespective of its age,

and the mother and child wail and starve for days. Many die of sorrow.

 

 

Elephants are very intelligent and social and live in herds headed by

a matriarch (a female~mother elephant).

The baby is protected by its mother and aunts for nearly fifteen years.

The male calves disperse thereafter, establishing their own home range

to avoid inbreeding. Females never leave. Calves never stray far from

their mother,

who becomes extremely agitated if she loses sight of her baby.

 

 

In recent years the elephant population in the wild has come down

drastically. 50 percent of the Asian elephants are found in India. Of

them, 50 percent live in South India. Before Independence, their

population was over 1,000,000

Today it is about 28,300. The decreasing numbers are due to habitat

loss, as forests are cleared for agriculture, plantations of tea,

coffee, teak and rubber and human habitations; dams and canals and

polluting mining, clear cutting in forest areas; and poaching for

ivory, which has made Indian tuskers a rarity.

 

59 percent of elephant deaths are caused by poaching, 13 percent by

food poisoning by farmers, and 8 percent by electrocution from electric

fencing. Between 1980 and 1986, countless scores of male elephants

were killed annually.

 

 

Project Elephant, initiated in 1991-92, aims to manage the species,

creating eleven reserves. But the elephant corridors are encroached:

elephants need to migrate over large areas in search of food, something

that is disappearing fast.

 

 

So, as we pray to our Beloved Lord Ganesha, spare a thought for the

precious tortured and murdered elephants. Are we being kind to them?

 

 

The elephant goad and noose in Ganesha?s hands must remind us

of human cruelty to this noble creature who once roamed most of the

mother earth.

We worship and adore the elephant-headed God. Let us treat the

elephant with the same love we shower on Ganesha.

 

 

~*~ OM Ganeshaya Namah: ! ~*~

 

 

 

~*~*~*~*~*~ Shivani Sannyasini ~*~*~*~*~*~

 

 

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