Response to article in CyberNoon.com on Animal Rights activism in India

[Guest guest]

This is my response to the editor regarding an article entitled 'Animal

activism- A Hype and hoopla game' by Tavleen Singh that appeared in today's

Cybernoon newspaper(23rd November,2006)

http://www.cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress & subsection=edit\

orials & xfile=November2006_onthespot_standard185 & child=onthespot

 

 

Sir,

This is in reference to Tavleen Singh's article entitled 'Animal

activism — A hype and hoopla game' in CyberNoon.com published on 23rd

November,2006. As someone who protested the match in Jaipur, I want to

remind the author that the experts who protested the game in Jaipur have

considerably more experience in dealing with elephants than the

organisers(or herself for that matter). She writes, " Mark was more shocked

than anyone when so-called animal activists started an international

campaign on the internet to stop the Cartier match. PETA activists took to

the streets to protest outside Cartier shops in London, Paris and New York

and in India huge pressure was put on the Animal Welfare Board to stop the

match. Luckily it failed and glamorous socialites like Parmeshwar Godrej and

Bollywood stars like Preity Zinta and Zayed Khan descended on Jaipur last

Saturday to watch the match. " The condescending tone of her article

indicates that she was possibly too busy rubbing shoulders with so called

celebrities to worry about reading the information that is available on the

internet on the various issues surrounding the match. (

www.stopelephantpolo.com) The organisers are not the only concerned elephant

experts and animal welfare workers in India and the world. Top elephant

experts like Dame Daphne Sheldrick and Raman Sukumar have voiced their

opposition to this event. The author would be well advised to read their

opinions before singing paeans to the utility of elephant polo to aid

conservation.

Maybe the author should understand the difference between glamorous party

events and the efforts of the people who have worked for more than 50 years

to save elephants. No sensible conservationist or animal welfarist would

make an elephant play football or polo to raise funds; it is absurd to claim

otherwise as she does with gay abandon in her article.The author has

possibly forgotten that elephants have not evolved to play polo and were not

meant to take part in films to fatten producers' wallets. The organisations

that have protested the match have also raised enormous sums of money for

elephants and much more than Elephant Family at that so the impression that

Elephant Family and Help In Suffering have the sole prerogative on elephant

issues since they have been working in Jaipur is not only misguided, but

pernicious. Zoocheck Canada, an organisation that protested the elephant

polo match organised a singular fundraising event to raise $140,000 for

elephants some years ago. The event resulted in the publication of the book

" Elephants: The Deciding Decade " that had contributions from the most well

known elephant experts in the world. To my knowledge no elephant was made to

play polo during that event.The elephant polo activism encompasses a variety

of issues and will carry on regardless of opposition from people like her.

The author ignores the fact that the organisers had to impose Section

144, that is tantamount to a curfew, to tackle peaceful protesters. One

wonders what was so threatening to the organisers to take such an extreme

arbitrary step? Or did they have something to hide beneath the champagne and

jewels and ornaments? Perhaps the suffering of the wounded elephants who had

their injuries elaborately covered to amuse the author and her associates on

November 18th?

The author says that the activism was stupid. Many researchers take to

activism and Edward Wilson of Harvard University, the great biodiversity

researcher regeretted that he did not take to activism sooner than he did.

There is nothing wrong or stupid about the elephant polo activism since well

informed researchers took part in it.

Perhaps the real stupidity lies in media people who are more keen on having

their pictures shot with party animals than doing concrete research on any

issue before putting ink to paper. If there is one thing that stands out

in the article, it is the singular obsession with celebrity status and a

concomitant disregard for suffering, animal or human. Such an attitude is

perhaps not surprising in today's media world. As media scholar Noam Chomsky

said, " Ownership dictates content. "

The author writes, " The idea behind the match was to create awareness about

the sad plight of the Asian elephant and naturally to get some good

publicity for Cartier who have returned to India in a big way for the first

time since the days of the maharajahs. " The real point was not to create

awareness about the sad plight of the elephants since Cartier has been

encouraging elephant polo since 1986, but the latter, ie., to create some

good publicity for Cartier and bring back the days of the maharajahs, for

the benefit of a select few. It is suggested that the author checks out

Cartier's past animal welfare and human welfare record(eg. their role in

perpetuating the blood diamond trade) before extending a red carpet for them

in print. The author says that the latest disease in India is irresponsible

activism. Just wanted to emphasise cogently that the activism in this case

was much more responsible and measured than she reckoned and that

irresponsible journalism is a virus eating into the very fabric of this

country.

Best wishes and kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

 

 

http://www.cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress & subsection=edit\

orials & xfile=November2006_onthespot_standard185 & child=onthespot

 

On the spot - Tavleen Singh

 

Animal activism — A hype and hoopla game

Thursday, November 23, 2006 10:49:13 IST

 

when it comes to real ecological damage we hear not a peep out of our

so-called activists so we have the most polluted rivers in the world, the

worst urban environment and the filthiest villages

 

Irresponsible activism is becoming the latest Indian disease. Wherever you

look, whatever you try to do you will surely stumble over some group of

busybodies who will try to stymie you either through the courts or through a

public campaign. I say this in the context of the needless and highly

irresponsible campaign that a group of dodgy animal activists launched

against an elephant polo match in Jaipur organised by Cartier last week. The

idea behind the match was to create awareness about the sad plight of the

Asian elephant and naturally to get some good publicity for Cartier who have

returned to India in a big way for the first time since the days of the

maharajahs. Cartier had no idea that they were being 'cruel' to elephants

until animal activists ranging from Maneka Gandhi and her sister Ambika

Shukla to international organisations like PETA (People for the Ethical

Treatment of Animals) tried to stop the match at the last minute by putting

pressure on the usually ineffectual Animal Welfare Board. Animals are

treated so badly in India that its news that there is an Animal Welfare

Board at all. As for the so-called friends of animals, my sister discovered

the sincerity of their concern when she tried to save a dying camel in Delhi

last week and could not find a single animal shelter that was prepared to

take him in. She ended up taking him personally to a vet and then bringing

home to die at her gate. Maybe the activists were busy in Jaipur protesting

against Cartier.

 

*What a love

*Elephant Polo has been played in Jaipur for decades. The city has more than

a hundred urban elephants usually used to carry tourists up to Amer fort.

Until foreign charities like Elephant Family and HIS (Help in Suffering)

came along not a single animal activist appears to have noticed that these

poor creatures had no access to water, shade or medical attention. Nor have

these activists noticed that walking up to Amer Fort in the burning heat of

Rajasthan is much tougher for elephants than ambling around on a grassy

field for a few rounds of polo. My own view is that had Cartier and Mark

Shand not been involved in this particular match there would have been no

protests at all.

Mark Shand is an old friend of mine and before he became more famous as the

brother-in-law of Prince Charles was better known for a book called 'Travels

on my Elephant' in which he describes a journey across India on an elephant

called Tara.

It was this journey and his love for Tara that began his interest in doing

whatever he can to save elephants in India from almost certain extinction.

Elephant Family organised a charity dinner in London last summer that raised

more than half a million pounds for the cause.

So, Mark was more shocked than anyone when so-called animal activists

started an

international campaign on the internet to stop the Cartier match. PETA

activists took to the streets to protest outside Cartier shops in London,

Paris and New York and in India huge pressure was put on the Animal Welfare

Board to stop the match.

Luckily it failed and glamorous socialites like Parmeshwar Godrej and

Bollywood stars like Preity Zinta and Zayed Khan descended on Jaipur last

Saturday to watch the match. As someone who was there may I say that rarely

have I seen such a happy group of elephants. Nobody was allowed to use an

'ankush' so they ambled around lazily as if taking a walk in the park making

the absurdity of the protests against elephant polo seem even more absurd.

But, the activists have a new cause already they are trying to prevent

Ashutosh Gowarikar from using elephants and horses in the film he is

shooting in Jaipur on Akbar and Jodha Bai. The protesters appear not to have

noticed that in Akbar's time there was no motorised transport.

 

*Off the cause

*Gowarikar has trouble from Rajput activists as well who have their own

ludicrous objections to a film being made about Jodha Bai that links her to

Akbar. How stupid can this kind of activism get? Stupider than we realise

and stupidly we in the media ask no questions. The worst activists are those

who take up the cause of animals and the environment and it is not for

nothing that they are called eco-terrorists. Their activism in India has

held up major infrastructure projects on the silliest grounds. So the

highway between Mumbai and Pune was stalled at one point because some group

decided that it was going to destroy the habitat of a particular kind of

squirrel. And, the Bandra-Worli sealink in Mumbai was delayed for two years

because fishermen and other activists raised an endless series of supposedly

environmental concerns. Every delay in a major project costs taxpayers

hundreds of crore rupees.

India's tragedy is that when it comes to real ecological damage we hear not

a peep out of our so-called activists so we have the most polluted rivers in

the world, the worst urban environment and the filthiest villages in which

humans and animals live in conditions so primitive they would be

unacceptable in almost any other country. So much for ecological activism.