No Elephant for Lord Jagannath's Annual Chariot Festival

[Guest guest]

No Elephant for Lord Jagannath's Annual Chariot Festival

http://www.dailyexcelsior.com/web1/03june23/national.htm#5

 

PURI, ORISSA, June 22, 2003: The elephant will no longer be used as

part of the age-old rituals in the annual rath yatra (car festival) of

Lord Jagannath, Lord Balabhadra and Devi Subhadra, which begins on July

1. The temple authorities have decided to break with the tradition of

an elephant leading the procession of the Puri king from his palace to

the three chariots, parked near the Temple's Lion Gate. Last year

Laxmi, an elephant who came all the way from Varanasi to perform the

ritual, died, and the Temple authorities came under severe criticism

from the general public as well as the wildlife lovers for not

attending on the ailing elephant properly. Also, as a result, the

Temple management was accused of being in violation of the Wildlife

Protection Act.

 

Arranging an elephant became a problem for the Temple management after

the Nandankanan Zoo Authority in nearby Bhubaneswar refused to part

with its pet elephants, Prema and Basanti, to lead the procession of

the Puri Gajapati in 2000 car festival. For decades Prema was used in

the rituals as she was docile, obedient and better trained by the mahut

to accommodate the surging crowd during the car festival. Basanti, the

other female elephant of the zoo, also accompanied her for at least

five years. The practice of using elephants from the zoo was

discontinued in 2000 when the two female elephants on their way to

participate in the car festival damaged several houses near Patia

village. Wildlife officials attributed the behavior of these two

elephants to the loud honking by a passing vehicle. Since then, the zoo

authority decided not to send them to participate in the festival. A

senior zoo official said the crowd behavior, the traffic and the road

condition had changed over the years and were no longer conducive for

the elephants to join the rituals as it would be difficult to ensure

everyone's security. Moreover, the mahut who used to guide and interact

with Prema for over a decade is no longer alive, and the zoo officials

felt that it would be too dangerous to send Prema to the car festival

with another mahut.

[gHari]

... who was obviously no ordinary elephant.

[gHari]

Were there elephants in the Nevada Ratha Yatra this week?

[Subala]

same people who complainign abotu elephant died I bet most of them meat eaters.....

 

well may be not - but this is a biggest hypocrasy (if i spell it right)

 

one of my collegues at work was proud to announce he saved and sheltered 4 kittens who would surely die - he saved them from parking lot. How wonderful...

 

meanwhile he eats meat and killign hundreds of cows...

 

save the kittens and kill 100s of cows.

 

no words.... to describe stupidity