Sacred and shackled: Tamil Nadu’s temple elephants Premium

The sudden and dramatic death of Lakshmi, the temple elephant in Puducherry, led to an outpouring of emotions from thousands of devotees, most of whom came to realise after her death that she was leading an unnatural and solitary life in a concrete jungle, and was possibly abused, at times. While activists argue that it is no longer advisable to hold elephants temples, within cities where freedom of movement and the lack of wide open spaces for the pachyderms can cause trauma to the animals, the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowment Department, in charge of most temples in the State, insists that the living conditions of the temple elephants have vastly improved and that tradition will have to continue.

Never in recent times has the famous Sri Manakula Vinayagar Temple in Puducherry witnessed a gathering of such magnitude on a non- auspicious/festival day as was seen on November 30, to mourn the loss of temple elephant Lakshmi, who had breathed her last that morning. While the presiding deity of the temple was believed to be powerful, and thus popular, equally liked and revered was Lakshmi, the temple’s elephant. The darling of the masses, she would patiently bless every person offering her money or goodies to eat, as she stood shackled just outside the temple.

The 32-year-old animal collapsed in a dramatic event caught on CCTV, near Calve College Government Higher Secondary School, while she was being taken for her early “morning walk” from her small enclosure in the town. 

Video footage gathered by government agencies from CCTVs installed near Calve show Lakshmi dragging her feet on the road, unusually, and then, after a while, collapsing on to the road. As she fell, the elephant started jerking her legs and then collapsed. Passers-by and nearby residents panicked and tried to revive her by giving her some form of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but the efforts were in vain.

“She collapsed at around 6.20 a.m and in a few minutes the temple veterinarian reached the spot. A preliminary investigation by the doctor and the panel of veterinarians drawn for the post-mortem points towards cardiac arrest as the reason for the death. We are awaiting the findings of the autopsy to further ascertain the cause of death,” said a senior official.

It is learnt that Lakshmi had a long history of foot rot. Before her death, for more than a month, the pachyderm was confined to her enclosure on Eswaran Koil as she was not in good health. She was under the care of Veterinary Assistant Surgeon, Animal Disease Intelligence Unit, Madurai, N. Kalaivanan and temple veterinarian Selvaraj.

According to the official, the elephant had developed fever three days before her death. She was on medication and seemed to have recuperated. “But she looked very tired. We have to find out whether she was in good health when she was taken for a walk on the fateful day,” said the official.

Lakshmi’s stay at Sri Manakula Vinayagar Temple, ever since she was brought from Kerala in 1995, had generated its own controversy with animal rights activists and officials in the Forest Department objecting to the way she was taken care of. There were frequent complaints about ill-treatment to the animal by the mahouts as the pachyderm was seen only from the tourism point of view due to its star status, said a veterinary surgeon.