A Plea for Freedom (2/15/99)

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This is an impassioned plea to all those who have a sense of compassion and respect for all living creatures, human and nonhuman alike. It is also a plea for all those concerned to overcome small-mindedness and set aside personal resentments, and do the decent thing.

This story involves a makhna, a tuskless male elephant, estimated to be 40 years old, who was captured from the wild by the Forestry Department, in mid-July 1998, because he was destroying crops, and also may have even killed people.

He was marched 40 kilometers, over a gruelling 5-day period, in leg chains, guided by five helper tusker elephants, to the Elephant Camp at Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary. During this epic march, he sustained extensive and severe wounds to all four legs, because the chains cut deeply into his tissues, severing tendons in two of the injured legs. He was also inadvertently gored several times by the helper elephants in the left flank and shoulder, the resulting wounds becoming deeply infected, and which continue to ooze pus even to this day.

For approximately 7 months, the makhna was confined to a 16’ x 16’ kraal constructed of teak logs, never once during that time, to anyone’s knowledge, being able to lie down on the permanently urine-soaked ground. He was subjected to beatings by two mahouts, one session of which I witnessed, in an attempt to train him. During the beating I observed, the elephant was struck at least 587 times with sticks during 20 of the 45-minute training session (a very conservative count made from an audiotape that was secretely recorded at the time). The object of the “training”, as explained by the mahouts, was to make the elephant “sleep”, that is, sink to his knees and lie down on command. The accomplishment of this goal would indicate the elephant’s readiness to submit to specific training procedures, his spirit broken. He was unable to achieve this because of the injuries to his legs, particularly because of the ankylosis of the fetlock joint of his right foreleg, which he could not flex. He resisted the beating, even with two feet partially suspended in the air (as can be clearly seen from the photographs I took during the training session), by holding onto the teak railing with his trunk, screaming all the while (also recorded on the audiocassette).

To the best of my understanding, the elephant was removed, after 7 months of incarceration, from his kraal on February 6 of this year, and shackled by chains around his right foreleg and left hindleg to two trees. His training is scheduled to begin again soon. It must be emphasized that the injuries to his legs have still not healed, and the abscesses on his flank and shoulder continue to ooze pus. The elephant has also lost a considerable amount of body weight, as confirmed even by the Sanctuary staff, because of inadequate feeding.

The utter cruelty of this, from a clinical veterinary point alone, hardly needs comment. The heavy metal chains attached around still-injured legs, the persistence of pus-draining abscesses, and the resumption of the beatings say it all.

As with any species of animal, training is usually carried out on young individuals, still in their formative period of life, when they are more open to mental manipulation and conditioning by human beings. This, apparently, is also the same for elephants, as was confirmed by translated questioning of the mahouts, and would not usually be carried out on a 40-year old wild male, as in this case. This clearly constitutes mental cruelty, made all the worse for being imposed on physical cruelty.

That any nation could openly condone such senseless cruelty (the purpose of the training is just so that the makhna can be used to give rides to Sanctuary visitors: he could never be used as a breeding stud because of the severe and permanent injuries to his legs) to a defenseless animal is beyond understanding, especially when the country is India, a country that is known and revered the world over for its reverence to life and respect for all creation.

I beg you to release this animal to a life of sanctuary, and not continue to punish him like a criminal.

James Mahoney, D.V.M., Ph. D.
Research Professor
New York University School of Medicine

February 15, 1999