Press Release: April 10, 1999

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Save Loki the Elephant: The World Appeals to India

Article 51-A (g) of the Constitution of India: “It shall be the fundamental duty of every citizen of India to protect and improve the natural environment…….and have compassion for all living creatures.”

Thanks to the Internet, the plight of an elephant in India called Loki is now known in millions of homes and offices from Sweden and Australia to the U.S. Ambassador in New Delhi.

The Indian government is not reacting in the elephant’s best interests, according to Deanna Krantz, Director of India Project for Animals and Nature (IPAN), a division of New York-based Global Communications for Conservation, Inc., who provided critical care for Loki for 4 months, and in the eyes of more and more Indian citizens, and people from other countries and cultures.

A cultural barrier of denial and hurt, false pride has been erected to discount how much this animal had suffered before he was broken in spirit by the ancient traditional Indian method of training elephants. This method is used by western circuses, and is being challenged in western courts on the grounds of unjustifiable animal cruelty that is in violation of the Endangered Species Act because it puts elephants’ lives at risk, and State and Federal Animal Protection and Anti-Cruelty Laws.

Perhaps through the Internet, as different peoples around the world come ever closer to each other, we will examine our own cultural values and traditions and learn from others.

IPAN respects and follows many of the great cultural values and traditions of India: AHIMSA (non-harming), ABHEY (freedom from fear), and embraces the DHARMA through the empathic spirituality of panentheism (that is explicit in the VEDAS, the MAHABHARATA, and the BHAGAVAD GITA, among other ancient Indian texts), that encourage a reverential respect for all life. (1) All meals for staff at the Animal Refuge are vegan.

The beating of the makhna Loki into submission in order to make him trainable by breaking his spirit was coupled with starvation and confinement for 7 months in a log crate 16” x 16” in which he could neither walk nor lie down. The traditional Indian method of elephant training should not have been applied to Loki on veterinary and humane grounds. He had already suffered enough. Yet the veterinarian in charge, Dr. Krishnamurthy, actually ordered the beating of Loki to begin in late December, 1998. This treatment induces learned helplessness and the elephant’s immune system becomes compromised. The animal may then succumb to stress-induced disease like herpes, foot rot, tooth and tusk abscesses, overwhelming parasitic infestation, and chronic bacterial infection.

Loki developed several of these diseases and more. He was, like many of his kind, also loaded with lead from villagers’ bullets and probably with pesticides and herbicides from their poisoned fields. And he had been gored terribly during capture by trained tuskers (kumkis). Then he was crippled by the heavy chains he had to walk in for 8 days, with chains, hooks, and wires that cut through his skin and into the deep tendons on all four of his legs. Eight months later he is still a cripple from these injuries. Ropes should and could have been used instead of chains, but what ropes were available were found, at the last minute, to be too rotten to be of any use.

Elephants are highly empathic animals, and are extremely social and socially interdependent since they live in matriarchal communities. The bulls are loners, through preference probably avoiding intra-familial and inter-herd conflicts.

Ancient matriarch and patriarch elephants live as long as people and were revered and never harmed by being taken from the wild and having their spirits broken by the tribals like the Kurumbas in the Nilgiris, who support IPAN with full hearts.

Religious sensibilities are evidently offended when the western world, that does not bow to icons of Loki called Ganesh, expresses concern over India’s suffering animals. Why?

Hinduism Today, a magazine published in Hawaii, took offense recently to a painting by German artist Verona re-Bow, donated to IPAN, that depicted cattle suffering in various situations encircling a person worshipping a golden icon of Nandi, the bull god. The painting was seen as offensive because it seemed to imply that Hindus both worship and slaughter cattle. But the artist’s intent was to emphasize the paradox between religious tradition and reality and to use the image of devotion toward an animal idol to inspire compassion for living sacred forms of the same divine image.

Indeed, the teachings of the dominant religious traditions of India - Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, and Buddhism - all emphasize the spiritual and ethical reasons for treating animals with compassion. Furthermore, India is the only country to have written into its Constitution that it is the duty of every citizen to protect the natural environment and to treat animals humanely.

So it seems inconceivable that the Indian authorities responsible for the humane treatment of Loki should take personal offense at IPAN’s concern over the fate of this elephant and accuse IPAN, as Chief Wildlife Warden R.P.S. Katwal has written, of painting the authorities as villains and of spreading misinformation out of sheer vested interests. Rather than come forward and willingly collaborate with IPAN and others to free Loki from his chains and allow him to live out the rest of his life in an enclosed sanctuary, the authorities have chosen to personalize the matter. Deanna Krantz is being painted as a trouble-maker with some hidden agenda who is interfering with government business – a deportable offense. False allegations in the press against IPAN implying that “the real issue is not the elephant but a deeper conspiracy” raise doubts as to the value and virtue of reason and compassion where truth is distorted by misinformation and self-interest. The irony is self-evident. Those who seek to discredit IPAN’s actions and concerns are doing precisely what they accuse IPAN of doing – spreading misinformation out of sheer vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

One Indian scholar, Prof. M.N. Srinivas (2), contends that humanitarianism is a western value that is still alien to Indian culture, a conclusion affirmed by another Indian scholar, Dr. D.O. Lodrick (3). These insights may help explain why the Loki issue has been turned into a personal attack against Deanna Krantz and IPAN. Those responsible for Loki feel personally attacked and cannot separate themselves (i.e. their own vested interests in saving face) from the documented history of this animal’s terrible suffering. There is no separation, and thus no humanitarian progress at this time because, as Srinivas and Lodrick observe, the traditional Indian attitude toward animal suffering, which includes fatalistic acceptance and non-interference, is that to wantonly cause any sentient being to suffer is to make oneself spiritually impure. Thus to be associated with an animal’s suffering, as in the Loki case, even if there was no deliberate intent to harm, and to be confronted with the facts, is an affront to a deeply ingrained spirituality that can lead to denial of responsibility to save face, and inaction.

This spiritual ethos of self-interest in not harming animals may be the reason for the cultural dissonance between India’s approach to animal welfare and that of IPAN and the western world. It is alien to this ethos to care for animals for the animals’ sake and not for some spiritual merit. Hence IPAN’s efforts to help Loki for Loki’s sake alone cannot be seen as pure humanitarian concern for the animal but as some kind of conspiracy or covert vested interest.

These cultural differences in the ethics and spirituality of animal welfare and protection aside, there are vested interests, far from spiritual, that want Loki’s story covered up because Loki, as the messenger-god of old Norse mythology, reveals a nexus of forces that are leading to the extinction of the elephants in the wild and their continued suffering and dispirited existence in captivity. The animistic, polytheistic religious world-view of Hinduism includes many animals as totems and icons of divinity, a major animal deity being Ganesh, the elephant God of Wisdom, Remover of Obstacles, and Bestower of Wealth and Well-being on all his devotees. The ultimate irony is that with more reverence for and protection of wild elephants, the wealth and well-being of indigenous peoples, with whom IPAN is closely linked in the Nilgiris and who depend on the sustainable use of forest resources, would be better assured.

Fewer elephants are used in India today for labor, especially by the declining timber industry, the main use being for temple ceremonies and in parades for various public events, festivals, weddings, and for carrying tourists on their backs, which Minister Maneka Gandhi has advised tourists to boycott. Although circuses have been recently banned in India, elephants are still exported and bred in captivity for use in circuses in other countries where the traditional training methods are still used.

More sanctuaries are needed for India’s spent, old, crippled, and sick elephants and for wild orphans, with much better infrastructure support in terms of adequate feed and proper veterinary care. The continued use of elephants in any culture is to be questioned when no alternative to cruel training methods that are designed to break the animals’ spirit is feasible or acceptable.

As for Loki’s future, the question remains: Will the authorities concede, in a collaborative gesture, to allow IPAN, the Performing Animal Welfare Society, and other concerned organizations and individuals to provide a proper sanctuary for this elephant? Or will they continue to fault IPAN for not trying to work things out with local officials, who in truth, refused to collaborate and forced IPAN to tell Loki’s Story to the world?

(1) M.W. Fox. The Boundless Circle: Caring for Creatures and Creation. Wheaton, IL, Quest Books, 1996.

(2) M.N. Srinivas. Social Changes in Modern India. Los Angeles, CA, University of California Press, 1968.

(3) D.O. Lodrick. Sacred Cows, Sacred Places. Berkley, CA, University of California Press, 1979.