Note: I have since learned more about mahouts and their tactics of breaking elephants’ spirit to tame them – and have seen firsthand how mahouts can use their knowledge of elephants to exploit them for profit. I don’t negate what I’ve written in this article, but the conclusion should be much more nuanced. Because the full picture is something darker.
When Arjuna, a retired Ambari elephant known for leading the Mysuru Dasara in Karnataka, India, died tragically last Monday, one news clip caught my attention. It was a video of Arjuna’s former caretaker, mahout Vinu, who fainted upon learning about Arjuna’s death. The clip shows him being escorted through a crowd in anguish. Vinu is quoted in The New Indian Express weeping, “Oh God, you should take my life also along with my Arjuna’s... I cannot live without Arjuna.” This quote broke my heart. I have seen caretakers who love their animals, but this struck a different chord. Moved by Vinu’s devotion to Arjuna, I wanted to better understand their bond.
A mahout is anyone who works with, rides, and tends to an elephant. But traditionally, Southern Indian mahouts come from the Jenu Kuruba tribe – an ethnic group from the Nilgiris whose people share an ancient bond with elephants. This deep knowledge of elephant caretaking is passed down through generations, from how to dress their wounds with herbal medicine to how to speak a language only elephants can understand. A mahout will care for the same elephant for its whole life, treating this creature like his own kin.
Not only do mahout-elephant relationships model reciprocity and respect between humans and nonhuman animals, but their work creates safer jungles. Elephants are known to attack humans when they feel threatened, which leads to hundreds of casualties each year. But although India depends on mahouts for elephant management, numbers in the profession are dwindling. Jenu Kuruba mahouts live in poverty at the bottom of the caste system. They are highly underpaid, receiving just $120 a month, and many mahouts are leaving their homelands for cities to find new work. And to make matters worse, urbanization is forcing humans and elephants closer together, creating a greater need for mahouts than ever before. And this is where Elephants in the Coffee comes in.
Elephants in the Coffee: The God that Became a Menace is a brilliant documentary directed by Tom Grant and DK Bhaskar that tells the story of human-elephant conflicts on coffee plantations in Coorg, a hill station near Mysuru. The film discusses how agricultural development has put immense strain on human-elephant relationships with fatal consequences. Exploring the social, political, and environmental factors fueling this fraught dynamic, Elephants in the Coffee raises questions about if and how humans can learn to coexist with elephants.
As humans turn forests into coffee plantations, they are moving onto the native land of elephants. The elephants are then displaced from their homes without knowing it and continue to graze on these new farmlands. Being such enormous animals, they cannot help but crush hundreds of coffee plants on the plantation as they go. Laurel Higginbotham, a researcher featured in Elephants in the Coffee, describes this phenomenon. “This land is being bulldozed… and elephants are being forced out of their natural habitats to find other places to live. We are pushing them out, and by natural will and instinct to live, they are trampling people’s homes and rummaging through farmlands to survive.”
Elephants in the Coffee illustrates plantation owners’ struggles to manage their crops as increasing numbers of wild elephants wreak havoc on their land. Many use tactics like firecrackers and gun shots to scare these animals from their property. But these tactics only put humans at a greater risk, because startling an elephant makes it more likely to charge.
Interestingly enough, elephants were actually welcomed by farmers in previous decades. The film’s subtitle, The God that Became a Menace, refers to Hindu worship of elephants as the God Ganesha, who has the body of a human and the head of an elephant. The presence of elephants on plantations was formerly seen as a sign of Ganesha bringing a bountiful harvest. But as more and more elephants began destroying crops and human lives, locals became vengeful over reverent.
I recently spoke with Tom Grant, one of two directors of Elephants in the Coffee, who explained how these feelings of anger and injustice get in the way of mutual understanding. “Losing crops is a personal thing, and then our emotions start driving the way we handle [elephants],” he said. “And the elephant is then blamed for causing the damage. But they are emotional as well, and can get out of control because of their reactions to us.”
It appears to be a vicious cycle. Humans create a resource deficit for elephants, which then forces the elephants into human civilization, who then accidentally destroy crops and infrastructure, which then infuriates the humans, who then retaliate against the elephants, which then frightens the elephants, who then retaliate against the humans, and the cycle repeats. In this entanglement of trauma and reactivity, what could possibly be the solution?
The film suggests two tangible avenues for change: to give land back to the elephants and to support the work of the mahouts. If mahouts are given more financial support and livable conditions, then more elephants can be sustainably cared for, elevating the status of the mahouts and alleviating human-elephant conflicts. And not only do Mahouts manage the most dangerous elephants in the wild, but they model a reciprocal relationship with nonhuman animals that we can all learn from. As one mahout said in an interview, translated by DK Bhaskar, “It’s a two-way process. [I have] to choose the elephant and the elephant has to choose [me].”
Though the film highlights a controversy surrounding the mahouts’ methods of taming wild elephants – involving a period of initial starvation and the use of chains – it is clear to me that some form of intervention is needed to prevent human deaths from elephant attacks. And Jenu Kuruba mahouts approach the taming process from a place of ancestral knowledge, compassion, and kinship, making them expertly suited to give these elephants a good life.
My takeaway from Elephants in the Coffee is that there must be a mutual understanding cultivated between humans and elephants where, in the words of Swami Vishnumayananda, “each individual is considered a part of the ecosystem.” We must value human and elephant livelihoods on an even playing field where symbiosis is the goal and both species’ needs are considered. Because if we as a population are able – like the mahouts – to shift our approach to land management away from entitlement and conquest and towards understanding and respect, then I believe we can eliminate these conflicts.
I am excited to keep learning about elephants and exploring these relationships while traveling through India in the coming months. I would love to connect with anyone working in a related field, whether elephant-specific or broadly related to the impact of human development on wildlife in India. Thank you!