,
Madurai, Tamil Nadu
Origin and general characteristics Important temples, especially in South India, keep their own temple elephants in the modern era, which are acquired either by purchase or as gifts. However, it is possible that elephants declared as a 'gift' to a temple at the end of the 20th or in the 21st century were actually acquired on the illegal
black market. This was a common practice after India banned the trade in elephants in 1972 and the capture of wild elephants in 1982. Illegal elephant trade (e.g. in
Sonpur Mela) continued until the present day (2024). Temples and festivals in Tamil Nadu and Kerala Only very rarely has an elephant been explicitly "rescued" in a temple; conversely, maltreated elephants have to be rescued from temples more often. Elephants that are already born in a temple are extremely rare, as many temple elephants are kept alone and in
isolation. These elephants have little or no contact with the opposite sex, and the reproductive capacity of female elephants in captivity is greatly reduced, especially if they are not comfortable. Furthermore, male elephants in
musth - an important requirement for mating - are usually isolated and strictly chained. Furthermore, according to Richard C. Lair (1997) "Hindu temples ... have specific prohibitions against breeding". In 2009, there were no animals under 6 years of age among India's temple elephants, with most of them aged between 16 and 60 years old. In the age of social media, some of these elephants are particularly well-known or popular, such as in Tamil Nadu the temple elephants Andal (or Andaal) at the Srirangam (or
Sri Ranganathaswamy) temple in
Tiruchirappalli, Akila at
Jambukeshwara temple in
Tiruvanaikkaval or Mangalam at the
Kumbeswara (or Kumbeswarar Kovil) temple in
Kumbakonam (2024). In the southern Indian state of
Kerala, traditionally male temple elephants are favoured, but they are more aggressive and can be dangerous, especially during intermittent
musth periods. The
Guruvayur Temple in the
Thrissur district alone in 2009 had 54 bull elephants, plus 6 females, in 2019, there were 45 bulls, of which only 13 were used for rituals, according to
Sangita Iyer.
Tasks , 2007 The temple elephants take part in religious ceremonies in the temple together with their
mahouts. Their faces, trunks and ears are painted and they may also be adorned with
garlands, colourful
shabracks and a so-called
nettipattom, which covers the forehead and part of the trunk. Temple elephants often also wear one or more bells around their neck or on their body. They are also trained in some special skills beforehand, such as bowing or assuming a kind of "prayer posture" with the trunk raised to the forehead; some elephants also learn to play the
mouth organ (or
harmonica). One of the duties of the temple elephants is to stand together with their mahout at a certain place in the temple, often near the entrance, to give blessing to the worshippers, which consists of briefly placing or tapping the trunk on their heads. According to a 2010 study, temple elephants in Tamil Nadu spent on average about hours doing these blessings every day and have to stand the whole time (sometimes chained up). According to Surendra Varma et al. (2009) individual elephants must give the blessing 800 to 2000 times on feast days. There are also special religious festivals with glamorous elephant processions and parades, which attract many tourists - the elephant parades in Kerala are particularly famous. Elephants and their mahouts are also hired for the big temple festivals, which can cost up to around 10,000 dollars per elephant per festival.
Living conditions, problems, criticism A first great scientific study on temple elephants and their living conditions was published in 2009. 267 elephants from 112 temples in five Indian states were analysed; the majority of the elephants studied (161) lived in Kerala. The results were alarming: there were considerable deficits in nine out of ten parameters observed (e.g. food, shelter, exercise opportunities, health, access to water and bathing opportunities, social contacts with other elephants, etc.), which are vital for elephants in captivity; a species-typical behaviour of the temple elephants was curtailed in a variety of ways. Overall, the 2009 researchers came to the following conclusion: "Keeping of elephants in temples and ensuring their welfare therein seems to be an uphill task. It is in the interest of the elephants and of the general public that no new elephants be brought under the management of temples. It would be best to phase out temple elephants over a designated period of time“. Elephant conservation activist
Sangita Iyer reached a wider audience with her 2016 award-winning documentary film
Gods in Shackles, in which she exposes the brutal reality of temple and ceremonial elephants behind the glittering façade of religious festivals such as
Thrissur Pooram. Iyer, her organisation
Voices for Asian elephants and various other animal welfare organisations around the world are campaigning against the common cruel practices. Often, temple elephants are taken from their mothers as babies and subjected to the procedure known as
phajaan, in which they are tied up, beaten, or starved to make them docile. If separation from the mother happens too early (and the baby survives), this has lifelong health consequences for the elephant, as elephant calves are dependent on their mother's milk for a very long time. Later, the elephants not only have to stand around for hours on hard concrete or stone floors - according to a 2010 study, temple elephants in Tamil Nadu had less than one hour of exercise a day and had to stand for about 70 per cent of their time–, usually shackled with short chains and isolated from conspecifics, they are also beaten and threatened with sharp
elephant hooks. Many animals have problems with their feet and joints or other health problems and/or show
stereotypical behaviour, such as rocking back and forth, which is typical of animals in captivity and indicates mental
trauma. In particularly bad cases, elephants have also been put on chains with sharp hooks that dig into their flesh, and some animals have had their eyes pecked out by angry mahouts. During religious festivals, the animals, gifted with exceptionally fine hearing, also have to endure the clamour of huge crowds and the noise of
firecrackers. Around 2009, temple elephants in Kerala took part in 40 to 100 different programmes during the festival season and had to travel repeatedly to different locations within a radius of 35 to 150 km. As of 2019, the elephants of the Guruvayur temple were given a diet that was far too unbalanced, had no access to water in the sweltering heat and suffered from sometimes fatal diseases caused by poor hygiene, among other issues. Male captive elephants are treated particularly harshly. Every year, during their three- to four-month long musth periods, they are constantly tied up in a confined space, unable to move. At the end of musth they are subjected to a traditional “ritual" called
Katti Adikkal, where they are beaten continuously for 48 to 72 hours by a group of men in order to break their will again (similar to phajaan). ) The severe, traumatising stress on the animals is expressed not least in repeated news reports of elephants either suddenly and seemingly unexpectedly ‘going berserk’ and injuring or ‘killing’ their mahout or another human - probably often unintentionally - or sometimes trample people to death in the midst of crowds. A well-known case of the latter is the famous and highly revered bull elephant
Thechikottukavu Ramachandran, who is considered the ‘largest Asian elephant in captivity’, who ‘
ran amok’ several times out of stress and killed both humans and conspecifics; Ramachandran for security reasons has already been banned by the government from the famous Thrissur Pooram temple festival, where he opened a temple gate during a traditional ceremony to the enthusiastic cries of an unleashed crowd. However, due to massive protests from the festival organisers, elephant owners, fans and the Kerala Elephant Owners Federation, he had to be allowed back in. Possibly in response to the increasing protests about animal cruelty, so-called ‘rejuvenation camps’ were set up for temple elephants, which take place once a year for around six weeks. However, the elephants still have to stand around chained, and many have severe problems with their legs. Some also make stereotypical pendulum movements with their heads, which are considered a typical sign of mental trauma, due to the chronic lack of movement and standing still for long periods of time. In 2021, there was a scandal over a YouTube video showing two mahouts in a ‘rejuvenation camp’ abusing a female temple elephant from
Assam with beatings. To reduce the burden on existing domesticated elephants, robotics companies Four He-Art Creations and Aanamaker with
PETA India and the group Voices for Asian Elephants began constructing imitative animatronic elephants. The first robotic elephant was donated to the Irinjadappilly Sree Krishna Temple in
Thrissur, Kerala in 2023; 5 more robot elephants have been made for temples across the South India region since. == Sri Lanka ==