September 2023, Mumbai, India.
Leaving her office this September in the Bandra district of Mumbai, India, Ramya Rao was shocked to see an elephant participating in the Ganesh Chaturthi festival going on. Upon closer inspection Ramya realized the elephant is robotic. “I danced with joy literally! So real looking! Can we only have robotic elephants for all festivities and ban using real ones?” said Ramya.
The life-like elephant, named Irinjadappilly Raman, was built by four young artisans from Thrissur, a district in Kerala India for Rs 5 lakhs. The mechanical elephant was inducted by the Irinjadappilly Sree Krishna Temple in Kerala. This was the first time a Kerala temple has used a mechanical elephant for its festival.
PETA India, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, donated the mechanical elephant to the temple who welcomed the robot in a traditional ceremony called ‘Nadayiruthal’ in which offerings are dedicated to the deity.
“The elephant figure has a height of 10.8 feet and with the wheels, around 11 feet tall. The core structure is made using steel and the outer material is rubber to give it a life-like feel. It weighs around 800 kgs and took us two months to complete,” said Prasanth Prakasan, the co-founder of Chalakkuduy-based Four He Arts, which created the elephant. The robotic elephant can move its head, eyes, ears, mouth, tail and trunk like a real elephant.
Live elephants are widely used in religious festivities in Asia. The elephants are dressed in heavy cloth and jewellery, oftentimes covering their heads and ears. Some elephants are hobbled in chains forced to walk in large crowds of people who are shouting or chanting, fireworks are often going off above their heads, drums beating. Noisy atmospheres in unbearable heat with a handler nearby ready to beat or stab any elephant showing signs of wanting to get away.
In Kandy, Sri Lanka this year at the annual Esala Perahera festival in August, live captive elephants used to carry cultural relics, ran amok sending one woman to the hospital. This is not a single event, in previous years deaths of human life have occurred. Vegan Sri Lanka created this petition to end elephant use in the Kandy Perahera due to cruelty and safety concerns. Please consider signing the petition and sharing it among your network.