Thiruvananthapuram: No one in Kerala, at least those tending to captive elephants in Guruvayur and Kodanad, had heard of a witch named Luna Lovegood, a fiery member of Harry Potter's Dumbledore Army.
So when 'Luna', of the blonde hair and sharp pale-green eyes and absurd dress sense, flew down to Kerala this April and roamed around temples and elephant camps, the mahouts and the temple authorities thought she was just another nutty young English backpacker.
Little did they realise that the blonde was secretly exploring the brutalities they have been relentlessly inflicting upon the majestic beasts.
It was the London tabloid, The Sun, that first told the world what the 'witch' saw.
In the report published on May 1, she essentially described Kerala as having people more villainous than those in the Forbidden Forest that borders the Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Also read: How Kerala kills its captive elephants young
This is what Luna's human incarnation, the Irish actor and vegan activist Evanna Lynch who played the role, wrote on her Facebook page after the undercover visit: “What I’d most like people to understand is that there is no way to be in close proximity of an elephant used for tourism or entertainment, that hasn’t been brutally beaten.”
What the 'witch' saw
On August 6, Lynch along with British actor Peter Egan will visit 10 Downing Street and tell British prime minister Theresa May, to discourage the English from travelling to Kerala.
Lynch and Egan will specifically ask May to support a new law to ban the advertising or promotion in or from the UK of unethical 'Asian elephant'-related holidays abroad.
It was with Save The Asian Elephant (STAE) CEO Duncan McNair and The Sun newspaper that Evanna Lynch travelled through Kerala during the second half of April.
She saw elephants standing near-dead in crushingly cramped wooden cages, saw them starved, chained and with puss oozing out of their seemingly eternal wounds. Evanna saw them being thrashed with pointed hooks, their teary eyes pleading for mercy.
Apparently encouraged by the presence of a foreign tourist, a mahout in Kodanad elephant camp even made an exhausted jumbo do some circus tricks.
She was but not furious with the man. “I paid him and thanked him even though he beats elephants for a living because he is not the problem. He was just a man in difficult circumstances and a culture that isn’t sensitive to animal welfare. The problem is the ignorance of western tourists patronising these cruel tourist ventures. We should know better,” she said in her FB post.
In a statement she released on the eve of meeting Theresa May, she said: “I strongly support Save The Asian Elephants because after witnessing the shocking treatment of captive elephants in Kerala, India, I want everyone to know of the brutal cruelty and suffering endangered Asian elephants go through due to misinformed holidaymakers paying for elephant entertainment at many tourist attractions. People wrongly assume the elephants are trained humanely. So often, they have no idea the Asian elephant species is threatened with extinction. We must stop the ruthless treatment of these sentient creatures who feel pain, suffering, terror and loneliness in captivity. We must take action now.”
The English are listening
The latest results of the highly reputed Populus Poll demonstrate that the tide is turning against Kerala Tourism. Eight seven per cent of the English who participated in the poll in June this year said they would avoid a tourist experience if they discovered the elephants had been treated badly.
If Evanna, Egan and STAE can get May to blacklist Kerala, it will be disastrous for the tourism sector.
The English constitute the biggest chunk of foreign tourists to Kerala - nearly 20 per cent. Tourists from France and Germany and the US form less than 10 per cent of the foreign footfalls.
Consciousness about animals, or non-vegan morality, has been on the rise of late. In October 2016, internet travel giant TripAdvisor had declared that it would not sell tickets to tourism destinations that are considered cruel towards animals.
Then, the state’s foremost animal activist, V K Venkitachalam, had shot off a missive, complete with photographs, to TripAdvisor CEO Stepfen Kaufer. Venkitachalam, who runs Heritage Animal Task Force, passed on his entire collection of photographs, taken secretly over the years, that revealed the unspeakable sufferings imposed on the elephant in the name of Thrissur Pooram.
The State Animal Welfare Board, too, had then written to Kaufer to blacklist Thrissur Pooram.
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