How India’s ‘Elephant Whisperers’ Overlooked Deeper Issues
(ANALYSIS) Ever since “Elephant Whisperers” won an Academy Award for short film documentary earlier this year, it has been garnering unabated attention, accolades from charities and recognition from civil society.
Most recently, the two protagonists, Indigenous couple Bomman and Bellie, received a lifetime achievement award from the president of India, Droupadi Murmu, for their service taking care of orphaned baby elephants.
Set in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu’s Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, the documentary takes place in the picturesque, lush jungles and is interspersed with beautiful waterfalls, fog, sunrises and sunsets of the reserve. Mudumalai supports one of the largest Asian elephant populations and is considered one of the best wildlife reserves to see Asian elephants in India.
The documentary’s premise is established early on, as the male protagonist, Bomman, is seen walking through the verdant landscape.
“This is my home, where I belong, where the wild animals roam free,” he says. “This is also the land where my ancestors lived for generations.”
In the documentary, Bomman and Bellie are seen devoting their lives to the care of the orphaned baby elephants named Raghu and Amu. Their bond is irrefutably beautiful. This connection between Bomman and Bellie and their pachyderms forms the heart of the documentary. The charming story of humans coexisting with nature and other beings is captivating. But while the documentary tugs at the heart because of its beautiful subject matter and scenery, some deeper structural issues remain largely ignored.
Bomman, a “mahout,” or elephant caretaker, belongs to the Indigenous Kattunayakan tribe, roughly translating to “The King of the Jungle” in Tamil and Kannada languages. The Kattunayakan live in the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.
Mahouts train, keep or drive elephants. They are part of a rich tradition of elephant-keeping experience that dates back 5,000 years. The origins of the mahout tradition lie in the deployment of war elephants in India, as the kingdoms would traditionally sponsor many mahouts to lend or train elephants to be used in wars.
The mahouts were also responsible for managing reserved forests to ensure a steady supply of elephants when needed. The Indigenous communities, including Kattunayakan in the region, rely heavily on forging this bond with the creatures — along with other forms of labor, like honey gathering and timber collection — for their livelihood.
“For us, Kattunayakans, the well-being of the forest is all that matters,” Bellie explains in the documentary. “We walk barefoot within it. This is our way of showing respect. We live off the forest, but we also protect it. We only take what we need. Our people do not fear elephants; that’s why we’ve been working with them for generations.”
The film, however, missed the mark in looking at the socioeconomic conditions that many caretakers and mahouts undergo, the plight of the elephants outside of conservation efforts, and the history of this bond between humans and elephants in South Asia that dates back nearly 5,000 years.
According to some researchers, mahoutship, or elephant caretaking, is a dwindling profession with a decline in expertise due to a lack of economic opportunities and traditional know-how and the dangers involved.
“I have learned over the many years of working with elephants that they are very intelligent and emotional beings,” Bomman says in the documentary. ¡But working with elephants is dangerous in so many ways. I got stabbed by my big tusker a while ago. I cannot work with large elephants anymore.”
There are only so many mahouts who now own their elephants. Mainly, private contractors or the forest or park departments employ them. Their poor socioeconomic conditions are largely tied to the government or private contracts with the temples or tourism industry that underpay, and mahouts often have to compensate by overworking their mammals. Their pay barely reflects the risks they undergo.
“(It’s) one of the tensions between the conservation, protection of animals, and ecosystems of interest and economic pressures,” said Liv Baker, research director at the Mahouts Elephant Foundation and a faculty member of the Animal Behavior and Conservation Program at Hunter College. “And that’s understandable that people need to live; people need to eat. But that drive of money usually overshadows better practices.”
Mahouts are also part of a complex ecosystem. Many elephants held in captivity or semi-captivity go through a taming process with extreme measures and are used for commercial gain and revenue. They are used for labor in the timber industry, tourist camps, rides and the illegal trade of ivory tusks.
Poaching of elephants for their tusks, though illegal, continues to threaten their population. The Indian government banned the ivory trade in 1986. But according to the Wildlife Crime Control Bureau’s data, nearly 1,047 pounds of raw ivory and 826 pounds of ivory artifacts were confiscated from poachers and traders in the country between 2018 and 2022.
The 41-minute documentary weaves in the grandeur of the southern Indian forest, and rightfully so, as the reserve is located in the Nilgiri district of Tamil Nadu and is part of the Nilgiri biosphere reserve, with a contiguous forest region of about 3,430 miles. The biodiverse forest is home to tigers, elephants, Indian leopards and Indian gaurs. But the toll of rapid industrialization in the form of tea gardens, paddy fields, dams and mines in and around elephant habitats or their migration paths remains largely ignored. These issues play a crucial role in the exacerbation of human-elephant conflict.
Despite the Indian government’s programs, like Project Elephant, aimed at protecting elephants, their habitat and corridors, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change registered that 2,544 people died in the human-elephant conflict between 2018 and 2022.
Elephants are considered sacred and are an integral part of the Hindu mythology as they represent Ganesha, the elephant-headed god worshipped for removal of obstacles.
They are often used in parades for temple festivities and are regularly surrounded by people, which has proven to be a hazard.
“These majestic elephants (are) completely adorned but mistreated, living terrible lives,” Baker pointed out. “And you can see that based on their physical presentation, their body condition, their deprivations — they’re clearly exploited. There’s a lack of understanding between what does it mean to truly venerate and care for another. And if that were truly believed, those elephants would not be part of those celebrations.”
Bomman is a mahout priest. In one of the scenes, he is seen chalk-painting Raghu’s forehead ornately as the mammal is decked with garlands and then taken to partake in a religious ceremony meant for elephant calves to seek blessings from Ganesha.
“I am proud of being both a priest and a mahout,” Bomman says determinedly. “Both bring me immense happiness. We pray to Lord Ganesha. Seeing an elephant, to us, is equivalent to seeing God. God and elephants are one for me. The way I serve God is the same way I serve the elephants. We take care of Raghu every single day, which in turn puts food on my table every day. This is God’s presence in my life. Without him, we’d have nothing.”
The documentary is strewn with beautiful anecdotes of what these elephants mean to the caretakers and how these mammals help fill a gaping void in their lives, but it fails to address the many realities they may face daily. It beautifully portrays elephants in the wild and their lives like a wildlife documentary would, representing nature and the elephants, which makes the documentary’s title a bit misleading as we learn very little about the struggles of the elephant whisperers.
For instance, Bellie mentions how Raghu and Amu, the baby elephants she cared for along with her husband, Bomman, helped her heal from the loss of her daughter. But we learn nothing of how she died.
Right before the closing titles, Bomman declares, “It is the action of us humans that is causing elephants to enter villages these days. Our mistakes are very harmful, both for us and for elephants. We were able to save Raghu and Amu because they were brought to us. But we are not able to save all of them.”
It remains to be seen if necessary attention to the documentary and aligning issues will translate to improving the working and living conditions of humans and elephants along with the environment they co-habit or will act as a mere souvenir reference to the man-elephant relationship, where only one aspect of their lived reality is depicted.
Manmeet Sahni is an independent journalist from New Delhi based in New York. She writes about politics, human rights, inequality and social movements. Her bylines have appeared in Documented, The Article and others, and she is an alumna of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.