The Dark Reality Behind India’s Festival Elephants

Overheard at National Geographic

National Geographic

Science, Society & Culture

4.5 • 10.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2023

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Asian elephants have been captured and tamed by people in Southern Asia for thousands of years as war machines, beasts of burden, and part of religious festivals. It’s a practice that continues to this day, but some activists are beginning to rethink its impact on this endangered species. For more information on this episode, visit natgeo.com/overheard. Want More? Check out even more coverage on elephants this month, including Secrets of the Elephants, a four-part National Geographic series streaming April 22 on Disney+. Visit NatGeo.com/elephants to learn more. Also explore: In addition to a film Sangita Iyer has also written a book, Gods in Shackles: What Elephants Can Teach Us About Empathy, Resilience, and Freedom. You can check it out as well as her other work at the website of her organization, the Voices for Asian Elephants Society. More information about Jyothy Karat and her films and photography can be found on her website. If you like what you hear and want to support more content like this, please consider a National Geographic subscription. Go to natgeo.com/exploremore to subscribe today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the sound of a festival in India called Trisha Puru.
0:12.0	Thousands of people attend this annual festival, including dozens of musicians,
0:15.8	but the highlight of this celebration, standing out over the crowds are the elephants.
0:21.0	They're covered in golden decorations and flowering eclases as they parade through the crowded streets of the festival.
0:26.6	It's a beautiful and impressive site and part of a tradition that goes back thousands of years.
0:32.0	But two national geographic explorers are taking a hard look at the practice.
0:37.6	Asian elephants are an endangered species and capturing them from the wild has been a major
0:41.6	contributor to this decline. According to an estimate, nearly one in three Asian elephants lives in
0:46.7	captivity and training an 8,000 pound wild animal to walk peacefully through the crowded streets
0:52.0	involves a lot of physical punishment. Beneath the flowers and ornaments, these elephants often
0:58.9	have scars from the hoax, prods and shackles used to tame them. I'm Brian Gutierrez and you're
1:04.6	listening to Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo,
1:09.6	and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world.
1:13.4	For Earth Month, National Geographic is releasing the documentary series Secrets of the Elephants on
1:17.8	Disney Plus. As a part of that project, we're putting together a three-part podcast series
1:22.1	and elephants with an all-female group of National Geographic explorers. This is the final
1:26.5	installment. Our first two episodes were about African savanna elephants, but this week we're talking
1:31.5	about their cousin, the Asian elephant. That's coming up after the break.
1:38.7	Fuel your curiosity with a free one-month trial subscription to Nat Geo Premium.
1:43.2	You'll have unlimited access on any device anywhere, at free, with our app that lets you
1:47.6	download stories to read offline. Explore every page ever published with a century of digital
1:52.8	archives at your fingertips. Check it all out for free at natgeo.com slash explore more.
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