Elephant Being Abused, Was Chained For 50 Years Finds A Second Chance To Life
I was just going through this story of the elephant and realized just how much I take life for granted. Unfortunately for animals, because they cannot speak as we do, some humans abuse them so much that it literally makes me wonder if these humans even have hearts. Imagine a life where one is shackled nearly 24/7 with no freedom to walk, sit or sleep. Just to think of such a situation makes me shudder, now imagine how Raju, an elephant, felt when he lived 50 years of his life shackled to a hut – that’s 18,250 days of torture and abuse. The only time Raju left his hut was when he was making money for his 27 handlers, but then too, the shackles followed.
Meet 55-year-old elephant called Raju, who was born in captivity and separated from his parents at a very young age. Soon after separating him from his family Raju was taken to a handler, known as “mahouts” in Asia, so he could begin working for them. Poor Raju had no idea that he would be forced to walk on burning hot streets of India under the scorching sun. Let me tell you that India experiences high temperatures, with the mercury touching anywhere between 44 and 50 degrees Celcius. Not only was he forced to walk the hot streets to earn money for the mahouts, but he was also severely starved with very little to eat or drink.
The mahouts are in charge of training and caring for these elephants and each elephant has two or three mahouts looking after them. But all those terms are just prints on paper, and we’ll understand why in a while. The Wall Street Journal mentions that in 2013 there were approximately 8,000 mahouts working in India. But working as a mahout isn’t easy, in fact, it’s a quite challenging profession that pays very less. For example, in 2010 an article posted on The Hindu mentions that mahouts were paid an average monthly salary of less than $55. On special occasions and religious ceremonies, mahouts received an extra $13 per day of work.
In order to make ends meet, mahouts force elephants to work so they can get monetary rewards from people who employ the elephant’s services. To get those extra tips, elephants are abused, whipped and forced to carry tourists on their backs and during religious holidays they’re forced to perform at events or give “blessings” to people. Such was the kind of torture Raju had endured for 50 long years. And so, because mahouts don’t get paid well, they neglect the health of the animals they’re in charge of. Due to this not only do elephants in Asia develop painful injuries on their feet, they’re also locked up and chained in huts – conveniently forgotten until their services are required again.
Coming back to Raju, because his mahouts were spending very little on him, he started eating sweet foods that tourists offered him and when that stopped, he began eating plastic and paper – just to satiate his unending hunger and exhaustion. Raju’s footpads were severely bruised from walking on hot asphalt-covered roads and worse, his mahouts had attached spiked shackles to his ankles so every time he walked, his skin tore open. When Wildlife SOS found out about Raju’s poor condition, they decided to take action. They had to free him from his uncooperative mahouts.
And so on the 2nd of July 2014, Wildlife SOS and police officers freed Raju from his chains and after all the problems the stubborn mahouts put them in, they transported Raju to Wildlife SOS’s Elephant Conservation and Care Center in Mathura where he was treated for his wounds and malnutrition. In July 2019, Raju celebrated his fifth year of freedom from shackles with a humongous elephant-friendly cake made from vegetables, fruits, beans, and sugarcane!
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