Karnataka - Mysore   

History of the elephantine victory

MYSORE: Adding a dash of colour and glamour to Mysore Dasara were a few “Oscar awardees” whose presence provided sheen to the festivities, but their “star value” remained unknown to the public at large. And therein lies a story.

In the early 1990s, a herd of rogue elephants went on the offensive in Ambikapur district of the then undivided Madhya Pradesh, bordering the present Chhattisgarh and Bihar. The conflict was due to increasing deforestation in the border regions of Bihar, as a result of which the elephants strayed from their habitat and entered Madhya Pradesh in the late 1980s. More than a dozen people were trampled to death in the escalating man-animal conflict, which brought tremendous pressure on the Government to put an end to the menace.

Then, the Madhya Pradesh Government turned to Karnataka, which had many trained elephants. Three of them — Srirama, Gajendra and Abhimanyu — were short-listed, given their tough nature and no-nonsense approach to work. Their task was to capture the rogue elephants in what was considered to be a “mission impossible.”

The three tuskers, on reaching Ambikapur fanned out into the jungles, tamed the rogues and returned triumphant — all this in 42 days, much to the delight of the local community.

Mission accomplished, the triumvirate returned to their temporary camp in Madhya Pradesh with the captured rogue elephants meekly following them, thus ending the crisis which had affected that State.

The entire sequence of the elephants’ capture was filmed by ace film-maker Mike Pandey, and the result was “The Last Migration: Wild Elephant Capture in Sarguja” which went on to capture the coveted Panda Awards, also known as Green Oscars.

And being the main protagonists of the documentary depicting the elephant capture drama, Srirama, Gajendra and Abhimanyu are indeed the “oscar stars” who added sheen to Mysore Dasara.

Though the three elephants make a regular appearance in Mysore for religious and traditional duties during Dasara, their more adventurous achievements are not well known to the public.

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