At a time when people resort to using drums, firecrackers and electrified fences to keep elephants at bay, a minar in memory of a jumbo at a remote village seems out of the ordinary.
That’s just what a man in Odisha’s Keonjhar district has built with his farm earnings as a tribute on his land where an elephant died accidentally a decade ago. He has also donated five acres of land around the memorial – Hati Minar (Elephant Minar) – for public use.
The touching story of Krushna Chandra Naik, a retired college teacher, began in the year 2009 when a tusker died after coming into contact with an electric wire on his field in Jali village under Champua Sub-Division.
Mr. Naik’s mother, a religious lady, could not reconcile with the incident. She kept telling her two sons that the death of the elephant, revered as the vahan (vehicle) of Goddess Lakshmi, on their land was a bad omen. In 2010, his younger brother died in a road accident and a year later, his mother too passed away. His mother’s last wish to see a memorial for the dead elephant stayed uppermost on his mind.
“From 2011, I started earmarking a portion of my farm profits towards a memorial for the elephant. I had no idea on mind as to what kind of structure should be built in memory of the elephant. In 2018, I started building a tower and named it Hati Minar,” said Mr. Naik.
Despite suffering a huge crop loss to rampaging elephants, villagers too came forward to cooperate him.
“The standalone memorial did not serve the purpose of being a fitting tribute to elephants facing existential crisis. I then decided to donate five acres of land where fruit-bearing trees had been planted. Incidentally, the land falls in the elephant corridor connecting Similipal Biosphere Reserve. The Mermeda rivulet, which flows nearby, quenches the thirst of elephants,” he said.
The 35-foot-tall Hati Minar was inaugurated in 2019. Villagers gathered around the memorial on World Elephant Day on August 12 this year.
“I don’t have any plan to turn it into a grand memorial. But, as long as it keeps generating awareness about protecting elephants, I will consider it to be a true tribute to the animals suffering due to shrinking habitat,” said the teacher. People from different walks of life come forward voluntarily to plant a tree in the area.
Human-elephant conflict has become critical in Keonjhar district, which had 112 elephants in 2002 but just 40 in 2017. Pachyderms are fast vanishing, reportedly on account of large-scale mining. More than 25% of India’s iron ore deposits are found in Keonjhar.
According to Wildlife Society of Orissa, an environmental pressure group, of the 784 elephant deaths in the State in the last 10 years, 45 were due to electric supply lines and poorly fixed poles while 79 jumbos were killed by poachers by laying live electric wires.
The conflict also threatens the lives and livelihood of people, leading to brewing anger against the wild animals. In 2019-20, as many as 115 people were killed and 132 injured in 204 human-elephant encounters in Odisha. Besides, ready-to-harvest crops on hundreds of acres of land were devoured by marauding elephants.
