The following petition site has been created by Ms. Kanwar, India, requesting people to sign the petition to put a stop to using elephants in the name of religion.

http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-elephant-abuse-in-the-name-of-relig...

I do not really know how to describe the cruelties done to these gentle creatures in my state. To me just taking them away from their herds in the jungle itself is enough to understand the cruelty part of it. But in my state (Kerala, India) the vast majority does not seem to be affected by what is happening around them, even though the incidents are reported by the media.

I personally feel this situation can easily be resolved if some of the authorites have 'empathy' and understand the horror of their actions. There are around 700 captive elephants in kerala, 3 to 5 people are dependent on them for their livelihood. The temple trust is so rich and the associations activities are so vast that they can easily relocate these people to other jobs. Not only that these captive elephants will need care for their remaining life so some of them will still continue in their jobs of looking after them.

Atleast they can put a stop to using these elephants for religious processions and letting them out to timber merchants to pull cut trees/logs! And also prevent the elephant contractors in Kerala from bringing elephants captured from the jungle from other states of India.

The cruelty starts when we encroach into their habitat, we take away their young ones, we train them using cruel methods like poking a hooked iron rod (elephant skin is supposed to be very sensitive), we chain their legs, we make them stand for hours in heat, among huge crowds of people (festivals), make them wear heavy ornaments, and some 3/4 people sit on top of them for hours, feed them only palm leaves whereas our jungles have a wide variety of food, and the most serious of them all 'abuse by the caretakers who are lowly paid, who have tortured and killed the poor animals to take it out on the temple authorities!

I can keep on and on, but here there are no organisations like in Africa, because Africa has lot of advantages, their wildlife is very visible, not like ours where jungles are thick and religious authorities are strong!