Kerala Temple Ditches Practice Using Captive Animals For Festival, Uses Motorized Elephant By PETA

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Recently, a Kerala temple has introduced a life-size motorised model of an elephant for performing their religious rituals by ditching the practice of employing captive elephants to carry processional deities.

The robotic elephant has been named 'Irinjadappilly Raman', is 11-foot-tall, weighs 800 kg and costs Rs 5 lakh and was donated by People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and actor Parvathy Thirvothu to the Irinjadappilly Sree Krishna Temple in Thrissur district.

'Nadayiruthal' ceremony, which is a ritual that includes offering elephants to the deity in Kerala temples was also conducted and therefore, Raman quite gracefully completed the ceremony just like elephants during the festivals. The robotic elephant was made by a group of artists in Thrissur.

Captive elephants are always chained, beaten and isolated and therefore, this measure was taken. Temple priest Rajkumar Namboothiri said that 'real worship is to protect all forms of life created by God. Allowing elephants to live in nature is the real way of revering the elephant god, Lord Ganesha.'

The elephant model is incorporated with five powerful electric motors and can carry five people at a time. The operator (mahout) controls the trunk using a switch. The idea was to help temples conduct ceremonies safely and in a cruelty-free way and thereby support the call for the rehabilitation of captive elements.

Like other temples, this temple too used to hire elephants for festivals in the past, but due to the high cost of getting a pachyderm, and increasing incidents of elephants turning violent during festivals, the practice was stopped.