World Elephant Day: Assam’s gentle giants on the edge of extinction
Heramba Nath
World Elephant Day, observed annually on 12th August, is not merely a celebration of one of Earth’s most intelligent and majestic creatures. It is a call to conscience. As the world collectively pauses to honour the Asian and African elephants that have graced our cultural memory and ecological systems for centuries, it must also confront an uncomfortable truth—these giants are dying, displaced, and disappearing, and the reasons lie largely with us. In Assam, this truth is more visible, more immediate, and more heartbreaking than ever.
Once revered in folklore and worshipped as divine, elephants now navigate a world carved up by railways, tea plantations, highways, walls, and human settlements. They are hungry, confused, and increasingly aggressive—not because they have changed, but because their world has. Their ancient migratory routes, etched into memory over millennia, now lead not to forested abundance, but to barbed wire, concrete boundaries, and fatal railway crossings. In the verdant hills and plains of Assam, the human-elephant conflict has reached a distressing crescendo.
The forests of Assam were once sanctuaries of co-existence. The Brahmaputra Valley, the foothills of Bhutan, and the tropical forests of Karbi Anglong, Dima Hasao, and the Kaziranga–Karbi Anglong landscape provided nourishment, shade, and migration paths for hundreds of elephant herds. But unregulated deforestation, illegal timber felling, monoculture plantations, and land use conversions have rendered vast stretches of forest ecologically barren for elephants. Their traditional foods—wild bananas, bamboos, canes, jackfruit, and grass—are vanishing. In their place stand crops that elephants cannot digest or industrial structures they cannot navigate.
The result is tragic yet inevitable. Elephants, starving and desperate, stray into villages and farmlands in search of food. In districts like Goalpara, Udalguri, Sonitpur, Nagaon, and Baksa, these forays have become dangerously frequent. At dusk, herds raid paddy fields; by night, they are inside village boundaries. Frightened villagers light fires, burst crackers, or wield weapons. Sometimes elephants retreat. Sometimes they retaliate. On both sides, lives are lost.
The numbers tell a grim tale. Assam has recorded over 800 human deaths due to elephant attacks in the past decade alone. In the same period, nearly 600 elephants have died unnaturally—hit by speeding trains, electrocuted by illegal fences, poisoned by pesticide-laced fruits, or trapped between walls meant to keep them out. These deaths are not isolated events. They are the logical outcome of a broken relationship between humans and the wild.
Nowhere is this breakdown more evident than along Assam’s railway tracks. The Rangiya–Rangapara and Lumding–Dibrugarh sections, slicing through forests and elephant corridors, have become zones of frequent carnage. In 2023 alone, over a dozen elephants, including calves and lactating females, were killed on these tracks. The tragic irony is that such deaths are avoidable. Speed regulations, track-side surveillance, and GPS-enabled alerts could prevent these accidents. But poor coordination between the forest and railway departments, along with institutional apathy, ensures the continuation of this silent slaughter.
In recent years, another obstacle has emerged in the form of walls—literal ones. In places like Goalpara, large concrete boundaries erected by private estates, residential colonies, and commercial farms have cut across elephant movement paths. These so-called “elephant-proof” barriers do not only block the animals; they disorient them. When elephants fail to find exit routes, they panic, charge, or turn aggressive. The walls, built without ecological assessment, worsen the already fragile equation between the two species.
Yet, it would be unjust to frame this crisis only through the lens of elephant suffering. The human cost of this conflict is equally tragic. Small farmers lose crops overnight. Children and the elderly are trampled in their courtyards. Homes are broken. Villagers, whose lives are already precarious due to poverty and poor access to services, are pushed further into despair. Compensation processes, when they exist, are painfully slow and inadequate. Distrust festers. Anger simmers.
Amidst this gloom, Assam’s history offers a rare and radiant figure—a man who lived not in conflict with elephants but in communion with them. Hasti-Manab Parbati Prasad Baruah of Gauripur, affectionately remembered as the Elephant Man of India, was more than a mahout or elephant trainer. He was a bridge between two worlds—man and elephant. His life, spent in the forests and riverbanks of western Assam, was a lesson in empathy, restraint, and ecological wisdom. At a time when domination defined human-animal relations, Baruah chose understanding. He tamed wild elephants not with cruelty, but with calm observation, silent respect, and human touch. He knew their moods, remembered their paths, and spoke their silence. His philosophy stands in stark contrast to today’s electrified fences and railway deaths. It reminds us that coexistence is not an idealistic dream—it was once lived reality. Today, as elephant corridors vanish and aggression festers, Parbati Prasad’s legacy must be revisited not as nostalgia, but as guidance.
This is where World Elephant Day must matter more than posters or pledges. It must become a platform to demand real, structural change. The protection of elephants cannot happen in isolation. It requires a holistic vision of coexistence that respects both wildlife and the rural poor who live in proximity to them. It requires habitat restoration, not just for elephants, but for the balance of the entire ecosystem. It requires humane policies, transparent compensation, scientific interventions, and above all, political will.
Assam cannot afford to be complacent. As one of India’s richest biodiversity zones and home to a substantial population of wild Asian elephants, the state bears a unique responsibility. The urgency is not just ecological—it is moral. Plans to revive elephant corridors must move from file to field. Reforestation must favour native species that sustain elephant diets. Human settlements near vulnerable zones must receive early warning systems, solar fencing, and support for crop insurance. Railway tracks passing through key habitats must be equipped with speed monitoring systems, elephant detection radars, and night patrolling. No elephant should die for the price of punctuality.
At the heart of this crisis lies a deeper philosophical question. What does it mean to share the Earth with other species? Can human development be truly called progress if it comes at the cost of extinction? Can a culture that deifies the elephant as Ganesha condone its suffering in the wild?
Assam’s landscape, so alive with the sounds of the forest, now carries the uneasy silence of vanishing trumpets. The elephant’s footsteps, once rhythmic across the jungle floor, now halt before highways and hedges. The wild is shrinking. And with it, so is a part of our collective soul.
World Elephant Day is not about saving an animal. It is about saving a relationship—one forged over centuries in the shared spaces of forest and field. It is about restoring empathy in our development narratives, and humility in our relationship with the wild. The elephant does not need our charity. It needs space, respect, and the right to roam.
In the end, the fate of the elephant in Assam is not just a conservation issue. It is a mirror held up to us. What we see there—compassion or cruelty, coexistence or conquest—will determine whether this Earth remains a home for all who dwell in it.