FWD: Charming eco-move

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This article is from The Star Online

URL:

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2004/6/29/features/8239536 & sec=f\

eatures

 

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Tuesday June 29, 2004

Charming eco-move

 

 

<b>India’s mystical snake charmers are facing eco-friendly transformation,

reports PALASH KUMAR</b>

 

FOR centuries, the snake charmer, who appears to tame venomous reptiles with the

hypnotic swaying movement of his musical instrument, has been an emblem of the

mystical side of India alongside elephants, maharajas, princes and wandering

gurus.

 

But under attack from animal rights activists and police, India’s estimated one

million snake charmers are at a crossroads and conservationists are charting out

ways to turn the age-old practice into a modern, eco-friendly profession.

 

A 1972 ban on snake charming has been inconsistently implemented, but more than

three decades later 75% of the entertainers have felt its effects in some way, a

study by the private Wildlife Trust of India found.

 

Largely chased out of major cities, the snake charmer is now increasingly based

in villages where he does not risk police crackdowns but earns far less, the

study said.

 

 

 

The Trust, in a list of recommendations to the Indian government, proposes

redefining the role of snake charmers, who catch some 400,000 snakes from the

wild each year, as “barefoot conservation educators”.

 

The snake charmers would work in special centres where they can share their

knowledge about the venomous reptiles and sell traditional medicine to treat

bites.

 

“This is a poor community and in an era where tolerance for wild animals,

especially dangerous reptiles like snakes, is going down, the skills of the

community can be used for conservation,” said Bahar Dutt of the Wildlife Trust

of India.

 

Alternatively, the Trust suggests turning snake charmers into musical ensembles

performing on their beens, clarinet-like instruments they play when the snakes

appear to go into a trance.

 

Snake charmer Banwari Nath said the entertainers, whose skills are passed from

father to son, desperately needed to find a new form of income.

 

“India is known for its kings and its snakes. You have stopped our profession

but there was a time when we used to be sent abroad to perform at festivals of

India. Even that has stopped now,” Nath said.

 

“Please restart these festivals so that we can earn something. Also please see

that our children get educated so that they don’t enter this profession,” he

said.

 

Snake charmers routinely used to accompany troupes of dancers, musicians and

village entertainers to special “festivals of India” organised in the mid-1980s

in many European countries and in North America.

 

Clad in the holy colour saffron, they are a fixture at village festivals in

India – where there is little awareness of the ban.

 

They take the reptiles, generally cobras, out of their sling bags and appear to

hypnotise them with the swaying movements of their beens and the mesmerising

music, which snakes, being deaf although highly sensitive to vibrations, cannot

hear.

 

But animal rights groups say snake charmers are cruel impostors who through

physical abuse train the reptiles to move to the sway of the clarinets.

 

The entertainers generally rip out the fangs of the snakes and feed them milk,

meaning the animals usually are unable to catch prey and die when returned to

their natural habitat after six months or so of performance.

 

Conservationists know their work is cut out for them in ending the traditional

charming of snakes – which are considered holy by many Hindus.

 

“(Snake-charmers) enjoy a god-like status as they are able to conquer these

deadly animals,” Dutt said.

 

Dutt travelled through the heart of India with fellow conservationists and was

initially shunned by snake charmers who feared she had come to take their

reptiles away.

 

“They threatened they would put snakes in my bag if I didn’t go away. Slowly,

the trust began to build,” she said.

 

Critics of conservationists point out that snake charmers help treat people for

bites in rural areas where health care is inadequate and that some of the snakes

snatched from the wild for entertainment would have been killed immediately by

frightened farmers.

 

For 60-year-old snake charmer Krishan Nath, the conservationists’ plan makes

perfect sense – that he put his skills to work at a special centre to educate

people.

 

What he cannot come to terms with is the inconsistency of the approach to snake

charmers. On the one hand, his occupation is illegal, but then he is sought out

for his expertise when snakes present dangers.

 

He said he was once even called to the prime minister’s residence to catch a

snake.

 

“I don’t understand this,” he said. “If there is a ban, why does the prime

minister’s office need us to catch the snakes?” – AFP

 

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