Born Free McKenna's elephantine plea-- VEDA

[Guest guest]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1056917.cms

 

LONDON: Forty years ago, a blonde young Englishwoman

became the world's sweetheart after she fell in love

with – and was loved right back – by Elsa, a lion cub

and her two siblings in the wilds of Kenya. Today,

Virginia McKenna, star of the 1964 cult animal classic

film 'Born Free', is still passionate about animals'

right to be remain free but right now, her attention

is entirely focused on the six-year-old Bangalorean

female elephant Veda.

 

 

" Will Veda be included in the Indian government's

brand new pledge to ban animals as diplomatic gifts, "

McKenna asked STOI , just hours after Prime Minister

Manmohan Singh announced New Delhi's radical new

manifesto for animal rights.

 

Veda's fate is of abiding interest to McKenna and her

worldwide band of animal rights campaigners because

New Delhi pledged the female elephant some years ago

to the Armenian president and thereby, the sub-zero

conditions of Yerevan zoo in the country's capital.

 

McKenna, now in her 70s and still the leading light of

the London-headquartered 'Born Free' foundation she

started after the film changed the world's attitude to

wildlife, has long campaigned for Veda's right not to

be gifted to a foreign government just like " a carpet

or a box of chocolates. "

 

On Saturday, McKenna hailed Singh's announcement of

the ban on diplomatic animal gifts. " India has led the

world on animal rights, I think it is now the first

country to ban the giving of animals as a diplomatic

gift, " said an admiring McKenna. Traditionally

animal-loving Britain has not done so and continues to

accept diplomatic gifts of animals, including the

Chinese pandas who were taken from the wild and became

a useful instrument of Beijing's ping-pong diplomacy.

 

But amid all the congratulation for India, McKenna

continues to ask the question: " Veda's name was not

mentioned by the Indian prime minister. Will she still

have the right to stay on with her family and in the

environment she knows? "

 

'Born Free', the film, memorably adapted the true life

story of Joy Adamson and her gamekeeper husband

George, as they set about raising three lion cubs in

the wilds of Kenya. In a remarkable instance of life

imitating art, McKenna later put the film to work in

her own life, marrying her co-star, founding the Born

Free foundation and championing animal rights around

the world.

 

The actress believes that if Veda's agreed diplomatic

transfer goes ahead and she leaves the balmy tropical

conditions of Bannerghatta National Park for Yerevan,

in India, she will pine away, live in pain and die a

sad death. Life in Armenia for Veda will be a radical

change from tropical conditions to a country where

temperatures regularly fall to -14C and below.

 

Veda has already become something of a name on the

Western high-flyer circuit because Born Free is

supported by several British celebrities, including TV

actress and Prince Charles's friend Joanna Lumley,

popstar Bryan Adams and the high-born, high-society

'it' girl Lady Victoria Hervey.

 

Says Born Free's campaign's director Alison Hood, who

has just travelled back from Yerevan. " Quite obviously

the sub-zero temperatures, the small enclosure and the

lack of a suitable social environment, in our view,

made this gift totally inappropriate. In fact, we

believe that the whole concept of giving wild animals

as diplomatic gifts should be abolished. As such, we

applaud this positive and forward looking decision by

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh which would prevent

Indian wildlife being sent to totally unsuitable

circumstances in the future " .

 

And yet, the question mark still looms large over

Veda's fate, insists McKenna, even as she turns her

attention to the next big fight – the proposed

transfer of 300 animals from the wilds of Kenya to

Thailand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GREATNESS OF NATION AND ITS MORAL PROGRESS

CAN BE JUDGED BY THE WAY ITS ANIMALS ARE TREATED- M.K GANDHI.

STOP HUMAN AND ANIMAL SUFFERING - GO VEGAN

I am only one but still I am one. I cannot do everything but still I can do

something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.

Helen Keller 1880 - 1968

 

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