WHEN RAJU, a four-year-old dancing bear, walked into a sanctuary with his owner in India’s southern Karnataka state last week, it ended a cruel practice dating back to Mughal times.
Raju is an endangered sloth bear, the last of more than 600 to be given a permanent home and lifetime care in special sanctuaries across India, instituted by the UK-based International Animal Rescue, India’s Wildlife SOS, Australia’s Free the Bears Fund and France’s One Voice Association.
“In all my years in animal welfare, I have never been part of such a resounding success story,” said Alan Knight of International Animal Rescue, which has been campaigning since 2002 for an end to the centuries-old tradition of dancing bears.
“To transform the lives of hundreds of captive bears is amazing in itself. But to put an end to this cruelty once and for all is nothing short of momentous,” he said.
Each of the 600-odd rescued bears was bought as a cub for as little as 500 rupees (€7.50) by nomadic Kalandar Muslim gypsies who earned their living by making animals pirouette enthusiastically before nobility and the rich.
The Kalandars made the bears put up impressive performances by threading a rope roughly through their snouts and a mere tug on it was sufficiently painful to force the animal on to its hind legs, giving the impression of dancing.
The bears were in constant agony, their mouths raw and bleeding and their toothless gums foaming. Their wounds were not allowed to heal.
Scores of the bears danced for foreign tourists along highways in northern India.
Though the practice of dancing bears was declared illegal in India in 1972 with the advent of the Wildlife Protection Act, it continued unhindered, proving impossible to eradicate as no rehabilitation programme existed for either the animals or their owners.
But the dancing bear eradication campaign, launched seven years ago in Agra, southern Karnataka and Tamil Nadu states, and eastern Bengal province, gave priority to a rehabilitation package for Kalandars, who have been taught new trades.
Kalandar children are now able to attend school and receive an education sponsored by the Kalandar Rehabilitation Project, instead of following their parents into parading dancing bears.
“We give the Kalandars self-esteem and responsibility by teaching them different vocations so that they can stand up proudly in society,” said Kartick Satyanaryanan of Wildlife SOS.
The largest sanctuary near Agra, which houses more than 200 bears, is a haven for the mistreated and traumatised animals, complete with a sophisticated dental wing where vets repair the damage to the animals’ snouts.
In the 400-acre wooded refuge on the banks of the Jumna river, they can be bears once again, frolicking in tyres suspended from trees and using the many scratching posts and water ponds with abandon after a lifetime of pain, maltreatment and humiliation.