India’s Vanishing Camels: How the Law Is Destroying Them to Save Them | Environmental News

Rajasthan, India – Jeetu Singh’s camel stands still, eating the leaves of a Khejri tree in the Jaisalmer district of the desert state of Rajasthan, India.

His calf occasionally nurses his mother’s breasts. Although the newborn baby is the last of Singh’s flock, sadness is evident on his face. His otherwise sparkling eyes dimmed, staring at the grazing camels.

When 65-year-old Jeetu was a teenager, his family had more than 200 camels. Today, this number has decreased to 25.

He tells Al Jazeera: “When we were kids, breeding camels was a competitive business. “I used to think that my camels should be more beautiful than those bred by my peers.”

He decorated them, smeared mustard oil on their bodies, cut their brown and black hair, and decorated them from head to tail with colored beads. The camels would later decorate the landscape with the friezes of symmetry they formed as they traveled in herds like “ships of the desert”.

“It’s all a memory now,” he says. “Now I only keep it because I am attached to camels. Otherwise, there is no financial benefit from them.”

The global camel population has grown from about 13 million in the 1960s to more than 35 million now, as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) declared 2024 the International Year of the Camel to highlight the point. the role that animals play in the lives of millions of households in more than 90 countries.

But in India, their numbers are in sharp decline, from about a million camels in 1961 to about 200,000 today. And the decline has been particularly steep in recent years.

A 2007 livestock census conducted by India’s federal government found that Rajasthan, one of the few Indian states where camels are cultivated, has about 420,000 camels. In 2012, their numbers fell to around 325,000, and in 2019, their population fell further to just over 210,000 – a 35 percent decline in seven years.

This decline in the camel population of Rajasthan is felt in India’s largest state by area.

About 330 km (205 mi) from Jeetu’s home is the village of Anji Ki Dhani. In the 1990s, more than 7,000 camels lived in the village. “There are only 200 of them now; the rest are extinct,” said Hanuwant Singh Sadri, a camel conservationist for more than three decades.

And in Dandi village of Barmer district, Bhanvarlal Chaudhary has lost about 150 camels since the early 2000s. He is only 30 years old now. While the 45-year-old was walking with her herd, a camel leaned towards him and kissed him.

“Camels are the language of our existence, our cultural heritage and our daily lives,” said Chaudhary. “Without them, our language, our existence has no meaning.”

2015 law the biggest blow

Camel keepers and experts cite various reasons for the decline in the number of camels in India. Tractors replaced their need on farms, and cars and trucks took over the roads to transport goods.

Camels also struggled as grazing areas dwindled. Since they cannot be fed in a stall like cows or pigs, camels must be left to graze in the open – like Jeetu’s camel, which eats the leaves of the Khairi tree.

“This outdoor installation hardly exists now,” Sadri said.

But the biggest blow came in 2015, when the Rajasthan government under the Hindu majority Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) passed the Rajasthan Camel (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration and Export) Bill.

The law prohibits the transportation, illegal keeping and slaughter of camels. “Even decorating them can harm them because the definition of harming them is clearly defined,” Chaudhary told Al Jazeera.

Penalties under the law range from six months to five years in prison, with fines ranging from 3,000 rupees ($35) to 20,000 rupees ($235). Unlike all other laws – where the accused is innocent until proven guilty – this law changes the common law practice.

“The burden of proving innocence is on the person who is brought to criminal responsibility for this act,” the information states.

With the enactment of the law, the camel market was outlawed, and camel breeders also intended to sell their animals. Buyers suddenly became “smugglers” under the law.

The act is based on the assumption that camel slaughter is behind the decline in the camel population in the state of Rajasthan. He banned the movement of camels to other states, Chaudhary says, thinking it would serve three purposes: the camel population would increase, the livelihoods of breeders would increase, and camel slaughter would stop.

“Well, he missed his first two targets,” Chaudhary said.

“Suddenly there was no buyer”

Sumit Dookia, an environmentalist from Rajasthan who teaches at a university in New Delhi, questions the government about the law.

“Why are camel numbers still declining,” he asks, if the law is in place to revive them?

Chaudhary has an answer. “We raise animals to make a living,” he says, adding that without a market or a fair price, keeping such huge animals is not an easy task.

“The law has shut the horns of our traditional system of taking our male camels to Pushkar, Nagore or Tilva – three of the biggest camel fairs,” adds Sadri.

Sadri says that breeders used to get good money for their camels at those fairs.

“Before the law was passed, our camels were sold for between 40,000 (US$466) and 80,000 rupees (US$932),” he says. “However, as soon as the government introduced the law in 2015, camels started selling for a measly 500 ($6) to 1,000 rupees ($12).

“Suddenly there was no buyer.”

So buyers lost interest? “No, they didn’t,” said environmentalist Dookia. “It’s just that they fear for their lives now.”

Almost all buyers at Pushkar, India’s largest camel fair, were Muslims, says Sadri. In the climate of anti-Muslim hostility under the BJP, they are particularly easy to target.

“If a Muslim eats camel meat, we have no problem. “If there are good slaughterhouses, the price of camels will increase, thereby encouraging breeders to keep more and more camels.”

“But the BJP does not want to do that. This takes us away from our traditional markets.”

“The law took away our camels”

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP came to power in India in 2014, the lynching of Muslims and Dalits by Hindu vigilantes for animal slaughter has increased exponentially. Dalits sit at the lowest rung of Hinduism’s complex caste system.

“Looking at the scenario in the country, buyers are scared and will not take any risk in camel transport,” said Chaudhary. “Given such a situation, why would there be a buyer? Who will buy the animals?’

Asked if the law has led to a decline in the number of camels in the country, Maneka Gandhi, a former minister in Modi’s cabinet who pushed the law, said, “The law has had no effect. Muslims continue to smuggle.” of the animal”.

Gandhi claimed that the law was “in no way enforced”. He said if the law is properly implemented, the camel population will bounce back.

But Narendra Mohan Singh, a 61-year-old retired bureaucrat who helped draft the law, disagrees.

“Look, the law is problematic and we only found out after it was passed and it started affecting breeders. We were given very little time to prepare it and the farmers and camel breeders who would actually be affected were not consulted when it was introduced,” says Singh, former director of animal husbandry, Rajasthan government.

“We have been told to make a law for camels similar to the law that exists for cows and other livestock. But the law, which was meant to protect camels, did the opposite,” adds Singh.

Amir Ali Singh, an associate professor at the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, agrees.

“There are two strange aspects to the extreme concern expressed by Hindu (majoritarian) politics towards animals,” he says. “First, it lacks an understanding of the nuances and complexities of issues like animal husbandry. Second, with a strange enthusiasm for expressing concern for animals, it ends up demonizing and dehumanizing groups like Dalits and Muslims.

Meanwhile, the sun set in Jaisalmer. Sitting on the ground by the bonfire, Jeetu thinks about the new-born camel in his herd and asks, “Will the baby camel bring good to Rajasthan?”

Sadri and Singh are not optimistic.

Sadri says the BJP’s “short-sighted legislation” continues to add to the decline of the camel population in Rajasthan.

“Animal welfare organizations know nothing about large animals. They can only breed dogs and cats,” he says, his voice boiling with anger.

“This law has taken away our markets and will eventually take away our camels. I will neither be surprised nor surprised if there are no camels left in India in the next 5-10 years. It will disappear forever like the dinosaurs.”

Singh has an almost dire prediction for the future. “If it doesn’t go extinct, it will become a zoo animal,” he says.