For God’s snake!

On the occasion of Nag Panchami, snake lovers capture 74 snakes exploited cruelly by ‘charmers'

On Monday, volunteers from the Akaash Group caught 74 snakes from various snake catchers around the city and handed them over to the forest department, who later released them into the wild.

Most snakes had their mouths stitched; they were later released into the wild

Several social organisations working for the ethical treatment of animals urged citizens to discourage snake shows and atrocities against reptiles by reporting snake charmers to authorities.

Head of the Akaash Group Akash Shinde said his team, comprising 25 youth, fanned across the city and seized around 74 snakes from ‘snake charmers’.

“Most of them were kept in wooden cases and gasping for breath. Many had their lips stitched up or glued together. Other superstitions followed by people involve feeding the snakes milk, which is not at all their natural diet.”

Activist Anil Avchite said he found a mere fifteen-day-old snake in the custody of one charmer. “The reptile had painful, crude stitches on its lips, which I removed with much difficulty. It was later released into the wild.”

“We appeal to the public to inform us or the forest department if they see such serpents made to ‘perform’ by snake charmers,” added Shinde.

According to the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, it is a crime for snake charmers to capture and exploit snakes for commercial purposes, or even own them.

As per Section 11, Sub Section 1 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, it is illegal to torture or cause unnecessary pain to an animal, wilfully and unreasonably administer any injurious substance to it, keep or confine it to a cage or any other receptacle that does not give it a reasonable opportunity for movement.

Range forest office for Pune region issued a release on Monday evening thanking the activists, and requested the public to file a complaint under various acts to prevent cruelty in the name of tradition.

http://www.punemirror.in/article/2/2012072420120724090302453e2662628/For-God%E2%80%99s-snake.html

In India, Snake Charmers Are Losing Their Sway

 

Snake charming is a dying art in India. Here, a man named Buddhanath is shown at a New Delhi market during Nag Panchami, the yearly religious festival in honor of the king cobra. The charmer plays a gourd flute and his snake responds.

Snake charmers used to be a fixture at Indian markets and festivals, beguiling crowds with their ability to control some of the world's most venomous reptiles.

But one of India's iconic folk arts is fading away — and animal-rights activists say it can't happen soon enough. They say it's an art based on cruelty.

These days, it's not easy to find a snake charmer, even on Nag Panchami, the yearly religious festival in honor of the king cobra, which fell on Aug. 4 this year.

It took a full day of searching in New Delhi to find Buddhanath, a thin man with a long, white beard who was sitting cross-legged on the pavement behind a round, flat container that looked a bit like a tortilla basket.

Buddhanath wore a loosely wrapped orange turban and a sweet, joyous expression as he tapped the basket.

"I have a king cobra," Buddhanath said. "He is Lord Shiva's cobra, and we worship him."

The blue-skinned Hindu god is usually portrayed wearing a king cobra around his neck.

The charmer flipped the lid off the basket, and the cobra popped up like a jack-in-the-box, scanning around with its hood fully extended.

It fixed its gaze on the tip of Buddhanath's gourd flute. The cobra's black scales glistened as it swayed, following the movement of the flute's tip.

Kartick Satyanarayan, of the animal rescue group Wildlife SOS, holds a rat snake. The group says it is trying to retrain traditional snake charmers and use their skills to remove dangerous snakes from populated areas where they threaten people.

The snake looked to be about 4 feet long, coiled in the basket, with a small, almost jewel-like head and glittering black eyes above the outstretched hood.

For a couple of minutes, the man and the snake seemed connected in a very ancient, intricate dance — but the snake can't hear a thing.

"Snakes don't have ears; most people don't know that," said Kartick Satyanarayan, a co-founder of the animal rescue group Wildlife SOS.

"But snake charmers use the pipe, so what the snake sees is simply something which is menacing, above him, which is swaying, so the snake's attention is focused just on the swaying object and moves along with that," he said. "So it appears to people that the snake is actually dancing to the tune of his pipe."

Satyanarayan said the illusion of the poisonous snake tamed and charmed by music is often based on very cruel practices.

To prevent the snake from biting, snake charmers sometimes break off the animal's fangs or sew its mouth shut. As a result, the snake can't eat and slowly starves to death.

Buddhanath said he has done nothing of the kind. He said the snake has merely been tamed, and won't bite.

He also said that he was about to release this snake back into the wild.

A 1972 Indian law forbids anyone to keep a snake, but it hasn't been enforced much in the case of snake charmers until recently.

The Indian government has tried to accommodate snake charmers and their existing snake, while trying to keep them from capturing more snakes.

The government has implanted identification chips under the skin of some snakes that were already in captivity. This allows the government to scan the animals and confiscate any that are newly captured and have no chips.

Satyanarayan also said his group is trying to rehabilitate snake charmers by turning them into snake rescuers. Instead of performing at festivals, the snake charmers can be called in to remove venomous snakes from city and suburban gardens and return them to the wild.

"So today instead of catching the snake, exploiting it, killing it, they actually help us protect snakes," Satyanarayan added.

And, he said, it's not just the law that's working against the snake charmers as performers; it's India's evolving culture as well.

As India becomes a more middle-class country, people are now more attuned to television shows and video games than they are to street performers.

Still, if it were possible to save something from the art of snake charming, it might be the music of the charmer's flute, a seductive little song that snakes can never hear.

My take

Wildlife SOS has been very successful in working animals campaign as they have provided alternative employment like rescuing snakes, driving auto rickshaws, etc. They also help in sending the children of these families to school and help in empowering the women.

Rehabilitating such groups by providing alternative employment is the ideal solution as it is a holistic approach towards the issue. I strongly feel animal rights organizations working on similar issues should help in providing alternative employment by working with human welfare organizations.