When elephants in Coimbatore trumpet, they trumpet in Malayalam! Guess why? They are Kerala elephants. Interestingly, elephants in Palakkad trumpet in Kongu Tamil. Well, they are obviously from the Kongu region of Tamil Nadu. Moving between different States comes with an advantage of learning various languages.
For an animal as intelligent as an elephant that spends its lifetime in learning, learning a language would not be a problem. Imagine the linguistic intellect of elephants that roam in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR), they trumpet in Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada as NBR covers three States. And with elephants also using some patches of forests in Andhra Pradesh, their resume has just added one more language, Telugu.
Now wait a minute, these are only major languages and all the States have numerous tribal tongues and with elephants moving regularly close to the hamlets, there are high chances that they might have also learnt those languages. Well, we are talking about South Indian elephants alone and considering the overall occupation of elephants in Asia and Africa, the numbers would see a steep rise. They are polyglots after all and no one would dare even to assess their linguistic skills.
All one is worried about is the problem at our backyard. The elephant problem! The problem is local, but the animal, foreign. Elephants have been using Coimbatore Forest Division for thousands of years and have all of a sudden become “Kerala elephants” because they are not moving away when people politely say “poda” (go away). No one knows if our ancestors have guided straying elephants back into forests using a word “poda”, but since it has become difficult to manage them, deaf men have started hearing elephants trumpet in a foreign language.
Remember ‘The blind men and the elephant?’ It is a similar story. Only difference is that those men were worried about visuals and these are worried about vocals. “They are not from around here,” people say.
A key stone species that has a destructive effect on the habitat if stagnated, elephants are known to move long distances covering vast home ranges. All they worry about are nutritive resources and not linguistic pride and hence naturally utilise different regions. Of the eleven corridors identified in Tamil Nadu according to the book, Right of Passage, elephant Corridors of India (2015), most of them provide access to forest patches in the neighbouring States of Kerala or Karnataka.
Over the course of time, man’s lust for land has made him think that he alone belongs to the place he lives and hence the term, “Kerala elephants”. Of course people in Kerala and Karnataka have also bifurcated elephants from their territories.
Hence the question arises. “Where do elephants actually belong?” The immediate response would be “Forests”. Needless to say we have isolated those forest patches and are at the mercy of corridors (that are nothing but degraded elephant habitats now restricted to forests). According to a report as of 2013, 76 per cent of corridors fall outside reserve forest areas that according to our laws, does not belong to elephants.
The question pops again, “Where do elephants belong?” The answer could be faintly visible if we redo the question a little. “Where did elephants belong?” Now this seems to give a picture, doesn’t it? A fragmented picture but a picture nonetheless. Starting from the mastodons to mammoths that flourished the world, to the modern day elephants, “Where did they belong?” Elephants belonged to the world and have become extinct in majority of the countries. They are now becoming extinct world over.
Pondering over these questions and the obvious answers, another question arises. Subtle; has a same tone; but comes with a little modification, “Where do we belong?” You read correct, “Where do we humans, belong?”