India’s Disappearing Beauty: How the Save It Act Will Destroy It | Environment News

Rajasthan, India Jeetu Singh’s camel stands calmly, chewing the leaves of a Khegri tree in the Jaisalmer region of the desert state of Rajasthan in India.

Sometimes her calf suckles from her mother’s breast. While the newborn is the latest addition to Singh’s flock, the sadness is evident on his face. His sparkling eyes turned gloomy, and stared at the shepherding beauties.

When Jitu, 65, was a teenager, his family had more than 200 camels. Today that number has dropped to 25.

“Raising camels was nothing less than a competitive affair when we were children,” he tells Al Jazeera. “I used to think that my camels should be more beautiful than those raised by my peers.”

He took care of them, applied mustard oil to their bodies, cut their brown and black hair, and decorated them with colored beads from head to tail. The camels then decorate the landscape with ornate friezes that they form as they walk in herds like “ships of the desert.”

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

Worldwide, the number of camels has risen from about 13 million in the 1960s to more than 35 million now, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which declared 2024 the International Year of Camelids to highlight key factors. The role animals play in the lives of millions of families in more than 90 countries.

But their numbers are declining sharply in India – from nearly a million camels in 1961 to just about 200,000 today. The decline has been particularly sharp in recent years.

A livestock census conducted by the Indian federal government in 2007 revealed that Rajasthan, one of the few Indian states where camels are reared, had about 420,000 camels. In 2012, their number fell to about 325,000, while in 2019 their population fell to just over 210,000 – a 35% decline in seven years.

This decline in camel numbers in Rajasthan is being felt across the vast state – India’s largest by area.

About 330 kilometers (205 miles) from Jeetu’s home lies the village of Angi ki Dhani. In the 1990s, the village was home to more than 7,000 camels. “Only 200 of them exist now; “The rest are extinct,” says Hanwant Singh Sadri, a camel conservationist for more than three decades.

In Dandi village in Barmer district, Bhanwarlal Chaudhary has lost nearly 150 of his camels since the beginning of the 2000s. He has only 30 years left now. While the 45-year-old was walking with his herd, the camel leaned towards him and kissed him.

“Camels are linked to our language of survival, our cultural heritage, and our daily life,” Chaudhry said. “Without it, our language and our existence have no meaning at all.”

The 2015 law is the biggest blow

Camel breeders and experts cite various reasons for the dwindling number of camels in India. Tractors replaced their needs on farms, while cars and trucks dominated the roads to transport goods.

Camels are also suffering due to shrinking grazing land. Since they cannot be fed in a stall like cows or pigs, camels must be left to graze in open areas – like the Jitu camel which eats the leaves of the Khejri tree.

“This open setting is rarely available now,” says Sadri.

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

The law prohibits the illegal transportation, possession, and slaughter of camels. “Even decorating it could cause harm to it, as the definition of causing harm is loosely worded,” Chaudhry told Al Jazeera.

Punishment under the law ranges from six months to five years in prison, and penalties 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 overturns traditional jurisprudence.

The text of the law states that “the burden of proving innocence falls on the person being tried under this law.”

With the enforcement of the law, the camel market has been banned – as well as camel breeders if they intend to sell their animals. Suddenly buyers became “smugglers” under the law.

The law was drafted on the assumption that the slaughter of camels was behind the decline in their population in Rajasthan. Chaudhry says that the government banned the transfer of camels to other states, believing that this would serve three purposes: increasing camel numbers, increasing the livelihood of camel breeders, and stopping camel slaughter.

“Well, I missed the first two,” says Choudhary.

“Suddenly there were no buyers.”

Sumit Dukiya, an ecologist from Rajasthan who teaches at a university in New Delhi, has a question for the government about the law.

He wonders: “Why is the number of camels still shrinking,” if there is a law aimed at reviving their numbers?

Chaudhry has the answer. “We raise animals to sustain our lives,” he says, adding that without a fair market or price, keeping such huge animals is not an easy task.

“The law contradicts our traditional system where we used to take our male camels to Pushkar, Nagaur or Tilwara – three of the biggest camel fairs,” Sadri adds.

Sadri says breeders were getting good money for their camels at those fairs.

“Before the law was passed, the prices of our camels were selling from 40,000 rupees ($466) to 80,000 rupees ($932),” he says. “But once the government implemented the law in 2015, camels started being sold for as little as 500 ($6) to 1,000 rupees ($12).”

“Suddenly, there were no buyers.”

So, have buyers lost interest? “No, they didn’t,” says environmentalist Dokia. “The only thing is that they are afraid for their lives now.”

This is particularly because almost all buyers at Pushkar, India’s largest camel fair, were Muslims, says Sadri. They are particularly easy to target in the climate of hostility against Muslims under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

“If a Muslim eats camel meat, we have no problem. If there are good slaughterhouses, the prices of camels will rise, which will inspire breeders to keep more and more camels,” he says.

“But the BJP doesn’t want to do that. It takes us out of our traditional markets.”

“The law took our beauty”

Since 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in India, cases of extrajudicial killings of Muslims and Dalits by Hindu vigilantes for slaughtering animals have risen. Dalits occupy the lowest rung of the complex Hindu caste system.

“Given the prevailing scenario in the country, buyers are afraid and will not take the risk of transporting camels,” says Chaudhary. “Given such a situation, why would there be a buyer? Who would buy the animals?

When asked if the law was responsible for the decline in the number of camels in the country, Maneka Gandhi, a former minister in the Modi government who pushed for the law, said: “The law has had no effect,” adding that “Muslims continue smuggling.” Of animal.”

Gandhi claimed that the law “was not implemented at all.” She added that if the law is implemented correctly, the camel population will return again.

But Narendra Mohan Singh, a 61-year-old retired bureaucrat who was involved in drafting the law, disagrees.

“Look, the law is problematic, and we didn’t know that until after it was passed and it started affecting educators. “We were given very little time to prepare it, and the farmers and camel breeders who would actually be affected when it was brought in were not consulted,” says Singh, former additional director of animal husbandry in the Rajasthan government.

“We were asked to make a law for camels like there is for cows and other livestock. But the law that was meant to protect camels ended up doing the opposite,” Singh adds.

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

“The excessive concern expressed by (majority) Hindu policy towards animals has two strange aspects,” he says. “First, it lacks an understanding of the nuances and complexities of matters like livestock herding. Second, in the bizarre enthusiasm for expressing concern for animals, it ends up demonizing and dehumanizing groups like Dalits and Muslims.”

Meanwhile, the sun set in Jaisalmer. Jeetu, sitting on the ground next to the fire, thinks of the newborn camel in his herd and asks, “Will the baby camel bring good luck to Rajasthan?”

Sadri and Singh are not optimistic.

Sadri says the BJP’s “short-sighted law” continues to further decline camel numbers in Rajasthan.

“The organizations that demand animal welfare know nothing about large animals. They can only raise 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 would not be shocked or surprised if there are no more camels in India in the next five or ten years. They will disappear forever like the dinosaurs did.”

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