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Controversy over Kaziranga centenary celebrations

GUWAHATI, FEB. 8. The ensuing centenary celebrations of the Kaziranga National Park has run into rough weather with well-known environmental activist group, `Nature's Beckon', claiming that Kaziranga was yet to step into its 100th year as it was declared a National Park only in 1974.

Talking to reporters here today, Nature's Beckon director, Soumyadeep Dutta presenting official documents asked how Kaziranga, located in Upper Assam, could hold its week-long centenary this year from February 11 when it was not even declared a reserved forest until 1926.

In 1905 the then ruling British regulated Kaziranga as a game hunting ground for granting hunting permits and did not declare it a reserved forest, Mr. Dutta asserted.

``If this hunting regulation year is sought to be taken as the beginning of the Park, then the wrong message will go to the world as the proposed centenary celebration will completely change history. This is unacceptable to the conscious people of Assam'', he said.

Disclaiming that Lord Curzon was the founder of the KNP as claimed by the centenary celebration committee, which invited Curzon's grandson Sir Nicholas Moseley to be present at the gala, Mr Dutta said the British instead used Kaziranga to hunt down wild animals.

Documentary evidence to this effect was provided by the then eminent environmentalist and conservationist E. P. Gee in his books, said the activist responsible for protecting rainforests, near-extinct hollock gibbon monkeys and other animals in Assam.

About the claim of the forest department that Kaziranga was the ``century's greatest conservation success story'' following its founder Curzon's efforts to conserve the five rhinos available there, the Nature's Beckon director quoted Mr.Gee to the contrary.

Mr. Gee in his books wrote, ``I have talked to the forest officer who was the first to be deputed to survey Kaziranga in the mid 1930s. He found poacher's camps at every beel (small lake) and about 40 carcasses of rhino with the horns removed''.

Mr. Dutta disagreed that Kaziranga was a ``conservation success story''. The Government's attention was concentrated only on Kaziranga ignoring all the other various rhino habitats across the State that had either shrunk or disappeared due to neglect, he said.

The Kaziranga Centenary celebration organisers have been at the receiving end also by protests from animal rights organisations from both home and abroad against its two prime scheduled programmes -- elephant football and tug-of-war among jumbos.

Following a public outcry that the pachyderms were trained through torture to play the games and that the celebrations were being reduced to a `circus', the two major attractions were withdrawn from the week-long celebration.

Wildlife Protection Society of India executive director Belinda Wright, People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi and her People for Animals, besides Nature's Beckon protested against the two events. PTI

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Controversy over Kaziranga centenary celebrations

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