The elephant as a person

Right from when I was a kid, I loved elephants.  I am not the only kid in the old country who would have had such a strong feeling about elephants.

Every once in a rare while, we would spot a young elephant being walked down the street from or to a temple.  Here was a large, powerful animal, walking about slowly as if it owned the world.  The movement of people and bicycles and scooters and cars and lorries and buses seemed to come to a halt.  

I would stand and look at the animal until it completely disappeared from view. There was something calming, quite therapeutic.

At the temples with elephants, it was always a thrill to be blessed by the elephant.  We would give 50 paise or so to the mahout, who would prompt the elephant to lift up its trunk and gently place it over our heads.  It was as good as being blessed by Pillayar himself!

As I got a little older, I started getting uncomfortable looking at elephants being held in restricted temple corners and all by themselves.  To be all the time under a mahout's control, to be pricked by his stick, to be unfree, was certainly not natural.  Even the standard art work of elephants dragging huge logs reminded me of forced labor. 

I could not understand how they could ever be exhibits in zoos.  To be locked away in a tight space, far away from its natural habitat and other elephants came across as nothing but solitary confinement.  

Even when young, we read in stories that an elephant never forgets.  Their brains are highly developed.  "Their huge brains are capable of complex thinking—including imitation, memory, coöperative problem-solving—and such emotions as altruism, compassion, grief, and empathy."

Altruism, compassion, empathy, all emotions lacking in many human beings, and yet they are merely animals while we humans are some superior species!

If elephants can remember, imitate, work with groups, and show those emotions, don't they qualify to be recognized as persons?  If an abstract corporation can be legally recognized as a person, why not a real elephant?  Do corporations emote?  Do corporations die?  Do corporations give birth?  Elephants do them all, and more.

If fertilized human eggs are celebrated by half the country as having some kind of a personhood with rights,  don't elephants, and chimpanzees, and whales, and more deserve to be recognized as persons?  As non-human persons?  

"How are we to recalibrate our relationship with animals that live in complex societies and have a sense of themselves as individuals? ... If we can’t save elephants, what can we save?"

(The photo below is from my only trip to Tanzania in 2009.  I was excited to see the African elephant, which is a lot bigger than the Indian elephant, and with ears that are huge.  Even more exciting was to see so many calves at one place.)