On Tuesday, December 19, the last ‘dancing bear‘ of Nepal was rescued. The two brown bears, Rangile and Sridevi, were found cowering and sucking their paws; signs of severe psychological trauma. This act of rescue is significant, for it means that centuries of abuse is coming to an end in South Asia.
Had they not been found, they would have spent the rest of their days in a cruel industry that drags them by rope from village to village, ‘dancing’ for human ‘entertainment’. Their rescue, by the Nepalese police aided by the Jane Goodall Institute of Nepal and World Animal Protection, marks the end of a bitter era of the abuse of Indian bears for entertainment. The species used are the Himalayan Brown Bear (Critically Endangered), Asiatic Black Bear (Vulnerable) and Sloth Bear (Vulnerable).
Just seven years earlier, India too marked a day in December as the last time a dancing bear would be caught. When ‘Raju’ was rescued at the end of 2009, it marked the successful conclusion of a long campaign by Wildlife SOS, the conservation NGO, to rescue India’s brown bears from their handlers. Much of this was due to the work of a wildlife enthusiast named Kartick Satyanarayan.
Cracking down on the bear trade was not a simple matter of law enforcement. The use and abuse of ‘dancing bears’ was a community-based vocation – and tackling what was an ancient practice for people now considered an ‘Otherwise Backward Community’ required empathy and tact.
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