Becoming Elephant

This paper presents the stories of three Asian elephants — Arikomban, Kalloor Komban, and Soorya—who live in a landscape of conflict, coexistence, survival, and captivity in the Western Ghats of South India. The stories of the three elephants give insights into what it means to “become” an elephant in different anthropogenic settings: in a mosaic forest landscape, in captivity at the elephant camp, and as a trained kumki (working) elephant who serves the forest department fighting against his conspecifics and mitigating so-called Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC). Our paper engages with what we call “relational personalities”, the individual and personal characteristics of elephants acquired throughout their life in contact and in close relationship to people. The article aims to acknowledge the personal histories of elephants in interaction with people and the knowledge and skills they have developed to survive in a mosaic forest landscape. Elephants have changed as individuals and as a species in the Anthropocene, and they endure hardships and violence when living close to people. Living near people and in human lifeworlds as well as among other elephants in a dynamic environment has shaped their habits, ways of being, and emotions — what they love, desire, dislike, fear, feel angry or joyful about. Arikomban, Kalloor Komban, and Soorya teach us that in order to better understand contemporary elephants, and facilitate their survival in non-captive settings, we need to recognize them as individuals with personalities situated in spatial and temporal history, politics, and trauma. Although shaped by interactions with people, elephants actively create their lifeworlds and respond to their environments and human contact in a variety of ways.