The killing of a pregnant elephant in West Bengal’s Jhargram district this month has put into focus the increasing numbers of human-elephant conflicts in the southern parts of the state and the role of ‘hula parties’ – local youth recruited by the state government to ward off elephants from human-populated areas. While for years, the issue of human-elephant conflict has been prevalent in northern West Bengal, the incidents down south are comparatively less well-researched, experts say.
On the morning of August 15 when a herd of six elephants, including two calves, entered a residential area in Jhargram town, it did not take long for local ‘hula party’ members to gather. In the presence of ground-level forest department officials who managed to tranquilise at least one elephant, at least one member of the ‘hula party’ threw a fire-tipped iron mashaal (torch) at the pregnant elephant, who was hit on her back. In several videos, the injured elephant can be seen visibly in pain with ‘hula’ members driving her into the forest.
As videos of the incident began circulating, the actions of the ‘hula party’ sparked widespread protests, with members of the Kurmi Samaj and locals taking out rallies in Jhargram, prompting the forest department to say it would take “strict action” in the matter. Despite attempts to treat the wounded elephant, several hours later, it succumbed to its injuries.
‘Hula parties’ comprise groups of young men between 15 and 35 years of age who stay in the villages in the Jungle Mahal districts of West Bengal. The men are recruited by the state forest department in their respective forest ranges to drive away elephants from human-populated areas.
The term ‘hula party’ originates in the long sticks tipped with fire used to drive away elephants, called ‘hula’ by villagers in this region. During a standard ‘hula’ operation, the ‘hula’ sticks are not always thrown at the elephants but furiously waved in front of them. The fire on these ‘hula’ sticks flickers in the wind, making a distinct sound that helps drive the elephants away.
“The concept of the ‘hula party’ is unique to south Bengal. You do not have it operating in the same way anywhere else in the country,” says Akashdeep Roy, a doctoral researcher at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, who focuses on human-elephant conflict in India. “These are unemployed young boys funded by the Gram Sabha and the Joint Forest Management Committee and not by the forest department directly. The issue is that these young men can become very violent. As part of the ‘hula party’, they run after elephants, use petrol bombs to chase them away and are very aggressive.” Although not funded directly by them, the ‘hula party’ members work closely with local forest department staff.
In 2018, the Supreme Court ordered that throwing fireballs at elephants to chase them away from human settlements and crops is illegal. However, the order did not include the ‘hula’ these groups use.
With the exception of the Mayurjharna Elephant Reserve spread across Midnapur, Bankura and Purulia districts, the forests of southern West Bengal are not typically suitable habitats for elephants, says Dr. Pradeep Vyas, IFS (R), former chief wildlife warden of West Bengal. But over the years, the forests have now become home to the species, where some elephants have become residents, in addition to the migratory herds.
“Till 1986, there were hardly any elephants in southern West Bengal. They may have existed some 100 years ago but were not recorded in the region in recent history. They do exist in Jharkhand, however, and they now move in West Bengal as well. They can travel all the way up to Bardhaman district,” says Dr. Vyas.
“Mayurjharna is a beautiful forest but it does not have a sufficient number of trees. This causes the elephants to venture into paddy fields and vegetable fields for crop raiding for food, resulting in conflict with villagers,” he says. The dry, deciduous forests of the region force elephants to raid crops during which they inadvertently damage houses and occasionally when they come near humans, it may result in accidental deaths.
Statistics for human-elephant conflict in various forms in southern West Bengal are hard to find, researchers interviewed for this report said, because it is not well-documented. However, experts say that the numbers are high.
“It is occurring on a daily basis because this region is an elephant corridor,” says Sagnik Sengupta, co-founder of Stripes And Green Earth Foundation (SAGE), who has been monitoring human-elephant conflict in the region for the last five years.
According to Sengupta, the elephant corridor starts at Jharkhand’s Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary and continues in West Bengal at Kankrajhore, Binpur, Lalgarh, Kalaikunda and Nayagram, before ending in Odisha. The elephants use the same route to return from Odisha to Jharkhand during the process of migration.
In the villages of southern West Bengal, when an elephant or a herd is spotted, the forest department is expected to conduct awareness drives by going from village to village. As news spreads by word of mouth, so does the enthusiasm among villagers who clamour to get a look at the elephant up close. Armed with mobile phones, they also try to get photographs and videos of the elephants, doing more harm than good, says Soumen Barik, a ‘hula party’ member from Bankura.
While many villagers living near the forests of the Jungle Mahals have grown up in proximity to various species of wild animals, the elephant continues to pique curiosity. “These are forest villages, and there is not much entertainment here. It gets dark by 5 pm – 6 pm. An elephant is entertainment for these villagers. It is a large animal and to watch something so huge moving through the forest area draws onlookers. Not everyone goes to harm them,” says Ashima Mitra, a West Bengal-based independent wildlife researcher who focuses on elephants.
But curiosity ends up escalating an already tense situation.
Despite the criticism levelled against ‘hula parties’, particularly following the August 15 incident, the controversial practice has not been stopped. Just days later, on August 27, Sengupta documented another incident that occurred in Jhargram district where a female elephant who had given birth to a calf a day before was driven away from the vicinity of Manikpara village where it was resting.
Videos shared by Sengupta show a batch of ‘hula party’ members chasing the elephant and her calf, forcing them to wade into the nearby Kangsabati River to escape the aggressive group. “The villagers got news of the presence of the elephant and her calf and started harassing them,” says Sengupta.
Last week, state Forest Minister Birbaha Hansda issued a statement admitting that ‘hula party’ members needed to be trained on how to manage elephants, an official confirmation that ‘hula party’ workers lacked formal training on dealing with the animals. The forest department is understaffed, particularly at the village-level, compelling it to depend on the informal recruitment of villagers to help out with jobs like these, experts interviewed for the report say.
“’Hula party’ members behave unprofessionally,” says Mitra. “They don’t know how to drive elephants or even the direction in which they should be sent because they have no formal training. Elephants have a planned route that they take in the corridor. But ‘hula party’ members deal with them using force. Psychologically, the ‘hula party’ members believe that they need to drive the elephant from their forest range at all costs and then what happens to the animals is not their business anymore,” Mitra adds.
The group that chases the elephant or the herd does not only comprise ‘hula party’ members, says Mitra. “Even other villagers join the ‘hula party’ to take videos and selfies with the animals. It becomes a competition to take the best selfie or video or to see who can film it from the closest proximity to the elephant. There are cases when these people are also drunk,” she says.
The ground staff members of the forest department do not necessarily have control of the composition of the rowdy entourage that proceeds to make its way to the elephants, creating an unsafe, chaotic and stressful environment for the animals as well.
In the case of a herd that includes calves, the younger elephants lack the energy and strength of full-grown adults when forced to flee while being driven by the ‘hula parties’. Mitra says that when the elephants are forced to move quickly, they panic and lose their sense of direction, which only adds to the chaos.
‘Hula party’ members working in Jhargram district declined to be interviewed following the criticism they continue to face. However, indianexpress.com spoke to ‘hula’ workers in neighbouring districts in the Jungle Mahals who say that the profession is unfairly vilified, especially over the past few weeks.
Some three years ago, when other ‘hula party’ members in Bankura were looking for recruits, 22-year-old Jayanta Sen decided to join. “I was always interested in elephants and learned that they cross our area regularly. I developed a connection with other ‘hula party’ members and joined,” says Sen. The August 15 incident has been a subject of intense discussion in the southern West Bengal ‘hula‘ community”, he adds.
“Hitting elephants is not intentional. Maybe the elephants were hit while the hula members were trying to save themselves. It is a risky job but maybe the person who threw it did not expect it would kill the elephant. The intention is not to kill them. We hit elephants only when they chase us or destroy crops,” says Barik.
The ‘hula party’ uses WhatsApp groups to communicate and there is only one goal: to remove the elephant from the forest range for which they are responsible, with no concern for where the elephant goes once it is driven away. “Hula team comprises 15-20 people. The local forest officer calls the team leader and says the elephant is coming and gives us the ‘hula’ and some oil. They just say ‘do your job’ and ‘this is the route the elephant will take’ and ‘don’t hit the elephant’,” says Sen.
Sen says that human-elephant conflict is complex and not enough attention is given to the difficulties that village populations face. “I don’t think elephants kill humans intentionally. But they are huge animals and when they enter villages, they lift or swat the humans or houses that stand in their path. They don’t like anything obstructing their path,” says Sen.
Mitra says that when human deaths do occur in cases of conflict with elephants, it is because they inadvertently come under the feet of elephants when the animal is trying to escape a ‘hula party’ or an aggressive mob of villagers. Researchers interviewed for this report said numbers for human deaths or damage to crops and houses in cases of conflict with elephants for southern West Bengal are not formally documented.
The issues with financial compensation for damage caused by elephants only add to the problem. “At the ground level, if timely and proper compensation is given to villagers, they would not be so vengeful against elephants. In West Bengal, the compensation for human death is Rs 5 lakh. In Maharashtra, it is Rs 25 lakh. Compensation for crop damage in West Bengal is Rs 5,000 per hectare. The farmer works hard to cultivate crops for three to four months, but the compensation is so low and the process of getting it is slow, when it happens. So the farmer gets angered and villagers take their rage out on elephants,” says Sengupta.
Addressing allegations of hooliganism and unruly conduct, Barik says it is not ‘hula party’ members who engage in this kind of behaviour. “Driving away elephants happens mostly after dark. The people, mostly men, who drink alcohol and turn up drunk while the elephant is being driven away, are common villagers,” he explains.
“We have to stay in the forest at night so it is not safe for us to be under the influence of alcohol. But consuming country-made alcohol in the evenings is common in our villages. So these villagers will drink alcohol and follow us into the forest with torch-lights and sticks and come with overenthusiasm to ‘help’. We do try to stop these men, but they don’t listen and they come in crowds that can include up to 100-150 people. Many come into forests with motorcycles. They go there to have a good time,” says Barik.
The censure and criticism that hula party members faced following the Jhargram incident has caused some concern among the operating groups, members say. It has also given ‘hula parties’ a bad name. “These are poor people who don’t have regular employment. They get Rs. 300 per day to chase away elephants, and maybe the day’s dinner. They don’t go out to kill elephants. They know there is a risk and are worried, but they are also worried about money,” says Barik.
The lack of training and inexperience of the ‘hula’ members contribute to the violence against elephants, experts say. But Barik says, there is little else that ‘hula’ members can do. “I don’t agree with the methods used by ‘hula parties’ to drive away elephants, but if we don’t use the ‘hula’, what are the alternatives? It is impossible to remove elephants without fire,” Bark says.
According to data by the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change (MoEFCC), from 2014-2024, West Bengal ranked among the top five states in India that consistently recorded high rates of elephant deaths, with Assam recording the highest numbers.
In this period, there were at least 921 documented elephant deaths in West Bengal, caused due to what the government categorises as ‘non-natural deaths’. This categorisation includes deaths caused due to human-elephant conflict, and no separate category records individual deaths state-wise for these kinds of fatalities.
The MoEFCC data also shows that between 2014-2024, 643 human deaths were recorded in West Bengal as caused due to conflict with elephants.
Last week, Sagnik Sengupta of SAGE filed a Right To Information (RTI) request with the West Bengal Forest Department, seeking data on elephant deaths caused due to conflict with humans in the state. As of the date of publishing this report, he is yet to receive a response.
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