Monkey Inspector's Report - A Simian History of Journalism in India

MONKEY BUSINESS
IN THEIR TIME, DELHI'S MONKEYS HAVE CAUSED ENOUGH TROUBLE TO EARN A

PLACE IN A SANCTUARY ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE CITY.

From 2009 to early 2011, I lived in a south Delhi barsati which had an enormous terrace area. When I
moved in,this open space looked sad and empty, so I spent many thousands of rupees doing it up with all
kinds of plants.Then came the monkeys. A team of five to ten. On finding the kitchen locked, they would
break the pots, and sometimes eat the plants. No flower was allowed to bloom.
0
I replaced the mud pots with heavy cement ones. The monkeys broke fewer of them but ate more shoots
and leaves. They would come at night. Soon they'd come at dawn, and make such a commotion I'd wake
up terrified. Mild banging on the door wouldn't ward them off, nor would the other tactics I tried. I was afraid
of them. They could be aggressive and strong and these traits were multiplied because they operated in
gangs. I felt caged in the small room of my large barsati. All I could do was share my misery on Facebook.
"Be careful," a friend warned in a comment, "they once killed the deputy mayor of Delhi."
In October 2007, Sawinder Singh Bajwa, the then deputy mayor, was trying to fend off monkeys from the
balcony of his home. He fell off the terrace and died. Ironically, in the election he had recently won for the
Bhartiya Janata Party, the opposition Congress had made the "monkey menace" a major issue. Apart from
stealing food and clothing like dacoits, biting people, and scaling the parliament building, they'd also been
known to create a scare on occasion by running through a Metro carriage or through the airport. After the
death, mayor Aarti Mehra started worrying about monkeys. She said Delhi had only five monkey catchers
for an estimated 20 000 monkeys. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) had also begun fining
Hanuman bhakts for feeding monkeys in public places. But the monkeys would not relent. A month later, a
lone monkey went around Shastri Park in East Delhi, biting 25 people in a single weekend. People
eventually beat him down with metal bars and sticks because they feared it was going to snatch infants
away. "Primal Invasion," the Hindustan Times had panicked on the front page.
If Delhi's monkeys make less news these days it may be because since then, the New Delhi Municipal
Corporation (NDMC) and the MCD have hired more monkey catchers, raising the number from five to 50
odd, and have raised the reward for every monkey caught to as much as Rs 650. Private contractors act as
go-betweens to find monkey catchers from across India, not an easy task because not many would want to
be cruel to Lord Hanuman, the monkey god, the god of strength. The captured monkeys are sent to a
monkey sanctuary on the outskirts of Delhi. But that we hear of them less is also because the monkeys
have effectively been displaced from the media glare, from the areas of south and central Delhi, and no
longer infiltrate the Defence Ministry and scatter files as they did in 2004, or kill children as they did once in
a while.
My curiosity about Delhi's monkey problem led me to the leafy neighbourhood of Asiad Village, where a
very warm Iqbal Malik welcomed me inside her lovely apartment. There was nothing to do with monkeys in
the shelves of the drawing room of India's best known primatologist. Over the next two hours or so, she
answered my questions, one after the other, explaining to me where it all began.
When Malik saw Delhi's urban monkey population explode in the 1990s she wasn't surprised. She'd seen it
coming.
Malik had started working as a primatologist a decade earlier. In the late 1980s, she was studying a group
of monkeys at Tughlaqabad Fort, having selected two sets of monkeys for comparative study and given
them all names (such as Bluff Ram and Daagi Ram) and hired a team of eight to observe them round the
clock. Soon, her monkeys started disappearing and her research was affected. She found that the monkeys
had been trapped and taken away by the MCD their way of keeping monkeys off the streets. "But what I
then saw was that monkey families were disrupted. The mother is away, the infant is here, the father
monkey unable to take care of it, and so on," says Malik. This chaos caused monkey groups to be divided,
one into two and two into four and so on. Their ecological balance thus disrupted by selective trapping led
to what Malik calls "chaotic fission," and they started entering houses to look for food. That is how monkeys
came into our homes.
To begin with, the monkeys were shy with Delhi residents, but the people were more forthcoming,
welcoming them with food. Malik asked some such people why they fed monkeys. "Lord Hanuman, who
helped Ram defeat Ravan, good defeat evil, has come to our house!" they would say excitedly. But this
religious enthusiasm lessened when people realised Lord Hanuman gets angry and aggressive when not
given food, helps himself to the fridge and even takes away clothes and causes destruction. "I would see
people come to Tughlaqabad to feed the monkeys, and give so much food the monkeys won't even eat all,"
she says. Later, when monkeys became a menace, she started hearing such complaints as, "God has no
fear!"
Thanks to media interest in the monkey issue, Malik's research brought her such fame in the late 1980s
that she would get calls from strangers asking her for advice. "The monkey is in the bathroom and I am
afraid," she remembers one such caller say, "what do I do?" Her views on tackling monkeys have been
sought by Rashtrapati Bhavan and by the courts. Once, an army officer met her to enquire if monkeys could
be trained to work with landmines. She shooed him away like others do monkeys.
The walls of the monkey sanctuary in Asola.

While the 1990s saw a proliferation of monkeys, it is not the case that the "monkey menace" did not exist
earlier. A quick dip into the archives shows a report in The Miami News from 1950 titled, "New Delhi Seeks
Monkey- Catcher." There reportedly hadn't been any monkey catchers since 1947, and when they found
one, a Muslim, he soon left for Pakistan. Hindus wouldn't take up the job, because, well, how could they be
tormenting Lord Hanuman? The report said, "Besides perpetrating such annoyances as swiping golfballs
right off the greens, the monkeys are occasionally vicious. Captured monkeys will be deported rather than
killed. Municipal president Yudhvir Singh thinks they might bring some much-needed dollars in U.S. trade."
Which points to the original sin that Iqbal also discovered: around the time India became independent,
Indian monkeys became slaves to American scientific research. One of the first studies on the Rhesus
macaques in India, by an American anthropologist in the 1920s, said that monkeys were present in groups
in forest areas from Delhi to Dehradun. These groups or monkey families were disturbed by the American
demand for middle-aged male monkeys. "I found that the sex ratio of monkey groups was not normal, and
particular age groups were being taken out [of the country] for years," says Iqbal.
That was when she started her research in 1980, two years after the devout Hindu Prime Minister, Morarji
Desai, banned monkey export to the US. The ban happened partly because of reports from the US that
monkeys were being used not just in vaccine experiments but also by the US army to test the impact of
weapons, in contravention of the agreement between the US and India on the monkey trade. American
newspaper archives suggest that the number of Indian monkeys taken out ranged between 20 000 and 50
000 a year.
Add to that the realisation that a lot of today's central and south Delhi was once jungle and the natural
habitat of the monkeys, forests, were replaced by Hanuman worshippers as the monkeys' source of food,
and there are plenty of reasons why the simians should live amongst us.
The MCD and NDMC's inability to see the root of the monkey problem means that monkey catchers with
cages, bait and sticks only make the problem worse; dividing groups makes them more aggressive. And
catching and releasing them elsewhere also spreads the problem, as do langurwalas, introduced in 2001,
whose langurs frighten off the smaller rhesus monkeys, and send them running.
Langurwalas, like Lakhan, who is about 18, are hired to scare away rhesus monkeys with their langurs.

In 2007, the Delhi High Court passed an order asking civic agencies in Delhi to ready monkey traps in ten
days and to start shifting monkeys to a newly created monkey sanctuary in Asola, on the outskirts of Delhi.
This was after the Supreme Court had transferred its own monkey case to the Delhi High Court,
exasperated with several state governments' refusals to take Delhi's monkeys. On the Supreme Court's
orders in 2004, 250 monkeys had been shifted to the Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary near Gwalior in
Madhya Pradesh. When the Supreme Court ordered another 300 monkeys to be shifted there, the MP
government refused; it said they disrupted the park's ecological balance.
In February-March 2007, the matter had become urgent. Three hundred monkeys had been lying in cages
in Rajokri in Delhi and had to be moved somewhere. So began the relocation of the monkeys to Asola.
The Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary is where Delhites go on weekends for bird-watching. It is such a large
sanctuary you may not see monkeys, because they have been settled at another end. To get there, you
must go to Chattarpur and keep driving straight for about 14 kilometres, past a Hanuman temple (!), until
you hit a dead-end near Bhati Mines. Drive through the village there and you'll come to a tall, sturdy wall of
green sheets enclosing an area, with a built-in gate.
Monkeys on the outside of the sanctuary.

You could be forgiven for thinking this is a secret military installation. But the door is at times open. Children
go in to fetch water. Monkeys come out for reasons they know best. Despite the open gate, the monkeys
climb up the sheets. They try to pull them down. They do so in unison and sometimes on their own, pulling
to remove them from the iron structure that holds them. This is a jail, and jailbreak is common. No wonder
the monkeys find their way into the city again.
Just as no one can simply enter and meet the inmates of a jail, entry here is prohibited. The guards call up
their superior, who tells me no one is allowed in, and gives me the number of D M Shukla, Delhi's chief
wildlife warden.
One of the guards says a monkey once bit him. In the village just outside the reserve, monkeys try to
snatch rotis from kids and from the women making them for breakfast before their children go to school.
The women respond by brandishing their lathis. The monkeys careen through the neighbourhood as one
resident says, using "the [electrical] wires like the Metro, causing us outages." Every second person here
seems to have been bitten by a monkey at least once. Dr Samar Sarkar of the neighbouring Fatehpur
Primary Health Centre says he gets at least ten monkey bite cases a day.
DM Shukla sits in a government office at Vikas Marg. He is incensed that the subject of monkey bites is
being brought up. He says that since 2007, 13 537 monkeys have been sent to Asola. He is not willing to
discuss much beyond. "There is no problem with monkeys. We're following the court orders. Why don't you
worry about real problems such as national security?" he asks.
Clearly, monkeys have been escaping, defeating the purpose of the sanctuary? "You can't put them in a
prison," he says. "They like to go out but eventually return because the food source is here."
He says enough food is provided in the sanctuary; but the trees planted for self-sustenance will take five to
ten years until fruition. According to court orders, Hanuman bhakts deposit food at the Hanuman Temple in
Connaught Place and Yamuna Bazar on Tuesdays and Saturdays, then the authorities deliver it to the
monkey sanctuary in Asola. The authorities are to arrange for food if this collected food falls short. It likely
does, if the monkeys have to snatch rotisfrom two year olds. What also attracts monkeys out of the
sanctuary is the food left by Hanuman bhakts at the nearby Hanuman temple.
Sikander Singh, 27, lives next to the sanctuary. His son was bitten when the monkeys first came in 2007.

Iqbal Malik had given the Delhi government a detailed plan for how the Asola sanctuary should be planned,
but she says none of it has been followed, because of which monkeys are still going out. She is not allowed
into the sanctuary either.
Sonya Ghose of the Citizens for the Welfare and Protection of Animals, an NGO, is one of four members of
a High Court-appointed committee to oversee the monkey relocation. She insists that Asola is India's most
successful monkey translocation programme, but admits that monkeys are not being caught in groups, and
that remains a problem. They're training the monkey catchers better, she says.
Ghose estimates that there are at best 5 000 monkeys remaining in the city limits. However, just a year
after the translocation began, she was quoted as saying: "There are hardly any monkeys left in the city. A
few stragglers can be spotted but that's about it."
The Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, could conduct a monkey census in Delhi but hasn't been asked to.
In the absence of numbers, and with the authorities not allowing any external scrutiny at Asola, it is difficult
to believe that Delhi's monkey problem is over. A few minutes at the gate of the monkey sanctuary,
however, make it clear that for the monkeys it is a problem by itself, an imprisonment for the misdeeds
committed by their more developed form.
And the problem is certainly not over for residents who still have monkeys as unwelcome guests. In late
2010, Dr Pratul Sharma in Mayur Vihar was showing his child how they could stand next to the Resident
Welfare Association (RWA)-hired langurwala's langur, and it would not bite. The langur leapt and bit Dr
Sharma on his arm. The RWA fired the langurwala. Soon, the monkeys returned in droves. A maid was
passing by when a monkey, crouching behind a car, ran out and bit her. She was down with fever for days.
The RWA was in a fix and called the MCD for help. The MCD sent across their langurwala. "Now my
children are afraid to venture out as they are afraid of both monkeys as well as the langur," Dr Sharma told
a newspaper.
The gate of the monkey sanctuary.
8/2/14 12:00 PM Scroll.in - News. Politics. Culture.
Page 1 of 28 http://scroll.in/article/672459/Why-the-Indian-Parliament's-monkey-problem-has-no-easy-solution
Shivam Vij Yesterday 09:50 am
HUMAN-ANIMAL CONFLICT
Why the Indian
Parliament's monkey
problem has no easy
solution
Parliament can scare away the monkeys, but where Parliament can scare away the monkeys, but where
should they go? should they go?
Everything you can say about India, the opposite is also
true. In keeping with this dictum, the Parliament of India
outlawed capturing or using protected animals such
as langurs in 1972, but continued using langurs to drive
away the monkeys that surround the Parliament building
Photo Credit: Sajjad Hussain/AFP
itself. At long last Maneka Gandhi got into the act, this
January, and made the New Delhi Municipal Corporation
give up the practice. The Parliament of India is now using
trained men to mimic langurs and scare them away,
while also shooting rubber bullets that would stun them.
The metaphor is irresistible: in the way our
Parliamentarians sometimes behave, the joke they have
reduced the legislative process to, the monkeys represent
we the people. Except that the monkeys trouble us too. In
not just Delhi but many parts of India, monkeys are so
commonplace in urban areas we dont even find it
bizarre. We think of them as other animals in our midst.
This was not always the case.
Two years ago, I visited Iqbal Malik, Indias best known
primatologist, to understand the roots of the problem. The
story begins in the 1920s, when American scientists,
Malik told me, first started taking out monkeys from
north India for research. The scientists usually wanted
monkeys who were neither old nor young, and preferred
male monkeys to conduct their experiments. This
disrupted monkey families from Delhi to Dehradun. As
monkey families were divided and as India began to
urbanise, the monkeys came out to the urban areas,
where looking for food wasn't as easy as it was back in
the forest.
Newly independent India, a poor country badly in need
of foreign exchange, was happy to export monkeys to the
United States. At its peak, as many as 50,000 monkeys a
year. That is how much we disrupted the monkey ecology.
Eventually, this stopped not because we were concerned
about ecology, but because of Lord Hanuman. While
animal rights activists in the United States had been
protesting the use of Indian monkeys, prime minister
Morarji Desai was being moved by religious groups in
India. The Americans had promised they won't use the
monkeys for defence research, but they were found
violating the promise. American scientists used Indian
Rhesus macaques for decades to test everything from the
functioning of the brain to cosmetics. The monkeys often
died.
The Americans arent to be blamed alone, of course. The
reason why theres such a dearth of monkey catchers in
India is also religious. How could anybody be catching
and imprisoning Lord Hanuman? For some years after
1947 central Delhi did not have a monkey catcher because
the lone monkey catcher, a Muslim, went away to
Pakistan.
In the late '80s and early '90s, rapid urbanisation meant
that the monkey menace exploded. It wasn't that monkeys
had invaded Delhi, but Delhi was cutting down the greens
and invading their habitat. The problem was worsened
because custom says that Lord Hanuman is welcomed
with bananas. People did this when the monkeys came
home, only realising later that monkeys could be
aggressive, dangerous, powerful, and that they bite! They
also steal, from your terrace and even from your hands. A
deputy mayor of Delhi once died because he fell from his
terrace while warding off a monkey. Monkeys have
invaded the Delhi metro and the defence ministry alike.
Missing the woods for the trees
Why can't Delhi solve its monkey problem? Delhi has
tried everything but, Iqbal Malik says, unscientifically.
The way they catch monkeys, the way they trap them, the
way they release them, making it possible for them to
return. There's also been some great Indian corruption:
the monkey catchers get paid per monkey, so it is in their
interest that the monkeys return. And of course
contractors are hired to go find monkey catchers from the
lowest castes in Rajasthan and other states.
The main problem with these methods of scaring away
monkeys, whether it is done through langurs or men
mimicking langurs, is that this makes the monkeys even
more aggressive and violent. You can drive them away
from Parliament and the offices of central Delhi, from
Delhi as a whole, perhaps, if you employ enough
manpower to scare them away. Yet you can't wish them
away, they will return. A nuclear armed republic with the
world's second largest population can't have this passive
aggressive relationship with the monkeys whose forests it
Trending on Scroll Trending on Scroll
destroyed to make cities.
The monkey menace reached its peak in 2007, and as a
result the Delhi High Court got into the act. It was found
that civic agencies were capturing monkeys and keeping
them in cages in the heat because they didn't know what
to do with them. The court asked them to be sent to the
Kuno-Palpur Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh, and
although the Madhya Pradesh government was given
money to take away our monkeys, they came back
pleading that they can't do this. The monkeys were
disrupting the ecological balance of the sanctuary. Other
states too refused to take Delhi's monkeys. That question
remains moot. The mimic men will satisfy Maneka
Gandhi, but where on earth will Parliament's monkeys
go?
A wildlife sanctuary for Delhi's monkeys
Isn't there a wildlife sanctuary in Delhi, the Delhi High
court then wondered. Thus Delhi's monkeys were settled
in the Asola-Bhati wildlife sanctuary. It's in one end of
Chattarpur, that corner of south Delhi near Mehrauli
which today is more famous for its wedding venue
farmhouses than for the Chattarpur temple complex. Keep
driving inside Chattarpur and you will find a temple of
you guessed it Lord Hanuman. You will begin seeing
monkeys. Keep driving and you will see a dead end,
called Bhati mines. Huge green sheets and a gate that's
often open. Hordes of monkeys. Emergency-era resettled
slum dwellers and a whole settlement of Pakistani Hindu
refugees, all complaining about monkey bites.
The Delhi government's wildlife department will not
permit you to go inside, even if, or perhaps especially if
you are a journalist. You discover you don't have to go
inside. The monkeys are not only coming out of the gate,
they have climbed those green sheets and are trying to
bring them down. When you see the monkeys trying to
break down the walls of the Asola Bhati wildlife
sanctuary, the image will stay with you forever. We've
given them a life sentence, no bail, no parole, no visitors
allowed.
The sanctuary idea can work, but the Delhi wildlife
department and its chosen non-profits together did what
they liked. Iqbal Malik gave them a plan, detailed up to
the last tree that should be planted. "They didn't listen to
me and you can see the monkeys keep getting out." Food
is brought from outside every day, and it has to be
admitted that this has reduced the monkey menace in
Delhi since the peak levels of 2007. Yet they are still all
over the place. Some years ago they destroyed a few
dozen plants in a lovely barsati I used to live in. That's
why I knocked on Iqbal Malik's door. I wanted to know
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why these monkeys were doing this to me. Her answers
made me stop cursing them.
The New Delhi Municipal Corporation now pays Rs 1.2
lakh per month to the Delhi wildlife department to
distribute food to the monkeys in the north Delhi ridge, so
that they stay there. Thats a lesson learnt after over six
decades of fighting with monkeys. Yet if the Parliament of
India and the city of Delhi want to solve their monkey
problem, the authorities should go to Iqbal Malik. They
won't. Malik fell out with Maneka Gandhi at some point.
While researching the story I wrote two years ago, I called
up Maneka Gandhi. While framing my question before
her, I made the mistake of using the phrase monkey
problem, even though by now I had become sympathetic
towards monkeys, thanks to Iqbal Malik. Gandhi said that
I had already decided that monkeys were a problem so
she wont waste her time on me, and disconnected the
phone. I called her back, and explained that I wanted to
understand what she had to say. No, she replied, I
think you have already made up your mind.
(Delhi's monkey business has made great copy for
journalists since 1950. For foreign correspondents in
India, it is a must-do exotic story. Samples of Indian
monkey journalism in the foreign press can be read on
the blog, The Monkey Inspector's Report.)

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.
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the monkey inspector's report
a simian history of journalism in india
23/07/2013
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MONKEYING WITH BIDENS SECURITY (2013)
American Vice President Joe Biden meets monkey journalism.

MONKEYING WITH BIDENS SECURITY
by Biman Mukherji
Wall Street Journal / India Real Time
July 23, 2013
The security around Joe Bidens visit to India may be among the tightest in the world, but it faced an
unanticipated threat during the U.S. vice presidents first engagement a pack of monkeys.
Mr. Biden started a four-day visit to India Monday with a trip to the Gandhi Smriti, a memorial to
the leader of Indias freedom movement at the site where he was assassinated in New Delhi in 1948.
In what could be described as bad timing, about a dozen adult monkeyssome with babies in tow
took a fancy to thick clusters of raw mangoes hanging on a tree above a tall statue of Gandhi, just
before the American dignitary was due to reach the spot on his carefully choreographed walkabout
of the site.
But, oblivious to the high-profile visit going on beneath them, the creatures gamboled on the
branches swinging from one to another, bombarding the area around Gandhis statue with unripe
mangoes as they bit into the raw fruit and discarded the leftovers. Then three of the monkeys
suddenly swept down from the branches on to a 10-foot high bamboo frame, covered with a white
cloth, erected as a backdrop to the statue.
What I dont want is a mango to drop on the vice president when he comes here, said an Indian
security official as he warily eyed the furry creatures, who are regarded by many in the Indian capital
as a menace.
Langurs, larger monkeys, and their owners were hired to keep smaller rhesus macaque monkeys
away from government buildings in the city, where they have been known to break in cause havoc.
But, according to reports, Indias wildlife and forest ministry has recently banned the use of Langurs
in this way, causing the macaque problem to return.
As Mr. Biden and his wife walked towards the statue, and the monkey filled mango tree, Monday
evening, photographers trained their cameras on the couple with a glint of anticipation. But no fruit
fell from the tree as the U.S. vice president posed for a few seconds in front of the statue. Perhaps his
security team had that covered too.

Tagged Joe Biden, langur, mangoes
26/05/2012
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RED TAPE TANGLES INDIAS MONKEYS (1958)
A legend of American journalism files one of the earliest dispatches from the monkey beat.
RED TAPE TANGLES INDIAS MONKEYS
Policy Shift Strands 5,000 Animals at Airport on Way Abroad for Medical Use
by AM Rosenthal
New York Times
March 2, 1958
NEW DELHI: More than 5,000 small monkeys and two chartered planes have been grounded at New
Delhis airport by Government red tape. It may be a break for the monkeys but it is driving the
exporters frantic.
The animals represent an investment of more than $50,000. They were on their way to laboratories in
the United States and Britain to be used in the production of Salk anti-polio-myelitis and other types
of vaccines. India, a country where monkeys are almost as common a sight as pigeons at New Yorks
Forty-second Street library, is a vital supplier to the worlds laboratories.
But the fact is that the business of catching and shipping monkeys abroad has never been a popular
one here. To tens of millions of Indians, monkeys, despite their mischievous marauding, deserve a
special place of affection.
The monkey god, Hanuman, is one of the best-loved gods in the Hindu religion and there are
temples to him all over the country. In the Hindu epic, the Ramayana, the monkey king Hanuman
and his hordes helped the God Rama rescue his wife from the clutches of the demon god Ravana.
Despite the widespread public dislike for the export of monkeys, the Indian Government has
recognized their importance in medical research and vaccine production. Licenses have been granted
to a group of exporters to handle the business.
But the latest shipments of monkeys were stranded at Palam Airport just before they were scheduled
to take off in special planes. The exporters were informed suddenly that monkeys weighing less than
six pounds could not be sent abroad. Most of the monkeys awaiting shipment fell into that category.
The government said that monkeys less than six pounds were not useful for vaccine production and
research purposes. The exporters denied this hotly.
According to the exporters, the foreign laboratories had specifically asked for small monkeys. As one
put it: Would I be spending hundreds of thousands of rupees in monkeys nobody wanted?
The exporters are pressing the Government to changes its rule or at least permit the stranded
monkeys to be sent. In the meantime, every monkey at Palam represents, to the exporters, a loss of
$10 in catching and shipping charges and of $2 profit.
A staff member of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis said in New York his organization
had been accepting monkeys weighing between four and eight pounds. The foundation imports
about 100,000 monkeys a year for research and vaccine purposes, he said. Large monkeys are
considered preferable for vaccine use because they yield more kidney tissue, he declared, but smaller
monkeys are also used in research.
The Lederle Laboratories division of the American Cyanamid Company reporterd that its research
unit had formerly used some Indian rhesus monkeys in the six-to-eight-pound range but now used
Java monkeys averaging about four and one-half pounds.
Henry Trefflich, president of the Trefflich Bird and Animal Company, a large importer of animals for
research, said he had been informed that shipments from India would now be limited to monkeys
weighing six pounds or more and that they must be sent five or fewer to a crate. Previously, he said,
three-to-eight-pound monkeys were shipped ten to a crate.
Tagged Abe Rosenthal, Hanuman
26/05/2012
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INDIA CUTS EXPORT OF SOME MONKEYS (1955)
INDIA CUTS EXPORT OF SOME MONKEYS
New York Times
March 11, 1955
NEW DELHI: India has banned the export of monkeys without special permission. The move takes
effect immediately.
India has been carrying on a thriving trade in monkeys. The bulk of the exports went to the United
States for medical research. A monkey that costs $2 here is sold for $4 in the United States.
Monkeys cause extensive damage to crops in India and the Government had allowed their free
export. The aim was to minimize damage to crops and earn foreign currency.
Reports of inhuman treatment of animals while in transit and stories that they were tortured in
United States laboratories have evoked widespread resentment and protest among Hindus who
worship the monkey.
However, the Government will allow export if it is satisfied that monkeys are needed for medical
research and will receive humane treatment in transit.
Official sources said 16,249 monkeys were exported in the year ending March, 1954. More than 80 per
cent were sent to the United States. The number exported in the eight months ending November,
1954, was estimated at 41,457.
Business circles reacted sharply to the curb. Some exporters experssed the view that it would
seriously affect research for prevention of polio in the United States.
Commercial sources said about 50,000 to 80,000 monkeys awaiting shipment from Calcutta, Bombay
and New Delhi would have to be held back until the Government had considered the case of each
consignment.
Tagged "who worship the monkey"
26/05/2012
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MONKEY BUSINESS IN INDIA SENDS THE CULPRITS TO
U.S. (1952)
MONKEY BUSINESS IN INDIA SENDS THE CULPRITS TO U.S.
Reuters
November 4, 1952
CALCUTTA: City police have decided to end the monkey business going on in suburban Hastings.
The exclusive residential area has been terrorized by a band of 500 monkeys, which have been
making organized raids on kitchens, searching for food, smashing crockery and making off with
ornaments, fountain pens, underwear and even spectacles.
The police have just put the finishing touches on a plan to deport the monkeys as undesirables to
the United States, where they will be used for medical research.
The fashionable Ordnance Club in Hastings whose membership is ordinarily open only to those
those simian ancestry is suitably remote has been forced to enter into an unwritten agreement
with the monkeys, allowing them free use of the swimming pool on Tuesdays. The pool is cleaned
Wednesday mornings and thereafter watchmen armed with sticks see to it that monkeys keep their
part of the bargain.
25/05/2012
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UNCATEGORIZED
SACRED AND SINISTER SIMIANS ROAM NEW DELHIS
STREETS (2001)
SACRED AND SINISTER SIMIANS ROAM NEW DELHIS STREETS
by Paul Watson
Los Angeles Times
May 21, 2001
Demigods shouldnt have to suffer the indignities that Indias monkeys do these days.
More than 5,000 monkeys roam the streets, and trees, of this capital city, and to the countrys Hindu
majority, each one is sacredalthough its getting harder to tell with so many Indians bad-mouthing
them.
Monkeys may be the earthly legions of the Lord Hanuman, the monkey god, but they are also
marauding gangs accused of stealing everything from food to sensitive government files, pulling off
womens clothing, and even killing people.
Its all quite upsetting for one of Indias leading primatologists, Iqbal Malik, who blames humans
especially the species sitting behind government desksfor letting New Delhis monkeys get hooked
on the good life.
That is when gods become pests, Malik, 49, said. And that is when people begin thinking: What
to do with them? Kill them. Shoot them. Stone them. That starts an aggressive reaction [from the
monkeys], a vicious circle.
Relations between man and monkey got really bad in 1999, when the government hired men with
trained langur monkeys to chase hundreds of slightly smaller rhesus monkeys away from
government buildings, where they were sneaking into offices and pilfering Foreign Ministry files.
A year ago, a monkey was accused of killing a New Delhi resident by dropping a flowerpot on his
head.
Things got worse last week, when rumors about a half-man, half- monkey attacking people in their
sleep caused a panic among the poor of east Delhis crowded slums.
Newspapers and TV jumped at the chance to report on something more gripping than the usual fare
of corrupt politicians, constant blackouts, various insurgencies and the 115-degree heat.
Drawings compared the police version of the monkey-mana4-foot- 6 creature covered in dark hair
to witness descriptions that put him closer to 5-foot-6, with long steel claws, black clothes and a
motorcycle helmet.
Because the monkey-man reportedly attacked only sleeping people in the dead of night, actual
sightings were hard to come by. One man who claimed that he had looked the monkey-man straight
in the eye said the beast immediately turned into a cat and ran away.
Leading Hindu nationalists insisted that the military intelligence agency in Pakistan had sent the
monkey-man in a sinister plot to destabilize India. Several members of Parliament demanded that the
government send in crack paramilitary units to catch the ape-man.
The normally staid Times of India joined in Wednesday with a front-page headline that screamed:
Monkeymans Reign of Terror in Capital Growing Daily.
New Delhis police force has deployed 1,000 officers, many of them posted on rooftops, in a special
operation to trap the monkey- man. Unofficially, police insist that he is just a figment of the
imagination.
But officially, police spokesman Ravi Pawar said there is something more to it, because people are
turning up with scratch marks.
Its a mischief-monger, Pawar said. We are sure to get him. Police arrested more than a dozen
pranksters calling in sightings of the monkey-man over the weekend and are offering a reward
exceeding $1,000 for the capture of the monsteror the guy in the monkey suit.
So many residents are convinced that the monkey-man is real, at least two people have died trying to
escape him: In the latest incident, a 21-year-old pregnant woman fell down a staircase to her death
Tuesday night when a reported sighting of the monkey-man set off a stampede.
In a front-page analysis of the monkey-man phenomenon, the Hindustan Times suggested that its all
In a front-page analysis of the monkey-man phenomenon, the Hindustan Times suggested that its all
about poor people fed up with daily blackouts lasting 10 hours and running water thats on only an
hour each day.
According to the rapidly developing lore, light wards off the monkey-man, and a splash of water on
his chest drains his power to leap.
For years, government officials have done little to fix the supplies of electricity and water, but now
that they are supposed weapons against the monkey-man, there suddenly is a steady supply of both
throughout the night in the slums where the monkey-man is said to prowl.
Malik sees the roots of Delhis monkey craze in the ruin of Indias environment.
The trouble started in the late 1980s, when a combination of shrinking forests, water shortages and
the illegal trapping of wild primates for medical research set off a steady migration of monkeys to the
city.
Twenty years ago, only 30% of Indias monkeys lived among people in cities, Malik said. The number
is closer to 60% today, she said. New Delhis rhesus monkey population quickly climbed past the
sustainable level of about 2,000.
The monkey god, Hanuman, is one of the most important deities in the Hindu pantheon, and devout
Hindus often feed monkeys in the belief that the animals will give them good luck, heal the sick or
help overcome any obstacle.
Although an adult monkey has the intelligence of a 2-year-old human, the animals are smart enough
to know a good thing when they see it. So they take up permanent residence in the city and, before
long, start to push their luck.
They all want to climb the social hierarchy, Malik said. One way is to show to peers they are
smarter, or can do things other monkeys cant dolike pulling off a [woman's] sari. Its just showing
off.
Shyam Nath, an ex-tailor now in the monkey management business, used his gray-and-black langur
monkey, Raju, and a cane, to scare off about 500 monkeys that were running amok in a government
complex. Now he hopes for a call to take on the monkey-man of east Delhi.
If hes a monkey, Im ready for him, Nath said, as Raju chewed on a leathery fistful of leaves.
Tagged "considered sacred", Hanuman, Iqbal Malik, langur, monkeyman, sacred AND sinister
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AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE MONKEYS (1998)
AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE MONKEYS
by Pamela Constable
Washington Post
September 21, 1998
If you arrive at the Tughluqabad ruins even one minute after sunrise, youre too late. Group leaders
Hukka Singh and Ram Singh have already moved their troops out of the 13th-century fort and
headed to a nearby military shooting range for breakfast.
The drill continues all day, with scheduled stops at various roadside banana stands and markets.
Then, precisely at dusk, the group of wild rhesus monkeys lopes back to the ruins, scrambles up the
parapets and starts settling down for the night amid the crumbling 700-year-old tombstones of King
Ghiyas-ud-Din Tughluq and his family.
The monkeys of Tughluqabad are among the last of a breed that once roamed Indias forests by the
millions. For much of this century, they were voraciously hunted and trapped for export, while their
habitats were squeezed by urbanization. By 1983, according to animal activists, there were fewer than
200,000 left.
Today, despite a 1978 ban on exporting monkeys, thousands are still trapped each year for domestic
medical and commercial research. They are widely used to test eye shadow and lipstick, rabies
vaccines and birth control pills, as well as chemicals.
Yet many Indians revere the monkeys, and dozens of devotees come each day to Tughluqabad, just
east of the old section of the capital, New Delhi, to feed the monkeys bread, nuts and bananas.
The visitors are worshipers of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god who is believed to bring strength
and good luck. In the Ramayana, one of Hinduisms great epics, Hanuman lifted a mountain to find a
special herb that could save the life of his master, the god Rama.
I come here for peace of mind, said Ashook Jain, 38, a school principal who has been feeding the
monkeys every day for 15 years. As he approached the ruins at dawn one recent day, he called out
loudly, Ough, ough, and a dozen monkeys bounded down the walls. These are bad times in
India, and we need to have a powerful god on our side, Jain said.
Just down the road, three men hopped off a motor scooter and began throwing bananas to another
group of monkeys. They said they work in a shoe shop and make offerings on days when they are
facing unusual business problems.
Everyone has their favorite god, and the monkeys were our ancestors, too, said the shop manager,
Umesh Kumar, 23, as a chittering pack eagerly surrounded the scooter.
The Tughluqabad monkeys have full-time protectors, watchmen who sleep in the ruins and make
sure no one harms them. They also have an influential champion in Iqbal Malik, a primatologist who
spent years studying them. Often she took her son Vijay along, raising him, she said, like a monkey
mother, with lots of body contact but an instinctive sense of how much freedom to allow.
mother, with lots of body contact but an instinctive sense of how much freedom to allow.
Today Malik, 40, devotes most of her time to promoting animal rights, and she has arranged for
thousands of urban monkeys to return and readapt to forest life. She also acknowledges that the
monkeys can become a nuisance in densely populated areas.
They get so used to being fed that they become aggressive. If you dont feed them they will invade
your house, raid your fridge, turn on your water tap, she said. If you try to kick them out, they
may tear your clothes. They are extremely strong.
They are also territorial. The five bands of Tughluqabad, totaling about 300 monkeys, have separate
feeding areas and sleeping places. Within each band, members are highly sociable and respectful of
rank, yet males often fight over food, choice sleeping places and females who defect to rival bands.
The monkeys also are spoiled rotten. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, which Hindu devotees say are
auspicious times for making offerings to Hanuman, the Tughluqabad monkeys have been fed so
many bananas and nuts by morning that they usually vanish to spend the rest of the day snoozing in
the trees around the ruins.
There is no point coming here those days, cautioned Nanak Chand, a former watchman at
Tughluqabad who used to sleep with monkeys curled around him and often returns to visit. They
wont even bother to come down.
Tagged "revered by Hindus", Hanuman, Iqbal Malik
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THE MONKEY ON A NATIONS BACK (1998)
Mr Bedi goes for five. See also: Indias Marauding Monkeys (1993); Romeos Monkey Business Drives Nurses
Bananas (1994); Monkeys Mock Democracy (1996); and Monkeys Go To Jail (1997).
THE MONKEY ON A NATIONS BACK
by Rahul Bedi
The Australian
March 26, 1998
NEW DELHI: A pack of alcoholic monkeys create havoc on a daily basis in the Excise Department
laboratory in New Delhi, guzzling liquor samples brought in for testing and going berserk when
denied their daily drink quota.
Excise officials said that despite security, the pack of seven monkeys who have lived near the
laboratory for years manage to get inside and get drunk on hundreds of liquor samples.
More than 100 police stations send moonshine seized from bootleggers to be tested at the laboratory,
which also services scores of drug companies that send samples of alcohol-based substances used in
medicines.
Each monkey must have drunk hundreds of bottles by now, a laboratory official said.
He said the monkeys became violent when unable to get a drink and moved into the office complex,
ransacking and destroying everything in sight.
All attempts to deal effectively with menacing monkeys here and in several other places across India
is hampered by the reverence with which they are held by Hindus, Indias majority community.
Hindu religious sentiment associates monkeys with Hanuman, the monkey god who was Lord
Ramas fearless and loyal assistant in his battle against Ravana, the evil god king of Sri Lanka .
There are thousands of Hanuman temples across India and every Tuesday is reserved for the
worship of him.
Meanwhile, wildlife authorities in Patiala, a northern town in Punjab State, some 322km north of
Delhi, where monkey business is rampant, have come up with a special jail for criminal simians
who are incarcerated for varying periods before being declared fit enough to be released back
into society.
There are an estimated 50,000 monkeys in Punjab, almost all wild, the largest number being in Patiala
district. Their numbers have increased after monkey exports were banned in the late 1980s.
Led by ringleaders, usually the biggest and most vicious of the pack, monkey gangs chalk out their
patch in crowded neighbourhoods across the State and terrorise everyone around.
Monkeys also menace Delhis corridors of power and spread mayhem on the campus of the nearby
All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indias flagship research institution.
Officials walk warily down passageways in the north and south blocks of the Indian government
buildings housing, among others, the prime ministers office looking apprehensively over their
shoulders for fear of being set upon by marauding monkeys hiding in niches.
The animals chase doctors and nurses at the Institute of Medical Sciences and patients in post-
operative wards sometimes surface from anaesthesia only to be greeted by grinning monkeys in their
beds.
Tagged "revered by Hindus", Hanuman, Rahul Bedi
25/05/2012
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MONKEYS GO TO JAIL (1997)
MONKEYS GO TO JAIL
by Rahul Bedi
South China Morning Post
August 20, 1997
Monkeys arrested for anti-human activity across the northern Indian state of Punjab are
summarily locked up in a special jail in Patiala, and held until they are fit to be released back into
society.
One hard case inmate taken from Punjab Agricultural University campus at Ludhiana for attacking
students has been at the jail, about 320 kilometres north of Delhi, for nearly a year.
A ferocious pair, captured from a Patiala neighbourhood for stealing handbags and lunch boxes, are
reportedly being considered for parole.
Officials said they had been inundated with complaints about rogue monkeys from across Punjab but
did not have enough manpower to deal with them all.
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DRUNKEN MONKEYS WREAK HAVOC IN EXCISE
OFFICE (1998)
DRUNKEN MONKEYS WREAK HAVOC IN EXCISE OFFICE
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
March 21, 1998
NEW DELHI: Monkeys who got high on samples of liquor brought for testing in Delhis excise lab
are making life miserable for the citys excise department officials, reports said Saturday.
The monkeys addicted to booze become violent when they do not find liquor. One official got a taste
of it when a huge monkey jumped into his room and started tearing files in a rage at not being able to
get a drink, the Hindustan Times reported.
The simian was joined by seven others who wrecked the office at leisure for over an hour. Excise
office staff say the monkeys get violent the day they do not get liquor.
The monkeys are permanent residents of this place. They roam around freely and no one stops
them. Slowly they became addicted to alcohol samples which were brought for laboratory testing an
official said.
They are just like humans. There are times when they cant manage to enter the laboratory. Then
they move into the office complex and start destroying office property an official said.
After ransacking the office they usually move out and even cut the telephone wires by biting them
the official said.
The laboratory is literally overflowing with alcohol. Hundreds of alcohol samples sent by police and
several pharmaceutical companies who use it to manufacture medicines. The apes have a field day
with booze as intimidated excise officials watch helplessly.
Besides getting drunk, the monkeys also destroy samples sent for testing their quality, authorities
said.
All attempts to catch the tipsy monkeys have failed. Several plans were chalked out to nab them but
the simians proved smarter, officials said.
As officials are working overtime to capture the monkeys the animals are making merry. Going by
the rate at which they have been drinking the alcohol samples, each monkey must have drunk
hundreds of bottle by now an excise office employee said.
25/05/2012
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MONKEY BUSINESS ON INDIAN BUS (1996)
a newspaper reported yesterday.
MONKEY BUSINESS ON INDIAN BUS
The Australian
January 15, 1996
NEW DELHI: A monkey climbed onto a crowded bus in the Indian capital, urinated on the head of a
passenger and attacked two other people who tried to take its seat, a newspaper reported yesterday.
25/05/2012
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DONT MESS WITH THE MONKEY (1996)
The third instalment of Mr McGirks simian trilogy, after Coming to Grips With All This Monkey Business
(1990) and Police End Romeos Monkey Business (1994).
DONT MESS WITH THE MONKEY
by Tim McGirk
The Independent
June 7, 1996
If Rudyard Kipling were writing about India in the late 20th century, he might be tempted to change
the Jungle Book around. Instead of having Mowgli, the man-cub, raised by wolves in the jungle,
Kipling might be inclined to tell tales of the monkeys living in New Delhi who have become eerily
human.
Monkeys and men have co-existed for so long in India that, inevitably, the primates have acquired
some human traits. As Iqbal Malik, a primate specialist, explains, In the forests, monkeys are shy
creatures, but in the city they become very confident and quite aggressive. They will try to pull off a
womans sari.
You find monkeys riding public buses, like morning commuters. Wisely, they seem to mimic
politicians in their choice of habitat and behaviour. While in Bombay they might take after
businessmen, even a monkey is smart enough to figure out that in the capital, it is the politicians who
are highest on the food-chain. You find thousands of monkeys living around the North and South
Block bungalows used by the MPs.
Monkeys have even invaded the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the regal old viceroys palace which is now
used by Indias president. They importune the president when he strolls through his rose gardens,
and even his crack commando bodyguards, with their karate kicks, cant shoo them away. And just
like MPs in any country the monkeys periodically swagger into the government ministries, ripping
out long-forgotten files and causing much fuss in whatever office they visit.
Urban living affects the monkeys the same way it affects humans: they become more aggressive and
short-fused. In other words, monkeys in New Delhi experience road rage.
You dont find monkeys driving yet. But the commuting monkeys get just as exasperated with
public transport as do Delhi-wallahs. Thus, one monkey hopped on the same bus every morning,
chose the same seat and got off at the same stop. The other passengers were accustomed to this. One
day, the monkey swung onto the bus as usual and found another commuter in his seat.
Using tact and gentle manners, the monkey politely tugged at the interloper and tried to get him to
move. The man refused and committed the cardinal sin of primate etiquette: he looked the monkey
straight in the eye. Never look a monkey straight in the eye. Its even worse than laughing out loud at
their shiny, red bums. You are challenging his dominance, begging him to sink his teeth into your
face.
Need I say more? The monkey got his seat back.
This was not an isolated case of monkey road rage, either. A fortnight ago, bus number 260 pulled up
outside the Railway Ministry near India Gate and, along with the other passengers, a monkey
clambered aboard. The bus conductor happened to forget another rule of Monkey Dos and Donts:
never resort to violence unless, mafia-style, you plan to exterminate the monkey and all its relatives,
or you plan on leaving town immediately after. He messed with the monkey.
The next morning, the monkey was back at the Railway Ministry bus stop. Teeth bared, the monkey
jumped onto every bus that halted until he found the one with his conductor. (There is a second
version to this story, which appeared in the Indian Express, in which the monkey returns with
reinforcements, a platoon of other male monkeys. This exaggeration could have been spread by the
conductor himself. It is, after all, rather embarrassing to go one-on-one with a member of a squat,
lower species and lose.)
This monkey did a very bright thing. He went for the driver first, knocking his hands off the wheel
and forcing him to stop the bus. (I suspect that the the monkey picked up this trick from watching
Keanu Reeves in Speed.) Once the bus was stationary, the monkey lunged at the conductor, who fled
in panic. He took refuge in a jeep, but the monkey forced him out.
For the most vivid description, I quote the Indian Express: The humiliated monkey went up to a
cop, tapped him gently on the elbow and pointed at the locked car. Obligingly, the cop went to the
locked car. . . and ordered the man to open up.
Experts Ive spoken to say this is nonsense. Ms Malik, the primate specialist, explained, Monkeys
are apprehensive about men wearing uniforms and boots. Quite right. Monkeys, like people, have
learned through bitter experience that asking a cop for help always leads to more trouble.
Anyway, this monkey slapped around the conductor, took bites out of a few painful places, and
chased him into the railway ministry. From there, the injured conductor limped to hospital.
Yesterday, the monkey was back outside the Railway ministry, pacing angrily. A betel-nut seller on
the corner was sure he was waiting for the conductor
Its a different kind of jungle out there from Mowglis.
Tagged Iqbal Malik, Kipling, Tim McGirk
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MONKEYS MOCK DEMOCRACY (1996)
MONKEYS MOCK DEMOCRACY
by Rahul Bedi
March 22, 1996
An Indian security agency has been assigned an unusual, though formidable, task ridding the
New Delhi Election Commission of monkeys whose maraudings have delayed preparations for next
months elections.
Officials said the building at Kashmere Gate has been vandalised by monkeys who tore out electrical
fittings and damaged furniture.
We are apprehensive they might damage valuable election material like electoral rolls, ballot
papers, ink and stamps, said an official.
The security agency, meanwhile, is considering using special stun-guns to immobilise, trap and
relocate the monkeys.
Monkeys are holy for Indias majority Hindu community, which associates them with Hanuman, the
mythical monkey-god. One of the biggest Hanuman temples is next to the Election Commission
offices.
Tagged "monkeys are holy", Hanuman, Rahul Bedi
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TOO MUCH MONKEY BUSINESS AT INDIAN ELECTION
OFFICE (1996)
TOO MUCH MONKEY BUSINESS AT INDIAN ELECTION OFFICE
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
March 21, 1996
NEW DELHI: Officials preparing for parliamentary elections in April and May in New Delhi have
run into opposition to the smooth sailing of the pre-poll process from unexpected quarters
monkeys.
The simians have hampered the pre-election process with their mischief and have put things behind
schedule, according to reports Thursday.
Preparation of thousands of polling kits, including voters lists, ink, stamps and other arrangements
had to be put on hold because of the monkeys, Delhis Chief Electoral Officer T. T. Joseph said.
Hordes of simians roaming the area have wreaked havoc in the election office, breaking electric
fittings and ripping curtains to bits.
We are apprehensive that they will damage valuable election material like electoral rolls, paper and
stamps the Indian Express newspaper reported quoting Joseph.
The officials pushed to a corner by the monkeys have hired a private security agency to take care of
things. But the private eyes used to tackling all sorts of wrongdoers are at a loss over handling the
animals.
The agency is toying with the idea of using sprays to immobilize the monkeys and airguns to scare
them away but is not sure about their effectiveness.
I am not a specialist in animal behaviour. I think we will consult some specialist before offering our
final plan, the agency chief Arjun Walia said.
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ROMEOS MONKEY BUSINESS DRIVES NURSES
BANANAS (1994)
ROMEOS MONKEY BUSINESS DRIVES NURSES BANANAS
by Rahul Bedi
April 2, 1994
NEW DELHI: A male monkey, christened Romeo because of his fondness for female nurses and
patients, has struck terror into a north Indian hospital.
Victims of Romeos passionate attacks at SMGS hospital in Jammu say he makes his advances only
when he sees a lone female.
When rebuffed, Romeo becomes enraged and bites his victims, who then need rabies vaccinations.
Among Romeos recent victims was a 10-year-old girl visiting the hospital, but he seems to prefer the
Among Romeos recent victims was a 10-year-old girl visiting the hospital, but he seems to prefer the
nurses. He has bitten at least six over the past three months, waiting patiently for them in dark
corridors before attacking.
Hospital security staff have tried to trap the monkey, who lives somewhere on the sprawling hospital
campus, by offering him bananas laced with sedatives.
Romeo, however, has outwitted them so far, eating the loaded bananas and making off to his secret
lair to sleep them off.
Hospital staff say they cannot shoot or kill Romeo because of the strong religious sentiments aroused
whenever any serious plans are afoot to eliminate him.
Hindus associate monkeys with Hanuman, the mythical monkey god, among the most revered of
Hindu gods. Hanuman is worshipped in thousands of temples dedicated to him across India, and his
spirit is believed to live inside all monkeys.
Patients consider it propitious to feed a monkey, hoping Hanuman will hasten recovery. Even the
suggestion of killing one fills them with dread.
Tagged "revered by Hindus", Hanuman, Rahul Bedi
24/05/2012
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POLICE END ROMEOS MONKEY BUSINESS (1994)
POLICE END ROMEOS MONKEY BUSINESS
by Tim McGirk
The Independent
May 28, 1994
NEW DELHI: It was inevitable the Indian press would call the monkey Romeo, even though his
intentions towards women were more menacing than amorous, writes Tim McGirk.
The animal would swing into the wards at the SMGS hospital in Jammu, a town in north-western
India, biting and pinching helpless female patients.
He also developed a taste for nurses. But the cowardly Romeo would never attack men.
The monkey is considered a sacred creature by many Hindus, and this Romeo was allowed to
swagger around the hospital as he pleased. Even in the capital, New Delhi, at the prestigious All-
India Institute for Medical Sciences, staff have suffered invasions of monkeys, scampering through
wards and ripping the intravenous drips out of patients arms.
wards and ripping the intravenous drips out of patients arms.
But finally, after Romeo had injured more than 60 women and children over the past few months, the
hospital staffs tolerance snapped. They went on strike.
Faced with the hospitals closure, the authorites on 11 May issued shoot-to-kill orders against the
furry female chaser. But killing Romeo was not easy. Animal lovers and followers of the monkey-
faced Hindu god, Hanuman, sabotaged attempts by the police to get a clear shot at Romeo. And,
sensing that the mood in the hospital had swung against him from reverential to hostile, Romeo
clambered off to blend in with a troop of other monkeys.
Romeo was safe until his lecherous urges got the better of him. He abandoned his fellow monkeys
and slipped back into town to assault a woman on Wednesday. Witnesses immediately rang the
police, who gave chase. Forty-five minutes later he was cornered on a window ledge and killed with
a shotgun blast.
Tagged "considered sacred", Hanuman, Romeo, Tim McGirk
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SHAKING THE MONKEY OFF THEIR BACKS (1993)
SHAKING THE MONKEY OFF THEIR BACKS
by Chris Lefkow
Herald Sun (Australia)
December 30, 1993
NEW DELHI: Iqbal Malik is determined to put an end to the monkey business going on within the
Indian Government. The soft-spoken 35-year-old woman is not a corruption-buster, however, but a
zoologist with a plan to rid government offices of file-shredding and food-snatching monkeys.
Monkeys, which are sacred to Indias Hindus, have taken over the grounds of a number of
downtown buildings, and Ms Malik, who earned a doctorate in animal behavior from Delhi
University, has been called in to help repel the invasion.
The simians can be seen frolicking on the lawns of South Block, where the Foreign Ministry and
Prime Ministers office are located, grooming one another on window ledges or badgering passers-by
for handouts.
They have also been spotted climbing the walls of the presidential palace and raiding fruit trees in
the palace nursery.
Ms Malik says about 5000 monkeys have taken up residence in the Indian capital, living in groups of
six to more than 20.
six to more than 20.
She blames widespread trapping of monkeys for export and experimentation during the 1960s and
1970s for pushing them out of their natural habitat and into the cities.
The monkeys living in downtown New Delhi are indeed a pampered bunch, fed regularly by office
workers with bananas, apples, nuts and the remains of picnic lunches.
The monkeys are revered by Hindus as the avatar of the monkey-faced god Hanuman, a hero of the
Ramayana epic.
Theyre considered as gods, said Ms Malik. But gods become pests in a very short span of time.
They pull your clothes and demand food. Many offices have broken windows, so they enter. They
tear files, they look into files, like spies. Theyre very curious. Low-voltage electric fencing,
shrubbery with thorns, chemical repellants, sterilisation and guard dogs are among the
recommendations Ms Malik has made to caretakers trying to make official buildings monkey-
proof.
Tagged "monkey business", "revered by Hindus", Hanuman, Iqbal Malik
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INDIAS MARAUDING MONKEYS (1993)
INDIAS MARAUDING MONKEYS
by Rahul Bedi
Ottawa Citizen
November 9, 1993
NEW DELHI: In New Delhis corridors of powers, even the politicians walk warily.
Indias most powerful people are merely so much prey to the bands of marauding monkeys that
roam the cavernous passageways of North Block (site of the Home and Finance ministries) and South
Block (housing the Prime Ministers Secretariat, Foreign Office and the Defence Ministry.)
The reverence, bordering on awe, in which Indias 700-million-member Hindu community holds the
animals, gives the monkey squads virtually free rein.
The King so dubbed by North Block security staff heads a squad of around 25 monkeys
which, municipal officials believe, come from the nearby Ridge Forest.
And they are undisputed masters of most central government offices, says a Home Ministry
official, often indulging in an orgy of file shredding on holidays.
official, often indulging in an orgy of file shredding on holidays.
Workers on weekend duty are terrified to enter either block alone fearing they will be set upon
and often take circuitous routes to their offices. Most women walk in pairs knowing, to their cost, the
simians penchant for single women.
But the problem isnt limited to government.
Led by ringleaders normally the biggest and most vicious monkey squads range almost a
kilometre to Vayn Bhawan, headquarters of the Indian Air Force, and to the All India Institute of
Medical Sciences, the countrys flagship medical research hospital some eight kilometres away.
Windows of all wards, especially in the post-operative wing, are kept closed against the roving
gangs, descendants of escapees from the institutes laboratories over three decades ago. Official
estimates put the monkey population in and around the institute at around 200 but hospital staff
reckon it to be higher.
It is not uncommon for nurses and patients to be chased by playful often flirtatious monkeys
down institute corridors. Patients in post-operative wards have often come round to find grinning
red-bottomed monkeys either sharing their bed or playing with their life-support systems.
And over the years, several people have been bitten and then faced a course of painful anti-rabies
injections.
Attempts by medical institute security to shoot the marauding monkeys have been abandoned after
angry protests from hospital staff and patients.
Hanuman the mythic monkey god who was the fearless assistant to the Lord Rama in his battle
against Ravana, the evil god king of Lanka is among the most revered gods in the Hindu
pantheon. India has thousands of thriving temples dedicated to him.
When security staff replaced guns with tranquilizer darts, the intelligent animals hid only to
retaliate later by sneaking into wards and destroying equipment and terrifying medical staff.
Attempts to find the monkeys new homes have also failed.
A move to trap and dump them on the outskirts of Delhi was abandoned after protests from
environmentalists and animal rights groups, who claimed the monkeys would perish if divorced
from familiar surroundings.
24/05/2012
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MONKEYS TRASH NEW DELHI OFFICE (1991)
MONKEYS TRASH NEW DELHI OFFICE
Reuters
December 10, 1991
NEW DELHI: Monkeys attacked an Indian government office yesterday and shredded files while
police looked on helplessly, the Press Trust of India news agency said.
Monkeys are regarded as sacred animals by many among Indias Hindu majority and roam freely in
many towns.
The agency said the monkeys drove officials out of the Public Works Department office in Tezpur, in
northeastern Assam state, and spent 25 minutes destroying official documents.
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COMING TO GRIPS WITH ALL THIS MONKEY
BUSINESS (1990)
COMING TO GRIPS WITH ALL THIS MONKEY BUSINESS
by Tim McGirk
The Independent
November 24, 1990
NEW DELHI: One of the first visitors to The Independents India bureau swung in from a tree. He
was a large red-faced monkey. He strolled around the room, saw there was nothing to eat and came
out on to the veranda where I was sitting with the previous tenant, a Czechoslovak nurse. Ah, yes, I
almost forgot about the monkey, she said nonchalantly, as it ambled over to our table. He was
larger than my six-year-old boy and had fleas. He likes to pee from the top of the stairs and watch it
go cascading down, the Czechoslovak, told my wife and me.
Whatever you do, advised my wife, dont smile at the monkey. Hell think youre baring your
teeth at him. Act of aggression.
I wasnt smiling, I retorted. In fact, I was scheming how to rid myself of the monkey. It wouldnt
do to have visiting ambassadors and politicians hosed down with monkey urine. After that, I began
noticing monkey stories in the newspapers. Monkeys pelting schoolchildren with stones; monkeys
splashing in the swimming pool of a five-star hotel; and a troop of monkeys invading a hospital
ward.
My first plan was to scare away the monkey. During the Hindu Diwali festival I bought a rocket so
powerful that Saddam Hussein could have altered the balance of power in the Gulf with it. I fired the
rocket straight into the garden tree from where the monkey had first arrived.
What if he came back? The monkey would no doubt consider that shooting a firework at him was an
even more blatant act of aggression than smiling. I rang the Delhi Municipal Corporation and asked
if they had a monkey catcher. Friends had told me that snared monkeys were released at the temples
in the countryside, where they had a fine time stuffing themselves with offerings of bananas. But,
inexplicably, the city authorities referred me to the Animal Research Centre at a medical teaching
college. So I rang. Is your home now being monkey molested? a voice asked eagerly. Not really.
Im a journalist. When I said journalist, the telephone went dead. The Animal Research Centre
was beginning to sound ominous.
My assistant, Benny, and I went to the Animal Research Centre to scout around. In the hallway there
was a board listing the days experimental victims: rabbits, mice, guinea-pigs and . . . donkeys.
Donkeys? Benny went out to the animal pens and could not find any donkeys. But he did find
hundreds of caged monkeys. Some had had limbs amputated; others had been surgically tampered
with: their heads and torsos were crudely stitched back together. These hacked-up monkeys were
shunned by the others in the cages. I asked the research centres deputy director about his monkeys.
What monkeys? We havent got any monkeys, he said. Well, show me your donkeys, then. He
showed me to the door.
Later a zoologist, Iqbal Malik, who has been studying Delhis urban population of 5,000 monkeys,
told me that the Hindus consider monkeys to be special beings, ranking with snakes and elephants.
Thats because Hanuman, the monkey king, helped Lord Rama to get his kidnapped bride, Sita, back
from the Demon King of Lanka. If people found out that monkeys were being cut up for scientific
experiments, she said, there would be a terrific uproar. Thats why the medical schools never
admit to it. She showed me a photo of a Muslim monkey catcher. He was dressed as a woman, in a
bright sari. Women appear less threatening to monkeys than men, said Dr Malik.
I asked her why a large male monkey wanted to come and pee all over my stairway. It had occurred
to me that perhaps this was the monkeys way of marking off territory; any day I expected it to
return with a troop of 50 fellow beasts. She assured me that this monkey was a loner.
Hes probably quarrelled with the chief monkey, the alpha male, and lost his place in the
hierarchy, she said. Hes been deprived of the best females, food and space, so he left. I was
starting to feel sorry about using the rocket.
At nightfall I drove to Tughlakabad, the ruins of a fortified 14th-century city the high stone walls of
which had withstood everything but the curse of a Sufi saint. Only monkeys and owls would ever
live in Tughlakabad, the Muslim mystic had predicted, and he was correct. It was too early for owls
when I arrived but a Sikh on a Vespa stopped and walked up to the base of the fortress wall, tossing
bananas on the ground. The monkeys came, cart-wheeling and swinging down the ancient wall.
Im sure the monkeys would have recognised the smile on the Sikhs face as a smile.
Tagged Hanuman, Iqbal Malik, simian encounters, Tim McGirk
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MONKEY MENACE AT SUMMIT (1986)
MONKEY MENACE AT SUMMIT
Chicago Tribune
November 11, 1986
NEW DELHI: Officials planning security for a South Asian summit meeting are having trouble with
monkeys, the Press Trust of India said Monday.
The news agency said hordes of wild monkeys have refused to be relocated from the Nandi Hills,
where leaders of the seven member-nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
will hold private talks in nearby Bangalore.
The Press Trust said simians captured and moved from Nandi to another area have been returning
despite a security cordon.
The agency said the monkeys also have created havoc in the area where they have been relocated,
tearing up crops and assaulting at least four villagers.
24/05/2012
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MARAUDER MAKES MONKEY OF POLICE (1987)
MARAUDER MAKES MONKEY OF POLICE
by B Gellatly
The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
March 16, 1987
NEW DELHI: Policemen are the prime targets of a marauding monkey which has attacked 35 people
most of them in uniform in an eastern Indian town.
The monkey added another victim to its list on Friday when it slipped into a police barracks and bit a
sleeping constable in Kharagpur town, Bihar State, the Hindustan Times newspaper said.
The incident was consistent with the monkeys previous attacks. It usually struck at police officers
after sundown, the report said.
Monkeys are venerated in India as symbols of strength.
A few years ago, the Bihar State administration came under fire from the public after it decided to
reduce the monkey over-population in some areas.
Last year, the Himalayan State of Himachal Pradesh transported thousands of monkeys to remote
forests after they virtually took over the tourist town of Shimla.
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TAILED TERRORISTS IN NEW DELHI (1987)
TAILED TERRORISTS IN NEW DELHI: GANGS OF MONKEYS RUNNING AMOK
by Rone Tempest
Los Angeles Times
December 5, 1987
NEW DELHI: Donna Hughes and her 2-year-old son were driving contentedly down a major New
Delhi avenue recently singing one of their favorite nursery rhymes:
Bah, bah, black sheep, have you any wool?
The 27-year-old woman, an aquatics instructor and wife of a Canadian diplomat here, slowed the car
as it approached an intersection. Suddenly something burst in the open drivers-seat window and
began ripping her hair. She instinctively clutched the steering wheel for protection.
The natural impulse is not to look but to protect your face, she recalled. She had been in India only
a few weeks and had no idea what it could be that was hissing and spitting and scratching her neck.
When she finally summoned the courage to face her attacker, she was looking directly into the dull
watery brown eyes of a raging rhesus macaca mulatta monkey. His head was as big as mine and he
was spitting and baring his teeth, she recalled.
As Donna Hughes discovered, New Delhi has a monkey problem. In some cases, the monkeys that
run wild here pose a serious safety hazard. Of course, sometimes, when they steal lunch boxes from
school children or bathe in roof-top water tanks, they just stir up too much monkey business.
school children or bathe in roof-top water tanks, they just stir up too much monkey business.
Increasingly, however, the 5 million residents of the Indian capital are not amused. Simian Terror
Plagues Capital, blared a headline in the Times of India newspaper.
Gangs of monkeys . . . reinforced by fresh groups from neighboring areas . . . have been causing
havoc, the report stated.
Letters-to-the-editor columns of the newspapers regularly feature anti-monkey letters from readers.
Monkeys have become a major nuisance in the capital, wrote Indraneel Banerjee, 51, in The
Statesman newspaper. They raid houses and carry away fruit, vegetables, eggs and anything else
they like. Even medicines and sleeping pills are known to be lifted.
Even pro-monkey lobbyists such a Dr. Iqbal Malik, a primatologist at Delhi University who has
conducted a seven-year study of a monkey colony in the suburban Tughlakabad Fort area, admit that
things have gotten out of hand in the densely populated inner city.
There is a constant competition between human beings and monkeys for shelter and food, she said.
In a strange case of reverse-Darwinism, monkeys have reengaged the humans for primacy, only this
time on the humans home turf. There are those who think the monkeys are winning. Wrote
Indraneel Banerjee, It is difficult to take on these devils, as they come in groups.
The city both the ancient walled section and the new capital area has always had colonies of the
agile, big-eared, brown rhesus monkeys.
Monkeys are adored by Indias majority Hindu population, who see them as the descendants of the
great monkey god Hanuman who helped Rama defeat demon armies in the Hindu epic Ramayana.
Every day, even along walks surrounding the office of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Hindus
their faces glowing with beatific smiles can be seen feeding bags of bananas and nuts to New
Delhis monkeys.
Until 10 years ago, however, the religious love of the monkeys was kept in a kind of ecological
balance by the value of monkeys on the world market, where they were used extensively in scientific
laboratories.
In fact, India was once the main exporter of the animal to Western researchers.
However, a 1978 law passed by Parliament under pressure from religious organizations and
naturalists banned the export of monkeys. Since then, according to Dr. Malik, their population has
tripled in the city. She estimates that as many as 5,000 monkeys now live in the capital.
Maliks own study colony in the Tughlakabad Fort area has increased in eight years from 150 to 500
animals. Not only are the capitals monkeys naturally prolific, but they are social animals and rove
the streets in troupes of up to 100 monkeys each.
During evening rush hour when people are most likely to feed them scraps of food, they swarm over
the majestic red sandstone government buildings designed in the Indo-Saracenic style by British
architect Edward Lutyens. At twilight, it is as though the jungle had retreated and the Cambodian
ruins of Angkor Wat have come alive again, complete with monkeys silhouetted on the skyline and
thousands of people pouring from the doors.
Possibly because of religious sensitivities, the New Delhi municipal corporation has made only a
token effort to combat the monkey menace. The city has one monkey catcher, a well-known local
character named Attar Singh, 35, who claims to have captured 100,000 monkeys in his long career.
For every monkey he captures, usually luring the creature with food, Singh gets 95 rupees ($8) from
the city. By Indian standards, he makes a good living on 20 monkeys a month, he said.
A monkey is an equal adversary, he told the Associated Press. I have to confront them like an
enemy. It is an art to trap them. He said that after he captures the monkeys, he releases them in the
wild miles outside of Delhi.
Dr. Malik, in letters to Prime Minister Gandhi and Parliament, where her husband is a sitting
member, contends that Singh breaks up monkey social groups and often separates infants from their
mothers.
I have observed cases of death from clinical depression, she said, who advocates capturing whole
packs of monkeys and moving them en masse to a suitable rural location.
Some monkeys, however, should be allowed to remain in the city, she argues. There should be a
peaceful coexistence between the monkeys and the people, she said.
In some instances, however, peaceful coexistence is not easy.
John Hampton is a diplomat with the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. He and his wife, Janet, both from
Ohio, longed for the sweet corn from home that is not available in India.
They decided to grow corn in rooftop boxes at their home, located near a park where there is a large
monkey population.
We bought a Silver Queen variety imported hybrid, Janet Hampton recalled wistfully. We carried
the boxes to the roof. We planted. We nurtured. We fertilized and we began our countdown.
On the day we decided it was ripe we went to the roof, and monkeys had swung in from the woods
and were having a feast. She said at first she and her husband attempted to frighten the monkeys
away with sticks but they just bared their teeth and made it clear it was their corn.
In the case of Donna Hughes, who was attacked by a monkey in a car not too far from the scene of
the Hampton corn massacre, there was little permanent damage.
She jumped from the car. The monkey followed her and ran up a tree.
Fortunately, her son was more amused than frightened.
And after receiving five rabies shots for the open cuts on her neck where the monkey scratched or bit
And after receiving five rabies shots for the open cuts on her neck where the monkey scratched or bit
her (the doctor could not determine which), Donna Hughes is able to smile about the incident.
It just brought things back into perspective for me, she said over coffee in her New Delhi home. It
was a reminder that we are living in India. We are not living in Canada or the United States where
we can drive along with the window open and be sure nothing will come jumping in.
I dont drive around with my window down here anymore.
Tagged "adored by Hindus", Hanuman, Iqbal Malik, monkey-catchers
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MONKEY BUSINESS (1982)
MONKEY BUSINESS
by Nergis Dalal
Christian Science Monitor
March 8, 1982
NEW DELHI: This is an absolutely true story. I can vouch for it. It all began around six or seven
years ago with the sudden arrival of a small female monkey in the shopping center of one of Delhis
more affluent areas. She was a small brown rhesus monkey with a lean and hungry look and dark,
wistful eyes.
This might sound absolutely extraordinary in the United States, but in India monkeys do tend to
appear from time to time in thickly populated areas.
I first saw this one sitting mournfully on the high roofs of a cinema, blinking in the sun and looking
both forlorn and pathetic. Other observers presumably responded as I did, because very soon she
was eating a banana, shelling peanuts and even eating a slice of buttered bread. She still looked sad
and lonely.
Two weeks later we were astonished to see not one but two monkeys sitting in the sun and blinking
down at us from the high roofs of the cinema. This new one was a male, and he too looked lean and
hungry, but there was a wicked gleam in his eye and a certain swagger to his movements.
The cinema garden had shady trees, a fountain, flowering bushes, and lawns. Now, instead of
keeping to the rooftops, the two monkeys were more often seen leaping in the trees, drinking water
from the fountain, and sunning themselves on the lawns. They caused a certain amount of
amusement and interest, and foreigners were known to bring their children for an afternoons outing
to see the monkeys and to feed them peanuts, toffees, and fruit so much more entertaining than
the zoos.
Both monkeys soon lost their lean and hungry look and became positively rotund. Fat and furry,
coats gleaming gold in the sun, the female continued to look wistful but the male was smug and
often aggressive.
Instead of sitting on the trees or at a distance from humans, they now began to approach them with
great confidence. First they would simply sit and wait to be fed with handouts, but soon the male
snatched packets of peanuts out of the hands of his benefactors, and even stuck his hand into their
pockets.
One young man, in tight jeans, had his wallet sticking out, which the monkey calmly lifted and
inspected closely. The young man gave an angry shout and made a threatening gesture at which both
the monkeys fled, climbing rapidly to the top of the cinema canopies. Here they put their heads
together and carefully began to inspect the contents of their booty. Money in notes and coins was
flung down in disgust, showering the small crowd that had collected. The male then chewed at the
wallet ruminatively, but not finding the taste to his liking, flung that down as well.
This was the beginning of a life of delinquency, which they embarked on with great gusto. Anyone
eating chocolates or nuts was pounced upon and the food grabbed with lightning speed. The
monkeys seemed fascinated by the parked scooters and often spent their leisure ripping up the
leather seats and bouncing on the carriers. Close by was the office of the International Airport
Authority, which the pair would raid, appearing through the windows and snatching at files and
papers, and disappearing again like highly trained cat burglars.
The end was approaching fast. Complaints came hurtling in, except from the children, who found the
whole thing delightful. The municipal monkey catchers were called. The furry pair led them a very
complicated chase, at the end of which the monkey catchers left, panting and exhausted, while their
prey sat placidly in their favorite spot on the cinema roof and basked in the sun.
A senior zoo official was asked to come and help. He brought his tranquilizer dart, which he shot at
the male, successfully hitting him in the middle of his back. The female ran squeaking in fright. It
takes fifteen minutes for the dart to have effect and the trappers climbed up to the roof, hoping to
find an immobilized monkey. They found only the dart, and neither of the two monkeys was visible.
One of the two had obviously pulled the dart out and thrown it away. The next day they were again
sitting in their favorite spot, looking down at the people.
Now expert trappers of a private company were called in. They set nets and traps with luscious
tidbits inside, and both monkeys found themselves trapped at last. Safely inside a large carrier, they
were taken to a distant part of a heavily wooded park and released.
Alas for the trappers! Before they could return to collect their fee, the monkey pair were back, sitting
on the roof, a little ruffled and chattering with annoyance, but in full possession.
They are now an accepted feature of the place, and the only ones to attempt any shooting are the
cameramen. The couple pose without any shyness, the female very fat, but still with a wistful
expression, and the male even fatter, with an expression that can only be termed thoroughly
triumphant.
triumphant.
Tagged monkey-catchers, simian encounters
24/05/2012
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MONKEYS DRIVE THEM ALL NUTS (1986)
MONKEYS DRIVE THEM ALL NUTS
by D Anderson
The Daily Telegraph (Australia)
November 10, 1986
NEW DELHI: The authorities in the Himalayan foothills, where the British established their Indian
summer capital at Simla during the Raj, have been forced to tackle some serious monkey business.
An extraordinary plan is now being prepared to trap and capture vicious mountain monkeys, which
have begun to attack children and tourists in Simla.
The scheme is being handled at the political level in Simla, the capital of Himachal Pradesh state,
after the bureaucracy rejected it as a futile and dangerous task which could even lead to death for
anyone brave, or foolish, enough to try and catch the animals.
The crunch came in May when a male monkey attacked a school, bit 45 children, one fatally, and
forced a virtual state of emergency.
The fatality served to make up the minds of the authorities.
On August 10 they decided to hire monkey-catchers from the desert state of Rajasthan to snare the
animals at a price of $1 each and send them to areas uninhabited by human beings.
We cannot kill them because the Indian Wildlife Act prohibits it, Simlas mayor, Adarsh Kumar,
said.
More than 2000 monkey attacks causing injury and shock are reported in Simla annually, according
to medical authorities.
The government says it is determined to go ahead with the scheme despite protests from the
bureaucracy and fears of Hindu protests.
The monkey is revered by Hindus as a symbol of Hanuman, the monkey god.
Tagged "revered by Hindus", Hanuman, monkey-catchers

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MONKEY BUSINESS

IN THEIR TIME, DELHI'S MONKEYS HAVE CAUSED ENOUGH TROUBLE TO EARN A

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