Dangerous display

Villagers of a Sangli village display and worship cobras during Nag Panchami.

Every year,Battis Shirala village in Maharashtras Sangli district walks a dangerous line between faith and law. A month before the Nag Panchami festival in August,villagers catch hundreds of cobras from jungles in the region. The cobras are kept in pots,bags or boxes in homes and taken out on the day of the festival. The village,with a population of 30,000,has about 65 nag mandals (snake clubs) that organise the festival and a procession,in which the cobras are displayed.

In 2002,a Sangli-based organisation,Nisarga Pratishthan,filed a petition in the Bombay High Court,claiming that snakes were being ill-treated during the festival. The court passed an interim order banning the display of snakes during the festival. Since then,the festival is held under the observation of senior officers from the district administration and the forest department. Videographers and photographers are deployed to identify people who display snakes during the festival. Last year,court cases were filed against 23 people.

But that hasnt stopped the nag mandals from capturing and displaying snakes. Last week,on August 4,about 400 policemen and 140 forest guards were deployed in Battis Shirala for Nag Panchami,but no one stopped the cobras from being displayed in homes.

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Last Thursday,a cobra was worshiped at the house of a forest guard in Shirala. Cobras were also displayed in the tehsildars office.

When contacted,Additional Collector D S Patil asked the tehsildar to take action. Villagers believe the court has only banned the display of snakes during the procession. So they still catch cobras and worship them at home, he said. Its not easy to stop an age-old tradition so soon.

We consider the snake as a family member. We do not harm it. We release the cobras back in the jungles after the festival is over, says Uttam Nikam,president of the Nikam Nag Camp who admits to having been bitten by snakes. Nikam also admitted that the village has seen a few incidents of snake-bite deaths.