Rajasthan, India – Jeetu Singh's camel stands calmly, munching on the leaves of a Khejri tree in the Jaisalmer district of India's desert state of Rajasthan.
Her calf sometimes caresses her mother's breast. Although the newborn baby is the latest addition to Singh's flock, sadness is visible on his face. His otherwise bright eyes have turned gloomy, staring at the grazing camels.
When Jeetu, 65, was a teenager, his family had more than 200 camels. Today, that number has dropped to 25.
“Raising camels was not a competitive business when we were children,” he told Al Jazeera. “I used to think that my camels should be more more beautiful than those built by my contemporaries.”
He would dress them, put mustard oil on their bodies, trim their brown and black hair, and decorate them with colored beads from head to tail. The camels would then decorate the landscape with the festooned contrast they create while walking in the herds like “vessels of the desert”.
“That's all a memory now,” he says. “I only keep camels now because I am attached to them. Otherwise, there is no financial benefit from them.”
Worldwide, the camel population rose from nearly 13 million in the 1960s to more than 35 million now, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, which declared 2024 as International Year of the Camelids to celebrate the key. the role of the animal in the lives of millions of households in over 90 countries.
But their numbers are in sharp decline in India – from nearly a million camels in 1961 to only around 200,000 today. And the fall has been particularly sharp in recent years.
The livestock census conducted by the federal government of India in 2007 revealed that Rajasthan, one of several Indian states where camels are raised, had about 420,000 camels. In 2012, they dwindled to around 325,000, and in 2019, their population dropped further to just over 210,000 – a 35 percent decrease in seven years.
That decline in Rajasthan's camel population is visible across the vast state – India's largest by area.
About 330km (205 miles) from Jeetu's home is the village of Anji Ki Dhani. In the 1990s, the village was home to over 7,000 camels. “There are only 200 of them present now; the rest have disappeared,” says Hanuwant Singh Sadri, a camel conservationist for more than three decades.
And in the village of Dandi in Barmer district, Bhanwarlal Chaudhary has lost nearly 150 of his camels since the early 2000s. He is left with only 30 now. As the 45-year-old man walks with his herd, a camel leans towards him and kisses him.
“Camels are connected to the language that we live, our cultural heritage and our daily life,” said Chaudhary. “Without them, our language, our life has no meaning.”
The law of 2015 the biggest hit
Camel keepers and experts cite various reasons for the dwindling number of camels in India. Tractors have replaced their need on farms, and cars and trucks have taken over the roads to transport goods.
Camels have also been struggling due to the decline of grazing land. Since they cannot be fed like cows or pigs, camels have to be left to graze in open fields – like Jeetu's camel eating the leaves of the Khejri tree.
“That open position is hardly available now,” Sadri says.
But the biggest blow came in 2015, when the Rajasthan government under the big Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) passed the Rajasthan Camel (Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export) Act.
The law prohibits the transportation, illegal possession and killing of camels. “Even the decoration could be causing them harm, because the definition of harming them is clearly defined,” Chaudhary told Al Jazeera.
Punishment under the law ranges from a prison term between six months and five years, and fines between 3,000 rupees ($35) and 20,000 rupees ($235). Unlike all other laws – where the accused is innocent until proven guilty – this law reverses the common law.
“The burden of proving innocence rests with the person charged under this act,” it reads.
With the implementation of the act, the camel market was banned – and so were camel breeders if they intended to sell their animals. Buyers suddenly became “smugglers” under the law.
The act was designed with the assumption that the killing of camels was behind the decline in their population in Rajasthan. He banned the transport of camels to other states, said Chaudhary, thinking that there would be three reasons: the number of camels would increase, the livelihood of the breeders would increase and the killing of the camel would stop.
“Well, he missed his first two targets,” Chaudhary says.
'Suddenly, there were no buyers'
Sumit Dookia, an ecologist from Rajasthan who teaches at a university in New Delhi, has a question for the government about the law.
“Why is the number of camels still declining,” he asks, is the law intended to revive their numbers?
Chaudhary has the answer. “We raise animals to sustain our lives,” he says, adding that it is not an easy task to keep such large numbers of animals without a fair market or price.
“The law has locked horns with our traditional system where we used to take our male camels to Pushkar, Nagore or Tilwara – three of the biggest camel fairs,” said Sadri.
Sadri says that the breeders used to get good money for the camels in these fairs.
“Before the law was passed, our camels were sold from 40,000 ($466) to 80,000 rupees ($932),” he says. “But as soon as the government implemented the law in 2015, the camels started to be sold for as little as 500 ($6) to 1,000 rupees ($12).
“Suddenly, there were no customers.”
So, have customers lost interest? “No, I didn't,” said ecologist Dookia. “The only thing is they fear for their lives now.”
This is especially true because almost all the buyers at Pushkar, India's largest camel fair, were Muslims, says Sadri. And it is especially easy to target them in a climate of anti-Muslim hostility under the BJP.
“If a Muslim eats camel meat, we have no problem. If there are good slaughterhouses, the price of camels will not increase, thus encouraging breeders to keep more and more camels,” he says.
“But the BJP does not want to do this. It's pushing us out of our traditional markets.”
'Law took away our camels'
Since 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP came to power in India, cases of lynching of Muslims and Dalits by Hindu vigilantes about the killing of animals has increased dramatically. Dalits sit at the bottom of India's complex caste system.
“Looking at the situation in the country, buyers are afraid and would not take the risk of camel transport,” says Chaudhary. “With such a situation, why would there be a buyer? Who will buy the animals?”
Asked if the law was responsible for the dwindling number of camels in the country, Maneka Gandhi, a former minister in Modi's cabinet who had pushed for the law, said, “There was no effect at the law”, saying that “Muslims continue smuggling. of the animal.”
Gandhi said the law was “not enforced at all”. If the law is implemented properly, she said, camel numbers would recover.
But Narendra Mohan Singh, a 61-year-old retired bureaucrat who was involved in drafting the law, disagrees.
“Look, the law is a problem, and we found out about that right after it passed and started affecting the breeders. We were given very little time to prepare it and the affected farmers and camel breeders were not consulted during its introduction,” said Singh, a former director of as well as animal husbandry in Rajasthan government.
“We were told to formulate a law for camels similar to what existed for cattle and other cattle. But a law aimed at protecting camels ended,” said Singh.
Amir Ali, an assistant professor at the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, agrees with Singh.
“There are two strange aspects about the excessive concern that Hindu (majority) politics shows about animals,” he says. “First of all, we do not understand the volatility and complexity of issues such as cattle herding. Second, in his strange enthusiasm to show concern for animals, he ends up destroying and dehumanizing groups like Dalits and Muslims.”
Meanwhile, the sun has set in Jaisalmer. Jeetu, sitting on the ground next to a bonfire, thinks of the newborn camel in his herd and asks: “Will the baby camel bring good luck to Rajasthan?”
Sadri and Singh are not optimistic.
Sadri says the BJP's “brief rule” continues to contribute to the decline of the camel population in Rajasthan.
“The groups that push for animal welfare do not know about large animals. They can only raise dogs and cats,” he says, his voice laced with anger.
“This law took away our markets and will eventually take our camels. I will not be surprised or surprised if there are no camels left in India in the next five or 10 years. It will be gone forever like the dinosaurs.”
Singh has an almost equally dire prognosis for the future. “If it doesn't go extinct, it will eventually become a zoo animal,” he says.
