Asiatic Lion Information Centre

The Asiatic lion news archive - 2007

Stories relating to the Asiatic lion and updates on the captive breeding programme from 2007.

DATELINE: April 12, 2007
For a sher dil, wear lion's claw

At the foot of the Girnar hills, a saffron-robed sadhu with matted hair and rudraksh beads around his wrist sits smoking a 'chillum'. At first, he eyes you suspiciously. Engage him in a conversation on Lord Shiva and the ice is broken.

He slowly pulls out a lion claw from behind a picture of the deity. "No, don't touch it!" he warns, saying it has been purified for tantrik rituals. The TOI team is allowed to hold it only after washing hands. "We obtain these from lions who die naturally in Gir," he says.

Lion claws are cult symbols in and around Saurashtra. There is a belief system built around them. Fishermen wear them before venturing out to sea, apparently to make them "lionhearted". The forest department destroys all the claws collected from the carcasses of dead lions so there is no official route of getting these talismans.

Forest officials do not believe locals in Saurashtra would be hunting lions for their claws and claim that most of the claws are fake. The Kathi Darbar community wear them as status symbols. Sold at prices between Rs 5,000 and 10,000 per claw, they are flaunted as pendants worn on bare chests.

They are even embellished. Like Mahendra Koli, who spent Rs 2 lakh to encase a lion claw in gold and who wears it around his neck on a thick gold chain. "My guru from Girnar had gifted me this claw when I was going through severe financial crisis.

I first wore it in on a black thread, now I wear it around this gold chain." Koli says he had to go through an elaborate ritual before wearing the claw. But, with the real come the fake lion claws carved from deer antlers. These cost somewhere between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,000.

Bharatiya Janata Party legislator from Babra in Amreli, Bavku Unghad says nearly 5,000 people in Saurashtra would be found wearing lion claws all acquired through the illegal trade. Conservator of forest, Junagadh, Bharat Pathak, says, "We have powers to apprehend those wearing lion claws."

But he did not have information of the department having booked anybody over the years for possessing these claws.