11 October 2004	Monday	25 Shaban 1425

KORAI: His name is 'Shah Rukh Khan' and he can wiggle his hips better than the Bollywood star after whom he is named and strum a guitar almost like a rock star.

Khan is a shaggy black bear who dances at the roadside on the way to the historic town of Fatehpur Sikri, near the Taj Mahal, while his handler keeps tight hold with a coarse rope pierced through the bear's nose.

"We treat him like our child as he supports our family," says Abdul Nasser, thwacking Khan with a thick stick every so often. "We value them so much we even give bears in dowry to our daughters."

Just a few years ago, "dancing bears" or sloth bears - protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES - were as common in India as snake charmers with their king cobras.

On pavements and outside movie theatres, sloth bears entertained crowds by playing imaginary guitars, smoking cigarettes and dancing in the hot sun on their hind legs to the pounding of drums - all just for a few rupees a day.

Today, activists say, sloth bears are on the verge of extinction because of increased poaching by an ancient tribe of gypsies known as Kalandhars who use the animals for their shows.

Wildlife activists hope the current CITES conference in Bangkok will push Indian authorities to boost efforts to protect the bear and eliminate the factors leading to its extinction.

"We give so much importance to the rhino and tiger. But the sloth bear, too, is right there with these animals," said Geeta Seshamani of Wildlife SOS, an animal rescue group. "About 100 bears are poached from the forest every year. And the bear population has fallen from some 10,000 in 1997 to about 4,000."

ANCIENT TRIBE: Activists say the Kalandhars poach the sloth bears as young as two months and then subject them to horrific treatment to force them into submission.

The Kalandhars - an ancient Muslim tribe of wrestlers who have been entertaining people with dancing bears since Mughal emperor Akbar's reign in the 16th century - wrench out the bears' teeth without anaesthetic and force an iron needle with coarse rope through their muzzle for control.

Some animals go blind as the rope pulls over their eyes. Activists say there are about 600 Kalandhar families with about 1,000 bears, and they train them by putting them on a pan over a fire. They often castrate the bears with a hot knife.

"Otherwise their testosterone levels are very high which makes them very aggressive and difficult to control," said Kajal Jadav, a vet who treats rescued bears. As a result, many bears die of infection and trauma before their normal life span of about 25 years, prompting the Kalandhars to poach more from the forest. -Reuters