A Wildlife Law That Ended a Traditional Livelihood

India's Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, and stricter enforcement of it in subsequent decades, made the capture, possession and public display of cobras and other protected snake species illegal, directly outlawing the traditional practice, once common around Naga Panchami, of snake charmers parading captive cobras through streets and temples for public veneration and donation, a practice the law now treats as wildlife crime regardless of its religious association with the festival.

The enforcement has had a direct economic effect on the Sapera community, traditional snake charmers in North India whose livelihood depended substantially on this seasonal display work around Naga Panchami and at other times of year, and various state and NGO programmes have since attempted to help Sapera families transition to alternative livelihoods, with mixed success reported by researchers studying the community, so that a law intended to protect wildlife has also required a specific traditional occupational community to abandon a religiously connected trade practised for generations, a tension between animal welfare law and the livelihood of a specific marginalised community that receives less public attention than the animal welfare side of the story alone.