But the officials who work there are fed up. They've been
bitten, robbed and otherwise tormented by monkeys that ransack
files, bring down power lines, screech at visitors and bang on
office windows.
The Supreme Court has stepped in, decreeing that New Delhi
should be a monkey-free city after citizens filed a lawsuit
demanding protection from the animals.
Easier said than done. A past initiative to scare off the
army of Rhesus macaques with ultrahigh frequency loudspeakers
didn't work. A plan to deport them to distant regions has
stalled because local governments refused to have them.
There's an ape patrol of fierce-looking primates called
langurs, led about on leashes by keepers. But whenever a langur
looms, the pink-faced, two-foot-tall hooligans simply move
elsewhere on government grounds.
"Please do not feed the monkeys," implores a sign
at Raisina Hill, the complex of colonnaded buildings that
includes the president's residence, Parliament, and Cabinet
offices.
To no avail. Hindus believe that monkeys are manifestations
of the monkey god, Hanuman, and worshippers come to Raisina Hill
every Tuesday handing out bananas.
Last year the monkeys made their presence felt by hanging
from window ledges and screeching at reporters arriving for a
news conference with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld.
"It's a big problem, especially in the evening,"
says Defense Ministry spokesman Amitabha Chakrabarti. Monkeys
break into offices at night and paw through the files looking
for food, he said. "Those who work late hours have to be
careful when it is dark."
The city estimates at least 1,500 of New Delhi's more than
5,000 macaques live on Raisina Hill.
In the latest effort, a monkey relocation initiative, 400
monkeys have been caught at Raisina Hill in the past year and
moved to a holding area on the outskirts of New Delhi to await
their return to forests in neighboring states, said Madan
Thapliyal, a municipality spokesman.
But governments of those states have so far refused to take
the furry exiles, saying they have more than enough of their
own.
Maneka Gandhi, daughter-in-law of the late Indian leader
Indira Gandhi and an independent lawmaker in the lower house of
India's Parliament, believes the monkeys should be left in
peace.
Gandhi, an animal rights advocate, has already managed to
halt a New Delhi program to spay and neuter stray dogs, saying
it was cruel.
She claims that captured macaques, despite their holiness to
Hindus, have been given to laboratories for experimentation or
have died in their holding area cages. They were "relocated
to monkey heaven," she said.
The government says more than 200 monkeys have been relocated
to Gandhi's parliamentary district about 125 miles east of New
Delhi. Gandhi denies it. "It's all rubbish," she said.
"Not one monkey has been relocated to my
constituency."
Atul K. Gupta, of the Wildlife Institute of India, says
macaques belong in forests, but deforestation and human
settlement are driving them into cities in search of food.
Macaques are crafty pickpockets, know how to open
refrigerators, and brazenly snatch lunch pails from government
workers, he said. "They have learned the tricks of finding
food in an urban environment."
The answer, he said, is to save the forests. Otherwise, he
says, "the problem will get worse."
