THEY are viewed as the sacred embodiment of the Hindu god Hanuman, fed by devotees and worshipped as idols, but thousands of monkeys at an ancient Hindu temple in northeastern India have begun to bite the hand that feeds them, going on the rampage and attacking several hundred children in the past few weeks alone.

The 2,000 rhesus monkeys at the famous Kamakhya temple in Guwahati have long been accused of thieving from buildings near to the shrine, but they had not shown such aggressive behaviour, until early last month when children started to be attacked.

“They hide in trees and swoop on unsuspecting children loitering in the temple premises or walking by, clawing them and even sucking a bit of blood,” Bani Kumar Sharma, a priest at the temple, said.

The smaller the child, the more chance of an attack. “I was returning home from school when a monkey suddenly pounced on me, scratched my head and hand and pushed me to the ground,” Jolly Sharma, a six-year-old schoolgirl, said.

Monkeys are found in tens of thousands of temples across India and while occasional attacks are not uncommon, the sudden surge in attacks at the Kamakhya temple has perplexed experts. Some say that the monkey, which is not a natural carnivore, may be turning violent because of shrinking living spaces or because some that were formerly kept as pets have been unable to adjust to life out of captivity. Wildlife officials took three wild monkeys to Guwahati zoo recently to examine them for clues that might explain their sudden aggression.

The last time that the monkeys of Kamakhya made headlines was two years ago, when they took over a girls’ hostel close to the shrine, opening fridges to steal food and pulling clothing from washing lines. Their numbers have doubled since then, aggravating the problem.

The halls of power in Delhi have long been plagued by marauding troops of monkeys taking over ministry buildings, once even killing a civil servant by dropping a flower pot on his head. The problem is worse in urban settings, where monkeys grow accustomed to contact with humans.

Killing monkeys is illegal in most Indian states because of their divine associations, although frustration can move some people to violence. The bodies of 59 monkeys were discovered this year in sacks along roads in Haryana, the state where many of Delhi’s unwanted monkeys are dumped.

Authorities have offered several solutions to the problem, from using larger langur monkeys to scare the pesky rhesuses away, to founding a monkey prison in Punjab where particularly recalcitrant monkeys can be locked away.

• Delhi: An member of the Opposition triggered a free-for-all in an Indian state assembly yesterday when he threw slippers at the government benches during a debate over the granting of a mining contract to a company that plans to set up an alumina refinery.

  Naveen Patnaik, the Chief Minister of the eastern state of Orissa, was hurt when angry deputies pushed a table on to his leg, an official said.

  Sacred simians

• Hinduism considers many animals holy, among them monkeys, cows and elephants
  
• India’s most common monkey is the rhesus macaque, which lives in groups of 20 or more. There are two to four females to every male
  
• In 2001, 10,000 monkeys invaded Delhi’s government district. They entered army bases and even took defence files
  
• In Basana, a village in Haryana state, locals were found to have hired people secretly to poison the monkey population

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