We all aware of the emotional quotient of elephants, they are almost close to humans when it comes to getting emotional. And they love freedom, just like us. 
But for the past few centuries, our temples have imprisoned quite a lot of these emotional souls. Interestingly none of our agama Shastras or religious manuals  insist on taming pachyderms and forcing them to live in limited space inside places of worship. Yet our temples are doing it. 
Most temples maintain female elephants. There are reasons for keeping only specific sex in temples. Male elephants are not selected due to the occurrence of musth for a considerable time in a year resulting in the elephants not being able to do any temple duties including carrying water from the river. So, female elephants were the best choice; however, one problem with female elephants was exposure to males and consequent pregnancy. Post-delivery, taking care of their calves would take up substantial time and the female elephants may not be available for any temple related duties. So, this may be one of the reasons temple kept female elephant alone, in social isolation. As times changed, temples lost their forest cover and source of water. Some of the temples are constructed in city limits in the middle of sea of human. The tradition of keeping elephants continued, without any defined work for the animals.
Some of the temples that were not able to generate resources, even to give salary for their mahouts, knowingly or unknowingly, permitted mahout to generate resources by making elephants to bless devotees or perform other tasks for the public. Elephants, with the combination of control by the mahout and their liking for the food offered by devotees, had to allow exploitation by mahout.
Elephants, in addition to being made to continuously bless people, are made to stand for long hours on concrete surface. The shelters provided to them are very small, closed, with no or less ventilation. Even if there were modifications providing semiopen structures and artificially created mud floors, they are made to stand for long hours in the middle or are surrounded by food waste, their own excreta. The food coming primarily from devotees was restricted to a few varieties and biased towards high calorie values. Even with good intentions of offering food for elephants, there are no controls for hygienic status of food given by the devotees. Elephants are made to walk to reduce the regular routine of standing in one place for a long time; however the scope available for them to walk is only on tar or metal roads within crowded or congested city limits. A highly social species that fulfills its needs by social and environmental clues is kept alone throughout its life or only allowed fragmented interaction. Importance of fulfilling their needs through social and environment clues can be seen from a simple example: if elephants live together, and there is a water source environmental clue) around and if one elephant goes for drinking, that act makes other the animal (social clue) to drink water.

Bottom line is, these elephants belong to the jungles, they don't belong to temples are circus, they deserve freedom. Lets make that happen 
Some useful links
http://www.asiannature.org/sites/default/files/13.TR-Temple%20Elephants%20of%20India_P.pdf

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/hc-questions-need-for-keeping-elephants-in-captivity-in-temples/article25617671.ece 

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/kochi/Elephants-belong-in-the-wild-let-them-be/articleshow/53653105.cms