I WAS SUPPOSED TO GO out with Bhagat the next day but instead spent it shivering in bed and vomiting. Suffice it to say that my list of traveler's rules has a new addition: Don't drink the monkey catchers' punch. A day later, feeling stronger, I showed up at 6 a.m. to meet Bhagat, as we had arranged, but he waved me off. My translator called him that night and then called back with discouraging news. "The catchers want you to pay them 10,000 rupees [$200] each before you go with them again," he said. "I think they are all very drunk."

I took a few days off to explore the city. Just how prevalent were the monkeys? I left my hotel in Ram Nagar, a central neighborhood thronged by people, motorcycle rickshaws, and cows, and almost immediately heard screeching. I looked up and saw two monkeys chasing each other back and forth on an electrical wire that ran across the street. "The two monkeys, they fight for one wife," said a taxi driver standing nearby. One monkey, perhaps the loser, slid down a drainpipe to the street and darted between a few people's legs. He hid for a moment in a darkened doorway, then dashed out to snatch an orange from the cart of an inattentive vendor.

I hired a rickshaw and rode south into the wide, tree-lined boulevards of New Delhi. The driver parked in front of a large sign that read STOP FEEDING MONKEYS. People were feeding the monkeys. One man tossed peanuts. Another distributed bananas. We were standing in front of a fence, and behind it, in the greenery, were dozens of monkeys. It felt like being at the zoo, only the animals were free. They came through openings in the fence and scampered right past my feet.

A day later, I began to grasp why monkeys are seen as an image problem by the government. I had just finished a tour of Rashtrapati Bhavan, India's domed presidential palace. Three columns of soldiers rode up the central drive on horseback, red-turbaned men sitting tall in the saddle, with swords at their sides. The scene was orderly and dignified.

Then the monkeys came. Mothers with infants clinging to their bellies loped across the drive. Males traversed manicured lawns. Adolescents slid down the iron bars of the ornate front gate like commandos rappelling from a helicopter. On the other side of the fence, a tour bus had just let out, and a dozen Germans in snug shorts rushed up to take pictures. Delhiites are used to monkey hijinks, but Indian politicians know that outsiders are stunned to see organ-grinder sidekicks in the heart of the national capital. Imagine if hordes of chimps invaded the White House lawn.

The current removal campaign comes, not coincidentally, as the eyes of the world are on the modernization of India. One afternoon I went to an auto expo and witnessed the unveiling of the world's cheapest car, the $2,000, India-made Tata Nano, which journalists greeted as if it were an iPhone that could cure cancer. In 2010, athletes and media from 71 nations and territories will converge on Delhi for the Commonwealth Games, and the government is reportedly spending $17.5 billion to get ready. "We have to make Delhi into a very developed international-style city," Mayor Arti Mehra told me. Promoters unveiled the Games' chakra-inspired logo on January 6, with the pronouncement that it "symbolizes India's rise as a global power and its journey from tradition to modernity." Unfortunately for monkeys, they look a lot more traditional than modern.

If primping India for the 21st century is a motivation for the crackdown, ancient religious beliefs are a leading impediment. All over Delhi I saw signs of Hanumania—crowds thronging temples to the monkey god; a 108-foot statue of him with a gaudy shrine inside. Hanuman, one of the most revered deities in the Hindu pantheon, represents cleverness and strength. The Sanskrit epic Ramayana tells how Hanuman defeated Ravana, the evil king of what is now Sri Lanka, and rescued Sita, the wife of Lord Ram. He also looms large in pop culture: In the 2007 animated film Return of Hanuman, an Internet-surfing, "Hinglish"-speaking monkey god soars into space, guards the Statue of Liberty, and captures Osama bin Laden.

The tricky part comes when reverence takes the form of feeding monkeys, an illegal but common practice. "Once a monkey is fed, he will forever think that it is easier to find food from human beings than to look for it on his own," says Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder of Wildlife S.O.S., an animal-welfare outfit. "This same person who is feeding at the temple later comes home and then gripes about how his child was bitten by monkeys."

The deceased deputy mayor was attacked by monkeys who probably were fed at a temple a few doors from his house. I visited it. Inside the darkened worship room, a candle burned before a framed picture of Hanuman. A young male temple employee told me that as many as 100 monkeys used to hang around, waiting for free meals. Like many Delhiites, he didn't seem to make the connection between feeding and aggression. As I was leaving, he ran after me, waving his arms. "A few monkeys still come here," he said. "I feed them!"