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By Darryl D'Monte Emperor Jehangir killed over 17,000 animals in 12 years. The Raja of Sarguja hunted down 1,100 tigers. A new book provides a graphic account of the bloodlust that led to the mass destruction of India's bountiful wildlife
India's Wildlife History, by Mahesh Rangarajan
Permanent Black, in association with the Ranthambore Foundation, New Delhi, pp 135, 2001, Rs 250  There is a well-known anecdote about the Englishman who once asked Gandhiji, early in the 20th century, whether it was true that India's wildlife was dwindling. Gandhiji is supposed to have replied: "It is true that it is declining in the rural areas, but it is increasing in the urban areas!" A century later, his words have indeed proved prophetic.
Few readers may recognise Mahesh Rangarajan who straddles 'wildlife' in both geographical spheres: the natural forest and the urban jungle. He is better known as the authoritative political scientist who regularly appears on talk shows on TV, dissecting the latest developments in the country. But his academic career is steeped in ecological history: he published his doctoral thesis as Fencing the Forest in 1996. This reviewer was not very favourably disposed towards his first book because it was too scholarly and cumbersome for the layperson. This slim volume is everything that Fencing was not: it is concise, comprehensible and makes its point tellingly. Since it was supported by the Ranthambore Foundation, through which Valmik Thapar has done a marvellous job in drawing our attention to the precipitous decline in flora and fauna in the country as a whole, this is indeed a tract for our times. Ecologists like to think that previous generations - right from the time of Ashoka -- were far more sensitive to the need to protect animals than people are today. But this may not be entirely true. Royalty made it a case of one-upmanship to bag the biggest number of trophies in the kingdom. As the author documents, the emperor Jehangir killed over 17,000 animals in the first 12 years of his reign, which included 889 nilgai and 86 tigers and lions. The Mughals were fond of wild meats and regularly served up to 40 meat dishes at a banquet, which is why such a huge number of birds and deer was hunted. While Jehangir referred to a huge tiger he killed near Mandu as a "noxious animal", the officials of the Raj later demonised this hapless animal as "a cunning, silent savage enemy" which inflicted "fearful ravages" against common folk. Writes Rangarajan: "This kind of propaganda whetted the bloodthirst of generations of army officers, civil officials and box-wallahs (as the traders were known). District-level administration went out of its way and facilitated hunts, local gentry lent their elephants, and peasants were pressed into action as bearers…Stories of [army officers'] hunts for wild prey figured in after-dinner anecdote alongside tales of military campaigns." Anyone who has visited an Indian army mess as late as the early-1960s can vouch for this. The hunt was part and parcel of 'Indian India'. A Viceroy would like to do nothing better than bag a tiger or two on a morning's hunt. If one succeeded in killing five, it would earn the princely rulers a number of favours. One of the British recipients of Indian largesse in this respect was none other than Douglas Jardine, the fast bowler of 'bodyline' notoriety. The Raja of Singahi was responsible for this courtesy; he was known to enable his guests to shoot up to 40 head of swamp deer in a single day in his hunting estates. As the author records, "killing was a rite of passage into adulthood". Even the glamorous figure of the Maharani of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi, bagged a panther when she was only 12 years old; she received a congratulatory telegram from her future husband, which was "almost as thrilling as the kill", as she later described. If one sees the board put up at what is now the Bharatpur bird sanctuary detailing the massive bags recorded by VIPs, it is no surprise that the rite was religiously observed. Before 1900, two Britons had the record number of tigers: 400 and 227 respectively. However, they were soon to be superseded by the rulers of Udaipur and Gauripur with 500 each. The Raja of Sarguja clocked the all-time record of over 1,100 tigers in his lifetime. By the time he gave up shooting, he had also eliminated 2,000 panthers, another extremely dubious honour. In fact, reading Rangarajan, one wonders how the tiger and other species in nature's pyramid survived at all. In the half-century from 1875, over 80,000 tigers and more than 150,000 leopards were killed. This may well be an underestimate since these figures are gleaned from the rewards paid out. The brunt was borne by parts of central India, the United Provinces and Bengal, which were well-clothed in forests and had huge populations of herbivores. The tiger, it is important to remember, was a fast breeder and was part of the rural landscape. Mumbaikars will be surprised to learn that the last tiger reported to have been shot in the city was swimming across the Thane creek as late as in 1929. Sunjoy Monga, who recently published a book on the National Park in Borivli - possibly the only one of its kind in the world within a huge metropolis -- also records that sightings of the big cat were fairly common till the 1920s. Ironically, if at all the tiger survived, it was due to British self-interest and not to the belated awareness of conservation ethics. While a tiger skin might have been valued as a trophy, it paled into insignificance in comparison to the vast profits to be made on timber. Its favourite habitat was the hill forest where coincidentally much of the timber, including teak used for ships and furniture, also resided. It is interesting to recall that the ace shikari-turned-conservationist, Jim Corbett, was himself a forester who had in a busy earlier career laid waste huge swathes of forest in Bihar and elsewhere to obtain wood for rail sleepers. The railways were certainly the engine of the British empire. One should not be lulled into complacency by this historian's cogent account of the mass destruction of India's bountiful wildlife and imagine that the blood lust is now over. As endless incidents reported in the media show, while the organised hunt has passed into oblivion, the poacher is still very active and threatens to render the tiger extinct. Rampant urbanisation and consumerism are perhaps an even more insidious threat, for they set in motion forces which appear to be out of control and work against the preservation of the country's unique natural beauty. Perhaps the book that now deserves to be written should examine what steps need to be taken today to ensure that wild species continue to coexist with humans well into the 21st century.
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