The Inhuman Empire: Wildlife, Colonialism, Culture 1032700491, 9781032700496

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The Inhuman Empire

This book is a study of selected texts of British writings on Indian wildlife published between 1860 and 1960. Set in the context of British colonial rule in India, this book also reflects on similar situations across the British Empire and other colonial empires. The destruction of wildlife in the making of empires is a subject not yet fully explored in scholarship. This book aims to speak to global concerns regarding the extinction of several species and shows that the crisis has international roots. The Inhuman Empire breaks new grounds as it juxtaposes colonial narratives with folk narratives. These two types of narratives treat nonhuman animals very differently – folk narrative considers them sentient beings, while colonial narratives see them as “game” and do not care for their sentience. Both types of narratives are further evaluated with reference to the contemporary position of natural sciences regarding animal sentience and of anthropologists and philosophers regarding the relationship between nature and culture. Analyzing colonial accounts of hunting, the author looks at the pain and suffering of nonhuman animals and combines statistics alongside narratives of British writers, Indian populace and nonhuman animals in order to show narratives’ reflect and impact reality. This book will be of great value to those interested in Animal Studies, Folkloristics, the history of Colonialism and India. Sadhana Naithani is a professor of literature and folklore at the Centre of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interest is in seeing cultural transformations through narratives. Two of her books are In Quest of Indian Folktales (2006) and The Story Time of the British Empire (2010).

Empire and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000

This monograph series seeks to explore the complexities of the relationships among empires, modernity and global history. In so doing, it wishes to challenge the orthodoxy that the experience of modernity was located exclusively in the west, and that the non-western world was brought into the modern age through conquest, mimicry and association. To the contrary, modernity had its origins in the interaction between the two worlds. Art in the Time of Colony Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll Archiving Settler Colonialism Culture, Space and Race Edited by Yu-ting Huang and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower Decolonising Europe? Popular Responses to the End of Empire Edited by Berny Sèbe and Matthew G. Stanard Anti-Slavery and Australia No Slavery in a Free Land? Jane Lydon Beyond Science and Empire Circulation of Knowledge in an Age of Global Empires, 1750-1945 Edited by Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva, Thomás A. S. Haddad, and Kapil Raj The Inhuman Empire Wildlife, Colonialism, Culture Sadhana Naithani

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Empire-andthe-Making-of-the-Modern-World-1650-2000/book-series/EMPIREMOD

The Inhuman Empire Wildlife, Colonialism, Culture Sadhana Naithani

First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Sadhana Naithani The right of Sadhana Naithani to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-70049-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-70045-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-70048-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781032700489 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

In memory of my father J. P. Naithani For my dear friend Jack Zipes Scholar and Storyteller

Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgments x Introduction: The Narrative Grip

1

Human and Nonhuman Animals in Folk Narrative  3 Sentience and Nonhuman Animals  5 What Happened to Them?  18 British Writings on Indian Fauna  27 Works Cited  28 1 The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives: Major Henry Shakespear’s The Wild Sports of India (1860, 1862) and Captain James Forsyth’s The Highlands of Central India (1889)

30

Henry Shakespear: Out to Kill  31 James Forsyth: Making Them Suffer  44 Works Cited  48

2 The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty: G. P. Sanderson’s Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India (1878)

49

Rocking the Life of Elephants  54 Thinning the Wildlife  68 Works Cited  72 3 The Multispecies World of Indian Householders: John Lockwood Kipling’s Beast and Man in India (1991) Beings and Beliefs  74 Animals in Artistic Abstraction  92

73

viii Contents Reality and Ethnography  96 Works Cited  102

4 The Tiger Obsession: Henry Shakespear, James Forsyth, George Sanderson, J. C. Fife-Cookson 103 Tiger – The Trophy  103 Hunter – The Average  107 A Small Detail  110 Works Cited  111 5 The Tiger Grips the Narrator: Jim Corbett’s Many Books 113 Tiger – The Gentleman  114 The Hunter and The Man-eater  117 Tiger, Corbett and Himalayas  120 Jim Corbett – An Indian?  131 Works Cited  133

6 The Narrative Warfare

134

Facts and Figures  134 Tigers of the Narratives  137 Animals in Colonial Trap  139 History Writing and Folk Narrative  140 The Three Ps  142 British Narratives and Theriocide  144 Folk Narrative and Anthropomorphism  147 Colonialism and Wild Nonhuman Animals  151 Works Cited  153

7 To New Narratives

155

Works Cited  163 Bibliography 165 Index 169

Preface

This is a work of interdisciplinary narrative analysis. British writings on Indian wildlife remain in an undefined category of texts. Apart from occasional references in scholarly works, none of the selected texts have been studied and analyzed in detail. In The Inhuman Empire. Wildlife, Colonialism, Culture, they are treated as modern folk narratives due to their popularity and impact on imagination across national borders. They are juxtaposed with older folk narratives and placed in the context of contemporary research in historical and animal studies. As such, this study offers a new way of studying folk narratives in juxtaposition with other forms of narratives created in modern times. It opens the boundaries within which folk narratives are often isolated and kept separate from modern narratives. On the other hand, it defines and places certain types of writings that fall outside the pale of fiction because they claim to be based on experiences and, ironically, outside the definitions of historical documents for the same reason. Such texts, like British writings on Indian wildlife, employ techniques of storytelling in narrating the experiences of an individual. Their wide circulation impacted peoples’ imagination about a country (India) and the wild denizens of her forests. This imagination of India generated yet another variant of what I have earlier identified as A Folktale Called India. While India’s wealth and diversity gained proverbial status in the process of colonial exploitation, her vibrant and diverse wildlife too suffered the colonial plunder of unverifiable magnitude and the sufferance and loss of her nonhuman animals may or may not be beyond damage control. Indeed, the role and destruction of wild animals in the making of the British Empire is yet unaccounted for. In this situation, the story of Indian wildlife under colonial British rule may serve to change human perspectives on the conservation of those that are still alive, wild and free.

Acknowledgments

The final phase of research for this book was funded by a fellowship of the Fulbright Association of the United States of America. The Centre of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi provided me the required sabbatical leave to accept the Fulbright Academic and Professional Excellence Award and the Department of Anthropology and Folklore Program, University of California, Berkeley invited me to teach and research for the academic year 2022–2023. I am deeply grateful to Professor Rosy Singh, JNU and Professor Charles Hirschkind, UCB for their support. In a way, this research started more than a decade ago when I wrote the novella Elephantine (2016) – the story of a female elephant in the context of colonial forestry, but it is over the last four years that I realized the magnitude of this subject. It was during the pandemic of 2020 that I started thinking of researching colonial narratives about the wildlife in the colonies. The trigger to write came in the form of an invitation to a lecture at the 2021 Folklore Fellows Summer School, Finland – and for this I thank Professor Pertti Anttonen. In quick succession, an invitation to give a talk in the online lecture series “Voices from Around the Globe” of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research saw to it that I was firmly committed to pursuing the idea at a much wider scale. I cannot thank the ISFNR community enough for their role in my journey as a folklorist. Colleagues and friends who remained in conversation with me throughout the period of this research contributed in many ways and their ideas have become an integral part of my thinking and this book: thanks to Cristina Bacchilega for many conversations in helping with my research design, and to Charles L. Briggs for his insightful responses and questions impacting the conceptualization of this book. In Charles Hirschkind, I found a friend to share the passion for nonhuman animals – I thank him for thoughtful conversations. I thank Margaret Mills for sharing her love of folk narratives and their values to the human experience of life on this planet. I thank my partner Sudheer Gupta who believed in the value of this research subject and shared my joys and desperation on a daily basis. Finally, Cristina Bacchilega, Margaret Mills and Sudheer Gupta read the manuscript of this book. I thank them for their reading, critical comments and suggestions, which are now a part of this book.

Acknowledgments  xi I was fortunate to share my research with many scholars and students during the term of my Fulbright Fellowship in USA as colleagues invited me to their institutions for talks: Katherine Boreland and Amy Shuman, Ohio State University, Columbus; Claudia Schwabe, Utah State University, Logan to deliver a Tanner Talk; Jill Rudy, Brigham Young University, Providence; Diarmuid O’Giollain, Notre Dame University, South Bend and Lawrence B. Cohen, Department of Anthropology and South Asia Institute, UC Berkeley. I am beholden to colleagues and institutions for these opportunities and their hospitality. I am grateful to the group Environmental Arts and Humanities at UC Berkeley who included me in their futuristic discussions. Students in the two courses I taught at UC Berkeley and my PhD students at JNU kept me thinking on my feet with their questions and demands. For friendship, I thank John Rieder, Seema Alavi, Lawrence B. Cohen, Clara Mantini Briggs and Sunah Caroline Cherwin. I thank my mother Kamla for endless encouragement. The three canine members of my family – Laila, Zovi and Sheru – deserve special mention for their endless patience and apparent happiness in sitting all around my chair as I worked on this book. I am thankful to Max Novick at Routledge, New York, for welcoming the manuscript of this book and including it in the series Empires and the Making of the Modern World. I am responsible for any errors in facts and interpretations. Sadhana Naithani JNU, New Delhi

Introduction The Narrative Grip

Until lions have their own historian the history of the hunt

will always glorify the hunter. (African Proverb)

What if nonhuman animals, plants and humans, or the biologically diverse beings, could speak with each other? How would that have impacted the life on planet Earth? Folk narrative has found it worth imagining the scenario. 1. At the beginning of life on earth everyone had mutually understandable speech and language. They could all be heard and understood by the others. After some time, the man felt very constrained as he could not cut trees or kill animals because he could hear them screaming and crying. One day he appealed to the powers in the sky and said that in this mutually intelligible world he could not survive and something must be done about it. So, mutually understandable speech was taken away from all, but the man and the dog - they could continue to talk to each other. Soon they became the best of friends and with the help of the dog the man started to control all other beings. The dog’s abilities made the man very powerful: the man could smell and see more than his abilities, he could go anywhere, do anything, be warned in time. Their combined power caused a great disbalance of power to emerge on earth. Now, all the other beings called the powers that were and said “In this situation we cannot survive. Something must be done”. As a result, the man’s ability to understand the dog’s speech was taken away from him. Balance was restored with the reduction of man’s ability, not that of the dog. It is because of this that the dog can understand the man, but the man cannot understand the dog. (Transcreated Mayan Folk Tale) Life on Earth seems to be based on a fault line then – that the precondition for the evolution of life on Earth, as we know it, was that man must not be able to understand the speech of others. The lack of knowledge, willed by DOI: 10.4324/9781032700489-1

2 Introduction man himself, enabled him to use, exploit and kill others. The will alone, however, could not help him much for his own abilities were rather limited. To fulfill his desires, he needed the friendship of the dog and on receiving it he used it to make life hell for others. Intervention was needed and he was disabled from understanding the dog and therefore, from being all powerful. The problem is that we know that in spite of limited abilities man has pushed himself to control all other beings. How did this happen? Folk narrative has thought of this too: In the beginning man was not the king of the earth, the python was. One day the man thought this situation should change. So, he went out very early in the morning, lit a fire on the banks of the river, heated a piece of iron and started smashing it with another piece of iron. A whole lot of noise was created that disturbed all the other beings who were yet asleep. The fishes on the surface tried to understand what was going on, those below them asked what was going on, the birds started wondering what was going on, other earth animals started waking up and wondering what was going on. On peeping from the surface of the water, or looking down from the trees, or skirting around the man, they saw what was going on, but could not understand what it was that the man was doing. Finally, the matter reached the python and he sent his son to find out what was going on. The son came to the man and asked as to what he was doing. The man said that he is doing “work”. “WORK? What is work?” the python’s son asked. “If you want to know that, send your father. I will tell him what work is”. The python’s son went back and told his father. The python and all other beings heard the answer. Birds wondered what work was; they flew all day, gathered food, fed their kids, built their nests, but did not know the meaning of work. Neither did the fishes who lived in constant motion. Nor did the other earth dwellers who all searched for food, dug holes or found other kinds of shelter, made and raised babies and even managed community. Nobody knew the meaning of work. So, the python decided to go and find out what is this ‘work’ that man is doing. When he came to the man and asked, the man asked him to come closer. The python did. By now the man had two hot prongs with which he clamped the python’s face on either side. The python started shrieking in pain. Then the man said to him in a low voice: “You must declare to the world that I am the king of earth and not you. Until you do so, I will not release you from the hold of these burning prongs”. The python resisted for a while, but he was burning up, the pain was excruciating and finally, he gave up and told everyone that the man is the king of earth. Thus, man became the king of earth and the python still has the black marks on his cheeks sustained from the burning. (Transcreated Naga Folk Tale)

Introduction  3 The two stories encompass in themselves the imagination of a world where equality between all beings was destroyed by man – willfully, consciously and deceitfully. “Anthropocene” did not simply happen nor did it happen just a few hundred years ago. It happened a far longer time ago as the man has been on this journey of controlling and subordinating all others on this planet to his desires ever since life, as we know it, started on this planet. The importance of the narrative lies in its critical perspective on the role of the human being. As such, while it could not change the reality of human domination, it could mitigate the damage by the recognition of man’s role in establishing himself. Through its critical perspective, the folk narrative kept alive the notion of equality of all beings. The stories show the man as unfair, deceitful and responsible for disturbing the situation of equality among all beings. The stories too are created by human beings, and the narrators of the stories could see the unfairness of their own species toward other beings. The impact of the story was oriented against the man’s role and inspiring empathy for nonhuman animals. Human and Nonhuman Animals in Folk Narrative Folk narrative has concerned itself with several questions about the relationship between humans and nonhumans that are the concerns of natural scientists, social scientists and conservation movements. At the core of these issues are the rights of human beings versus the rights of other beings on this planet. At a point in history, when humans must realize that they have been the cause of much destruction and suffering of other beings, they are also compelled to acknowledge that the loss is theirs too, as those other beings also played, and still play, roles that are important for the survival of humans too. This interdependence, acknowledgment of the role of all, relativizing the place of human to that of others and mutual gratefulness are subjects that are so common in the folk narrative across the world that it is identified with them. Folk narrative proceeds from the assumption that all beings are sentient, and as such, they are cognizant and responsive, just as human beings are. In spite of the absence of any mutual language, communication between humans and animals has been assumed, articulated and developed. One of the earliest identified genres of folk narrative – the fable – used animals even to tell the story of human society. The role of animals remained prominent in all genres and epics as they developed. From representing issues of human society to the depictions of knowledge about animals, folk narrative’s relationship with the nonhuman worlds is highly nuanced, complex and culturally diverse. Folk narrative is itself reflective of varied forms of relationship between humans and nonhumans. Whether reality determined these depictions or whether depictions determined reality is not a debate – both the processes have taken place not in a linear, but in an interactive manner. Narratives about nonhuman beings were evidently based on observation,

4 Introduction interaction and need of human beings, as also on the creative and imaginative faculties of human beings; narratives also came to determine how different nonhuman beings were then treated in reality. Different societies accorded different statuses to animals more prominent in their landscapes and those statuses determined the different trajectories of existence for those nonhuman beings. The grip of folk narrative on human imagination and reality has been substantial in regulating the human–animal relationship in reality. And yet, folk narrative scholars have not asked pertinent questions of our time: how was folk narrative displaced from its position of regulating human– animal relationship to becoming unconvincing? How did so many nonhuman animals that were intelligent, helpful and sentient in folk narratives got treated like objects to be destroyed? What happened to the grip of folk narrative? In folk narrative scholarship, while the role of narratives in determining social perceptions, gender relations and ethical standards of society has been widely discussed, acknowledgment of the role of folk narrative in determining the real relationship between humans and nonhumans has not been adequately understood. The folk narrative scholarship, unlike the folk narrative itself, is rooted in modernity and has derived its perspectives from there. Therefore, the nonhuman animals in folklore have been largely accepted as fantastic or rather unrealistic. Analysts have tended to increasingly see them as metaphors representing psychological states. It has often escaped attention that folk narrative is itself rooted in a world where the dependence of human beings on nonhuman animals was far higher (Röhrich, 1991), as well as their proximity and interaction with them. British philosopher Richard Sorabji (1995, 1–2) has shown, that in spite of a separation that existed between the humans and animals in the western philosophical tradition since the ancient time, there were different views as to the extent of this difference. Modernity caused the separation between humans and nonhumans, between wild and civilized and between realistic and fantastic in deeply divisive ways. The one word that best expresses the division between human and nonhuman is sentience. Humans are sentient, nonhuman animals are not. “Sentience” was the wedge that was drawn between the humans and the “animals”. This premise has become increasingly more questioned and investigated in recent times. Writing in 2022, Jackie Higgins, a zoologist who makes scientific films, says We humans are often described as sentient beings, but what does this mean? The word, from Latin sentire, to feel, is so mercurial (…) Some use sentience interchangeably with the word consciousness, a phenomenon that in itself is so elusive as to reduce the most stalwart scientific mind to incantations of magic. (Higgins, 2022, ix) Scientists have been unable to locate “consciousness” in the physical matter; that is, it’s not visible how thoughts are passing through the “jelly” of a

Introduction  5 brain. Higgins offers a simpler definition: “sentience also describes our ability to sense the world around us” (Higgins, 2022, ix). Since modernity also questioned the existence of a higher being like God, and showed it to be rationally unbelievable, the sense of a being higher than all living beings and able to control the human was also lost. Humans were equal before the law (and even that took a long time to be formulated), but there was no one in whose eyes all living creatures of the Earth could be equal. None that humans as well as others could call upon to intervene in their favor. Humans were considered sentient, while sentient nonhuman beings of the folk narrative were easily relegated to fantasy and figment of imagination: cute, entertaining, laughable and ignorable, but not to be taken seriously. This even became the yardstick to decide who among human beings was modern and civilized and who not. Those who worshipped animals, believed in reading their own survival conditions through the acts of animals or accorded nonhuman beings the status of sacredness and therefore protection from human beings were people who were termed primitive, uncivilized, backward, unscientific and, of course, not modern. The distinction between two types of human beings also has other terms: colonizers and colonized. Within colonizers and colonized, it is also the distinction between genders: man and woman. Man as rational, woman as emotional and man as the conqueror of the world, woman as his subservient. It also defined the difference between adults and children: adults as rational, children as irrational and fanciful. With the advent of modernity, folk narrative became the narrative for children, simultaneously placed on the side of the disadvantaged in all other aforementioned distinctions, “because realism was what a serious writer was supposed to write under the rule of modernism, which had decreed that non-realistic fiction, if not mere kiddilit, was trash” (Le Guin, 2012, 5). Science and folk narrative came to represent two farthest points of epistemology, that is, situated at the maximum possible distance from each other in ways of creating knowledge. Since folk narrative proceeds from the assumption that nonhuman animals are sentient beings, it is important to see what is the current scientific position on the subject. Sentience and Nonhuman Animals In 2012, The First Annual Francis Crick Memorial Conference was held in the University of Cambridge. It announced its subject of deliberations as “Consciousness in Humans and Non-Human Animals” and declared that the conference aims to provide a purely data-driven perspective on the neural correlates of consciousness. The most advanced quantitative techniques for measuring and monitoring consciousness will be presented, with the topics of focus ranging from exploring the properties of neurons deep in the brainstem, to assessing global cerebral function in comatose

6 Introduction patients. Model organisms investigated will span the species spectrum from flies to rodents, humans to birds, elephants to dolphins, and will be approached from the viewpoint of three branches of biology: anatomy, physiology, and behaviour. (https://fcmconference.org) Interestingly, the conference announcement did not only carry the subject of deliberations but also its orientation. The text written by scientists played on the proverbial folk knowledge and said Until animals have their own storytellers, humans will always have the most glorious part of the story, and with this proverbial concept in mind, the symposium will address the notion that humans do not alone possess the neurological faculties that constitute consciousness as it is presently understood. (https://fcmconference.org. emphasis mine) It is noteworthy that a conference of scientists proceeded “with [a] proverbial concept in mind”. That is, from the folk wisdom as condensed in the genre of proverbs. The change from “historian” to “storyteller” of the animals is also noteworthy, as indeed, story is embedded in history and stories are the oldest form of history telling. The conference speakers included brain scientists, neurologists, neurobiologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, medicine specialists, experts from the fields of neuropsychopharmacology, biology and adaptive intelligence, sleep and consciousness, synthetic neurobiology and theoretical cosmology (Stephen Hawking). The conference ended with the signing of a “declaration”, which I am citing below in full, with emphasis as in the original: “The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness* On this day of July 7, 2012, a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge to reassess the neurobiological substrates of conscious experience and related behaviors in human and non-human animals. While comparative research on this topic is naturally hampered by the inability of non-human animals, and often humans, to clearly and readily communicate about their internal states, the following observations can be stated unequivocally:

• The field of Consciousness research is rapidly evolving. Abundant new techniques and strategies for human and nonhuman animal research have been developed. Consequently, more data are becoming readily available and this calls for a periodic reevaluation of previously held preconceptions

Introduction  7 in this field. Studies of nonhuman animals have shown that homologous brain circuits correlated with conscious experience and perception can be selectively facilitated and disrupted to assess whether they are in fact necessary for those experiences. Moreover, in humans, new noninvasive techniques are readily available to survey the correlates of consciousness. • The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures. In fact, subcortical neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals. Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding behavior and feeling states in both humans and nonhuman animals. Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in nonhuman animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are rewarding and punishing. Deep brain stimulation of these systems in humans can also generate similar affective states. Systems associated with affect are concentrated in the subcortical regions where neural homologies are abound. Young human and nonhuman animals without neocortices retain these brain-mind functions. Furthermore, neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological states of attentiveness, sleep and decision-making appear to have arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being evident in insects and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus). • Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness. Evidence of near-human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in African gray parrots. Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive microcircuitries appear to be far more homologous than previously thought. Moreover, certain species of birds have been found to exhibit neural sleep patterns similar to those of mammals, including REM sleep and, as was demonstrated in zebra finches, neurophysiological patterns, previously thought to require a mammalian neocortex. Magpies in particular have been shown to exhibit striking similarities to humans, great apes, dolphins and elephants in studies of mirror self-recognition. • In humans, the effect of certain hallucinogens appears to be associated with a disruption in cortical feedforward and feedback processing. Pharmacological interventions in nonhuman animals with compounds known to affect conscious behavior in humans can lead to similar perturbations in behavior in nonhuman animals. In humans, there is evidence to suggest that awareness is correlated with cortical activity, which does not exclude possible contributions by subcortical or early cortical processing, as in visual awareness. Evidence that human and nonhuman animal emotional feelings arise from homologous subcortical brain networks provide compelling evidence for evolutionarily shared primal affective qualia.

8 Introduction We declare the following: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates. * The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness was written by Philip Low and edited by Jaak Panksepp, Diana Reiss, David Edelman, Bruno Van Swinderen, Philip Low and Christof Koch. The Declaration was publicly proclaimed in Cambridge, UK, on July 7, 2012, at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals, at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, by Low, Edelman and Koch. The Declaration was signed by the conference participants that very evening, in the presence of Stephen Hawking, in the Balfour Room at the Hotel du Vin in Cambridge, UK. The signing ceremony was memorialized by CBS 60 Minutes”. The conference and the declaration were themselves part of a process that had been going on for years before the conference and continues to be researched, developed and applied further currently. Scientists have elaborated on the history of science and how animals came to be categorized as not sentient. Andrew Rowan, former professor at Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, states that common people accepted animal sentience, particularly for mammals, for hundreds of years, “But, of course, the philosophers did not follow the views of the masses and there is a clear line of philosophic argument for non-sentience from Aristoteles to Thomas Aquinas, from Renè Descartes to Immanuel Kant and Carruthers today” (Rowan et al., 2021, 2). Aristotele’s famous idea “Man is by nature a social animal” (Aristoteles, Politics) recognized man as an animal, but as different from all other animals in that man alone is “social”, all others are not. Man is social and builds relationships and communities. Man is higher than all other beings in consciousness, when not in abilities. Others are not social, do not build relationships, do not live in communities, and worst of all, do not have consciousness, but only intuition and instinct. They are lower than the humans in every possible way and deserve to be controlled, as in used for the interest of human beings. Most of the scientists take back the ascription of nonsentience of animals in modern times to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” as it implied not just the act of thinking, but awareness of the act of thinking, and the same could be said for other states of mind. “Mental states are felt states, and to have a mind is to have the capacity to feel. In a word: sentience”, writes Stevan Harnad, professor of cognitive science (Harnad, 2016, 3). This feeling, that I can think, is however, something one can know only for one’s own self. Harnad discusses the “other minds” problem, that is, how do we know whether others have a mind and whether they can think. As per Descartes, we cannot know that for sure. “Fair enough. We can’t be sure

Introduction  9 (…) But, we are nevertheless sure enough that it is true, that other people, too, feel, and the laws of science (…) are true” (Harnad, 2016, 4). Descartes did not deny this either, but asserted it logically. We infer other people’s capacity to think because we are the same species. However, when it came to other-minds problem of other species, Descartes confidently asserted that, despite their behaviors, animals are just feelingless machines – so we can go ahead and do whatever we like with them despite their struggles and screams. (…) Descartes assured us that animals cannot feel on the basis of a scientific theory (…). It was in fact a quack theory, attributing the mind to the pineal gland, into which a deity had implanted the power to generate feeling – in humans, but not in any other species. Apart from that, the body, in all species, is just a mindless machine according to Descartes. (Harnad, 2016, 5) This philosophical thinking disconnected modern scientific knowledge from the popular perception of animals as sentient beings. The mind-reading abilities of human, when it came to even mammals, were discounted as “anthropomorphic”. So, even if one is able to observe pain, joy or suffering in mammals, it is not to be believed. It is understandable how animals in folk narrative were relegated to being anthropomorphic representations. Donald Broom, emeritus professor of animal welfare, counters the idea that the size of the brain determines the cognitive ability and that the brains smaller than that of the human cannot be complex enough to be sentient. “The idea of a pyramid leading to humans is biologically naïve and to say that invertebrates are ‘less highly evolved’ is to misunderstand evolutionary mechanism” (Broom, 2020, 1). People often assume, incorrectly, that small animals, animals with small brains, cold-blooded animals, and animals with brain structures different from those of humans cannot have complex concepts and behaviour. Much recent research has demonstrated that a wide range of animals have substantial cognitive ability, irrespective of size. (Broom, 2016, 5) In his book Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), Donald Broom deals with the question as to how different we humans are from other animals to claim sole propriety over sentience. When human cognitive and other abilities are compared with those of other species, conclusions have to be qualified with relation to the very young or and some of the injured or old. At birth, a human child may have (…) far less actual ability than many other animals have. A person who has suffered substantial brain damage after an accident or a person with advanced senile dementia may be much less than the companion

10 Introduction dog or the magpie. Sentience is a capacity that normally grows during human development; it can also diminish or be lost. The same is true for other sentient species. (Broom, 2016, 2–3) In brief, it can be stated that today scientists broadly agree on the presence of sentience in mammals, birds and cephalopods. As such they have affirmed the premise from which folk narrative constructed its world. “In the first twenty years of the 21st century the idea of investigating animal sentience has developed and expanded considerably” (Rowan et al., 2021, 7). There have also been practical results of these findings in formulating laws for animal welfare. Andrew Rowan and his colleagues at Compassion in World Farming have spearheaded the cause of welfare of animals in general and of the farm animals in particular. Through their efforts at lobbying, animal sentience has been recognized and included in EU’s animal laws (Rowan, et al., 2021, 11). This has required years of advocacy and lobbying, and yet scientists and activists are aware that the impact is still negligible and there is a long way to go before politics of states can recognize, acknowledge and make required adjustments in policies as per the scientific understanding of animal sentience. The ascription of nonsentience of animals is difficult to overcome as it is grounded in the modern philosophical consciousness; yet, it is not, by any means, “universal”. Contemporary American philosopher Martha Nussbaum writes in her famous work Justice for Animals (2022) “The belief that ethical sensitivity to our treatment of animals is a recent invention is a sign of ignorance of other world traditions” (Nussbaum, 2022, 21). Philosophical traditions are simultaneously cultural traditions. Modern western philosophy was founded on secular and rational bases and made a break from its own religiously grounded philosophical traditions. Philosophical traditions outside Europe did not necessarily subscribe to the same conviction – that the animals are nonsentient. Even if colonialism brought with it the influence and practice of modern European philosophy and science, precolonial modes of thought and practice did not simply disappear. In the context of colonial narratives about wild animals in India, this contact, and often confrontation, between European and Indian notions of animal sentience played an important role. Martha Nussbaum’s words make sense here (…) we need to believe that the suffering being matters, is part of our circle of concern. (…) Wonder moves many creatures into our circle of concern without being self-referential: our concern is directed to the other as other, and not even as an intrinsically valuable part of our own life (as a relative or friend might be). (Nussbaum, 2022, 14) “Wonder” is at the core of the art of folk narrative, its primary creative tool, with which it spell-binds the recipient. Folk and fairy tales are often referred to as wonder stories.

Introduction  11 Indian modes of thought are visible in the stocks of stories that are widely spread and in people’s practices. Oral narratives and poetry have, since ancient times, played a crucial role in the dissemination of philosophy in the Indian civilization. The extreme popularity and dissemination of these texts in all forms of storytelling for more than 2,000 years would make it logical to accept that they have had influence on the minds of the populace. Their influence can also be seen through cultural-anthropological research. For example, in independent India, the status of certain animals and birds is based on stories and cultural practices: the declaration of peacock as the national bird in 1963 or monkeys receiving the status of a protected animal in 1972. Although these examples simultaneously reflect the dominance of certain modes of thought in the state’s ideology, they do not negate the presence of other ontologies. In the interpretation of stories, another important aspect is most often neglected. Do stories reflect reality or do they impact reality? In other words, is their role limited to reflecting social realities or might they have a critical relationship toward society and try to play a transformative role? The conclusions on the relationship between human and nonhuman animals based on stories are often trapped in these apparent contradictions, when stories contain perhaps both – reflection of realities as well as potential for transformation of social realities. This should be an important consideration, particularly in the interpretation of long-standing narratives like those of Panćatantra and Jataka stories, which were created to “educate”. While the stories are located in a cultural context, treating them as religious stories is a fallacy. One, they have never had that status. Two, the stories themselves are secular in nature. Three, their wide dissemination within and outside the Indian subcontinent speaks for their universal value. Aesop’s fables are known to have been inspired by the Panćatantra tales. No ancient writers (and few modern critics) seem to think of Aesop’s talking animals as having anything at all to do with real animals. But it is worthwhile to reflect on why fable, one of the world’s earliest forms of ethical literature, turned to anthropomorphized animals for its chief protagonists. That is, we can think of the fable animal as a particularly early and dynamic instantiation of an ancient preoccupation with tracking the boundaries between human and animal (Lefkowitz, 2018, 57) And finally, Indian folk narrative is not only comprised of Panćatantra and Jataka tales. There are two reasons for citing narratives from them: one, a pragmatic reason: they are identifiable resources of ancient origin and, two, the long period of continued circulation implies their impact on folk narrative in general. Any modern collection of Indian folk narratives since the nineteenth century also shows the influence and integration of multiple cultural strains it is comprised of (Naithani 2006, 19–55). Even the Indo– European concept relates with a part of the folk narratives, but not all.

12 Introduction Therefore, “indic” is a better term to define the nature of Indian folk narrative than any exclusively religious identification. Within “indic” there are other epistemological traditions that are not referenced here, like those of the tribal peoples in different regions of South Asia whose environmental sensibilities and narratives are deeply rooted in their habitat. In the following, we consider a few, randomly selected narratives that reflect some of the basic principles along which the human–animal relationship has been widely conceptualized in the indic civilization. Once, when Buddha was still there to answer questions, a man shot an arrow at a flying bird, which fell at a certain distance. When the man reached that spot, he found that another man had already picked the bird up. “That is my bird”, said the hunter. “No, it is my bird”, said the other man. “Shooting birds is my livelihood and it belongs to me”, argued the hunter. “I saw the bird falling from the sky, I picked it up; it is wounded and I am trying to save it”, the other man argued back. A dispute had already started and after a while they decided to go to Buddha. They reached his hermitage and found him deep in meditation. When Buddha opened his eyes, he listened to the two men laying their claim, as they both asked “Who does the bird belong to?” Buddha replied without hesitation, “The bird belongs to the man who saved it”. “Why?”, screamed the fowler in desperation. “Because the one who saves life is always bigger than the one who tries to take it”. Saying so, Buddha acknowledged the humane act of the other man in a world of everyday violence against nonhuman animals. The story itself acknowledges that the issue is not only the violence to the bird but also the fact that shooting it is a legitimate form of livelihood. One of the primary justifications for human violence against nonhuman animals is that the man does it for survival, whether by directly satisfying hunger or by selling the prey to earn a livelihood. This violence is at the very core of the human existence on planet Earth, and yet, as Buddha said, it is not justifiable when opposed. In his other lives, Buddha was born as a lizard, crow, iguana, jackal, maned lion, young lion, parrot, vulture, goose and pigeon among many others to show the unity of life and principle of rebirth. Once, he was born as a golden deer. The deer was still very young when seen by a man who lived at the edge of the forest and who decided to lure the deer by placing honey along its way and then change the direction toward his own house. The young deer got hooked to the honey and sought it every day. Finally, the deer landed at the man’s doorstep licking honey all the way; it was captured. Buddha acknowledged his own, that is, the deer’s responsibility in an act of violence against itself. The man’s violence was honey coated and the sweet taste let the deer drop his guard and walk itself into the trap. Metaphorical as the Jataka stories are, this one brings home the point that human beings are violent in myriad ways – deception, luring and entrapping are some of the ways that can function in deadlier ways than weapons. The difference is that while weapons work without the consonance of the victim, other forms engage the victim in ways that the victim becomes complicit in

Introduction  13 the violence against itself. These other forms of violence have as long a tradition as the weapons and continue to be practiced. While reflections on the violent nature of human beings are frequent in Jataka stories, Ahimsa, nonviolence is the core principle of the Jataka tales. This assertion of nonviolence can be understood in two ways: one, that society has traditions of nonviolence that are reflected in the narratives; two, that there is violence against animals in society, which is also reflected in the narratives. In this dialectic situation, the narratives seem to be playing a didactic role in favor of nonviolence. The book of fables, Panćatantra (Sharma, 1995), approaches violence from the point of view of the animals. What does a crow see when he spots a man in the jungle and identifies him as a fowler? One day as he [the crow] was about to fly towards the city in search of food, he saw a fowler approaching the tree with every intention of snaring birds; for he carried a net and a club in his hands and hunting dogs followed at his heels. He was a man of fierce appearance with splayed hands and feet, bloodshot eyes, bulging genitals, thickset, with a very rough, gnarled frame and swarthy complexion; his hair was knotted in a bunch on top of his head. Why describe him at great length? Suffice it to say that he appeared a second god of destruction, noose in hand; the very incarnation of evil and the soul of unrighteousness; prime instructor in crime and bosom friend of death. (Sharma, 1995, 194) That’s how a fowler looks to the crow – fierce and evil. Even if this is the imagination of a human storyteller, trying to see the world through the eyes of a crow, but in making the crow a cognizant being it highlights the experience of violence. It tells us that the nonhuman animals are not just victims of human violence, but also witnesses to the same. A fable is defined as a narrative that uses animals to tell the stories of human society, but in the original books of fables – the Panćatantra – animals are not simply used as dummies, but the story unfolds within their sphere of knowledge and experience. As far as sentience and communication across species is concerned, Panćatantra expresses it succinctly: Any creature understands what is plainly said, An elephant, a horse, when driven, moves on; What is left unsaid, the learned, wise, infer, The intellect sees clearly revealed Another’s true intent and purpose, Gains knowledge from expression of face and eyes, From tone of voice, from gait From gesture and deportment.

(Ibid, 18)

14 Introduction From empirically observable to reflectively interpretable – the range of communication is thus taken care of in two ways: one can empirically observe whether a nonhuman responds to the human command and the wise human can “infer” the mind of a nonhuman from facial expression and body language. That the nonhuman animals have thoughts and feeling is never even questioned. In the narrative tradition of Panćatantra, where all creatures can fathom others through observance of facial expressions and body language, the portrayal of human violence is vivid. On the one hand, it reflects the normative violent practices that existed in society then and do so now; on the other hand, it creates fictional solidarity, cooperation and adjustments across the species. Realistic and nonmoralistic, Panćatantra obliges rulers to formulate an ethical and nonviolent policy toward all live beings. Based on common philosophical principles, Panćatantra and Jataka proceed from the assumption that life is the same in all forms of creatures and thematize violence of humans against nonhumans in many ways. In no tale is there a reference of cruelty against humans from nonhuman beings, but there are a thousand pleas against the violence perpetrated by humans on nonhuman animals. While traditional norms of violence are acknowledged, it is the violence of these traditions that is questioned. The questioning is from the perspective of the rights of nonhuman beings: their right to life, and this right is nonnegotiable. Be it an insect or an elephant, every living creature experiences violence unwillingly and their suffering is equal. The perpetrator of the violence, however, is always human, but so is the savior. In conclusion, then, we can say that belief in the sentience of animals is more definite than belief in the nonviolence of human beings. Panćatantra was meant for the education of princes and to make them good rulers. As such it is concerned with justice that the kings ought to administer. The sentience of all beings speaks of their equality at one level, and at another, of need for justice for all. These stories are known to have been in circulation in the Indian subcontinent since several centuries before the Christian era. Their continued circulation implies their relevance, which in turn implies that myriad rulers over time have been faced with a populace that had these stories in its mind. Some of the great Indian rulers were known for their protection and conservation of wildlife. “From the edicts of Ashoka (circa 262 BC) to the orders of Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1582 CE, the rulers of India were known to protect wild animals based on indic values” (Rashkow, 2015, 282). This broad-based value structure, not codified and with many variations and exceptions, functioned as largely peaceful coexistence of humans with nonhuman animals. In the abovementioned philosophical systems, the human and the nonhuman animals are part of one narrative concerning history. Modern and western epistemologies decentered the nonhuman animals from this narrative by considering them nonsentient. The only actors in history are the human beings and rest are there to be done to as the human pleases. This perception has also guided the writing of history as the history of human beings. All forms of history writing – political, social, cultural and economic – are concerned with humans even though none of these aspects of human

Introduction  15 life were without the involvement of nonhuman beings. With the advent of modern natural sciences, the environmental and biological evolutionary histories have gained significance, but as almost unconnected to social history. The writing of colonial history too has been focused on humans alone until very recently. Zeb Tortorici and Martha Few’s work Centering Animals in Latin American History (2013) does what its title promises to do – to see the history of colonization of Latin America by European settlers with focus on the treatment of, engagement with and narrativizing of the nonhuman animals in the process. Introducing the premise of their work, Tortorici and Few say we want to pose the question of what Latin American histories would look like if we choose as the standpoint of our observation a focus not only on the human-animal interaction but also on the experiences and histories of the nonhuman actor in the unfolding of history. (Ibid, 3) They make two important shifts by their choice of the “standpoint of observation”: one, it is not merely a history of human–animal interaction; two, they want to write the histories of animals from the experiences they have had in the course of human history. It seems, the lion may find a historian from among the human historians. Skeptics would say, how do we know the “experiences” of animals? We will, if we looked beyond the experiences of our own species. Tortorici and Few are also aware of “the methodological challenges inherent in writing histories of animals”, particularly because the documents on which histories are based were “created by and for humans” (Ibid, 3). They ask themselves “Does the centering of animals – the transforming of nonhuman animals into central actors in the historical narrative – provide us with significantly different versions of the past than those historical works that solely present animals as visible and important factors in history?” (Ibid, 3). The collection of essays their book contains answers this question in varying degrees as the task of centering animals is new and daunting due to the long tradition of documents and histories from the human perspective. In the process, they found that even without the intention to center the nonhuman animals, the historical and judicial archives in colonial Mexico and Guatemala, for example, brings to light a number of files in the colonial period involving all sorts of animals (as well as animal parts and commodities): bestiality, animal-abuse, bullfights and cockfights, crop destruction by insects and roving domesticated animals, cochineal dye production, feral animals, abigeato (the stealing of livestock), shape-shifting, witchcraft (…). (Ibid, 4) These examples from the list of contents in colonial files concerning animals in Mexico and Guatemala are very revealing for many other colonial spaces.

16 Introduction The specifics may vary, but the point is that the role of animals in transforming the histories of both the colonizers and the colonized was so significant that considering them “actors” in history hardly requires justification. Continents were colonized as much by wars, conquests and annihilation of people as by destruction of animals in the colonies and induction of animals from the colonizers’ countries. In other words, colonized included nonhumans and colonizers included nonhumans. The difference between humans and nonhumans in the colonial context is that the narrative of the colonized nonhumans remains untold, while the colonizing nonhumans never willed to do what they were made to do. History without the “nonhuman actors” is then not based on facts of history, but of history writing. The facts of history are: one, that nonhumans were part of all historical phases, and two, that in the folk narrative, nonhumans had as central a role as the humans. These two facts entwined in that they impacted each other. We will see in the forthcoming chapters of this book how folk narrative too was a factor in history. That the narratives coming from ancient times continue to be narrated is evidence of the grip of the folk narrative on the minds of the people. Yet, narrative history is made up of layers upon layers – it is a palimpsest. Ancient narrative may continue, but that does not mean that others have not been added constantly to the repertoire of folk narrative. Today the ancient narratives must coexist with other narratives. That they continue to exist, shows their strength. That they exist along with others, shows their relativization in society; they are not the only one impacting the minds – there are others too. This coexistence may also not be harmonious as different narratives reflect different faiths, philosophies and histories. Their dominance in society depends on several questions, primarily on the dominance, or otherwise, of their creators. The changing power structures in human society impact the status of narratives in society too. Intangible as the grip of narratives is, it is a matter of research to determine which narrative grip is stronger at any given point of time. The narrative grips are not challenged every day, but only at certain points of time in history. The question is, can we trace the history of this clash of narrative grips? The following chapters of this book trace the intangible grips and a warfare between different and competing narrative grips in the context of British India. Colonialism created one such point of time in which different narratives clashed with each other. In the following, we will see the evidence of this clash of narratives and determine whether any side won at all. Colonialism encompassed the entire world, in one way or another, and although a global study alone would bring forth the complete picture, yet that is too vast a field. This study offers research into the colonial narratives about nonhuman beings in the location of South Asia, that is, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These three nations were Britain’s colony as one nation; the creation of the subcontinent of India into three nations is itself deeply embedded in the process of colonialism, but that is not the subject of this study. To the actual

Introduction  17 subjects of this study – the nonhuman beings – these divisions do not matter anyway. Most of the animals in the list of endangered and critically endangered list of animals today also belong to locations that are erstwhile colonies of the nations that considered themselves the harbingers of modernity and claimed to be bringing modernity, civilization and science to others. “Folk narrative” as a category varies in definition in every age, but the three major characteristics to define narratives as folk narrative are: medium of communication, ownership or authorship and distribution of the narrative. These definitions often vary at the popular and scholarly levels. The earliest definitions identify folk narrative as being oral, without author and well known to all members of the community. It has remained the most popular definition even though within scholarly literature it has been questioned and redefined. Therefore, an explanation is required as to why we classify the materials chosen for this study – British writings on Indian wildlife – as modern folk narratives. Regarding the means of communication, folk narrative’s association with orality is considered genetic; in actuality, folk narrative has been communicated through all forms of communication: visual, oral, print, cinema and digital. If orality was the significant mode of distribution of folk narratives in premodern times, then print became a vital means since the advent of the printing machine. Many early films were cinematic and silent telling of folk narratives in many different countries. Films based on folk narratives continue to be made. Digital and web-based media have only increased the communication of folk narrative across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Medium being the message itself, each medium did not just retell the tale, but transformed the tale itself. The important thing for our consideration is that it is not the means of communication that determines whether a narrative is folk narrative or not. The second element in the definition of folk narrative are the producers of folk narrative. The absence of an individual author is a typical situation for folk narrative. While this is generally correct, yet several tales and cycles of tales or group of tales have had an identified author, like Vishnu Sharma for Panćatantra. The general absence of an author in addition to the widespread knowledge of narratives has led to the “community” being seen as the teller/ author/owner of the folk narrative. The only feature of the folk narrative that has remained constant in its definition is related to its presence among the common people of any age. Its widespread distribution, narration and identity have defined folk narrative as narrative of the folk. It does not mean that each member of the group knows each narrative, but it means that the narrative is widespread enough to become part of the social discourse. In this process, the authorship, even if known at an early stage, may often be lost. The change of medium of communication too might erase the original author. According to Vladimir Propp, if a poetic text exists among common people and its presence is evidenced in many variants, it deserves to be called folk narrative. The variants are the

18 Introduction evidence that it has been integrated through reformulation by the folk. If an authored work of literature becomes so popular as to lose its connection with the name of the author and gain many variants, it is folklore. He defined folklore as two types of lore: “In the first case (…) folklore both by origin and by transmission; in the second case (…) folklore by transmission but literature in origin” (Propp 1984, 9). The materials chosen here are so widely distributed in most of the cases that their authorship does not matter anymore. Narratives have played a significant role in the human perception of nonhuman animals and other forms of life on planet. They have been based on human observation of life on Earth and expressed imaginative, creative and fictional narratives; they have been based on historical contexts and experiences; and they are based on our increasing scientific knowledge about nonhuman beings and plants. The common thing about them is: if well told, the narrative form of knowledge grips the minds of its recipients like none other. This grip cuts across several divisions in human societies and exercises its power in the form of cultural practices, as also in the form of community rules or national laws. The example of folk narratives is a case in point, and the analysis of the British colonial writings on Indian wildlife in this book will present a different case. However, the colonial context also shows that narratives have to fight to keep, or, fight to gain, that grip on the human mind. If a new kind of narrative establishes its grip on people, it will not only displace a set of narratives but also the associated worldviews, practices and thus, culture. The importance of narratives in our perception of other forms of life cannot be overstated. It is in this light that British writings on Indian wildlife are important: they created a new narrative culture through their depiction of the Indian wild animals. Let us see what were the historical and philosophical fundamentals of their paradigm and how it impacted the wild animals of India. What Happened to Them? It was in 1683 that a leaflet was printed in London, titled A True and Perfect Description of the Strange and Wonderful She-Elephant Sent from the Indies, which arrived at London, August 1, 1683. With the True Portraiture of that Wonder in Nature. There was a sketch of an elephant right under the mast of what looks like the page of a newspaper. The text began That mighty Creature, called the Elephant, exceedeth all other beasts in the world; both in its vast proportion of Body, & Wonderfull [sic] Disposition of Mind; there hath been but one of them before that in England. Before the Macedonian made excursion into Asia, no People of the World except the Indian and the African had seen them. Herewith started the reporting of the new wonders of the world – wild animals from the lands that the British and other European powers were seeking

Introduction  19 to plunder. The She-Elephant that had arrived in London was almost one of the first ones to have made such a journey across seas, had been separated from her loved ones, from her habitat and from her food. Did anyone wonder how she was feeling? Was she afraid, was she cold, was she in panic? Most certainly, she was lonely and cognizant of the strange place she had been brought to. Maybe they tried to keep her safe so as to be able to display her, but anything more than that? In any case, this report about the SheElephant stood at the start of a new tradition of narratives – narratives about the wild and free animals of India. In 1683, India was not yet a colony of the British Empire, but the narratives about the wildlife became an important factor in the portrayal of the subcontinent. The subject had narrative importance as it attracted people from all walks of life. More than a century later in 1807, Captain Thomas Williamson of the East India Company produced a book Illustrations of Indian Field Sports and “dedicated [it] to His Majesty King George the Third”. Within one century, since the report on the SheElephant in 1683, the narrative had already gained other dimensions. Captain Williamson wrote in his Preface of more than 40 plates of illustrations. It is not merely to the Sportsman that this work is addressed. It is offered to the Public as depicting the Manners, Customs, Scenery, and Costume of a territory, now intimately blended with the British Empire, and of such importance to its welfare, as to annex a certain degree of consequence to every publication, that either exhibits, or professes to impart, a knowledge of whatever may hitherto have been concealed, or that remains unfolded to our view. (Williamson, 1807/1892, vii) The narrative of the wild animals now included the humans they lived closed to. It was an imagination of India that was “now intimately blended with the British Empire”. Technically, India was still not a colony of the British Empire, but British power in India was already big. Captain Williamson also spelt out how his narrative communicated through the illustrations was useful for different sections of the British people Herein the British Nimrod may view, with no small satisfaction, a new and arduous species of the Chase. The curious observer of Nature will feel equal transport, in contemplating that part of her works, which she has appropriated to other soils. The Artist may reap a rich harvest of information, enabling him, not only to comprehend more fully the scenery of the torrid zone, but to adorn his own compositions with a greater variety of those beauties, which the climate and narrow limits of his own country cannot furnish. The Philosopher and the Historian may either confirm or correct their conceptions of former details; and to say the least, even those who, devoid of care for the past or for the

20 Introduction future, seek for present recreation only, may in these pages find that which, either from its novelty or attraction, may help them to pass with pleasure through many a lingering hour. (Ibid, viii) So, from the hunter to the philosopher and from the artist to the intellectual, along with the common person – everyone had something to gain, or, one could say, everyone was interested in India and her resources from different points of view. The narrative about the Indian wildlife was firmly entrenched in the British society and this had followed a process in which the narrative had impacted the reality – apart from other riches and attractions of India, her wild animals were another resource to be enjoyed, plundered and traded. A new genre in popular storytelling had taken root – narratives about the wildlife of India. These narratives were put out as nonfictional accounts of experienced reality, but were written with creativity and for a very wide readership. The element of storytelling had to be strong and compelling to make these interesting for the readers and to create an image of the self (the writer), the country (India) and the nonhuman denizens of the forest. Although the human denizens of India were not the main subject of these narratives, yet it was impossible not to include them in the narrative, just as it was impossible to experience the Indian wildlife without the help, guidance and assistance of Indians. The writers were British hunters, artists and officials in India, all the categories of people that Captain Williamson had sought to attract. The Inhuman Empire is a study of a selected set of narratives from this new genre of storytelling, which narrates how the British officials hunted the wild animals of India’s forests and then wrote accounts of their exploits which were eagerly consumed by the public in Britain, other European countries and the Unites States of America. “India as the land of jungles, tigers, elephants, leopards, antelopes, musk deer, boars, bison, rhino, birds, snakes, butterflies and fishes” was created by hundreds of personal accounts published over more than a century. They were popular narratives of their time that impacted not only the imagination of India but also the reality of India’s wild animals. The interest of the postcolonial scholars has been less with the narratives per say and more with the historical transformation of India’s forests and wildlife in terms of statistics.1 In the following chapters of this book, the analysis is focused on understanding the narrative construction of the wild animals of India by British authors. Through these narrative constructions it can be seen how the nonhuman animals of the wild were impacted by colonialism, the actual violence they experienced, their attempts to escape the situation and the counternarrative constructions of the Indian people about the nonhuman animals as well as about the British hunters and writers. Like all the other achievements of the British in colonizing India, the destruction of her wildlife too would not have been possible without the help of Indians. The texts under analysis also reflect as to who was participating and why, and, who was resisting

Introduction  21 British hunting. The next step leads to the wonderment: is there a narrative of those who were hunted and decimated, that is, of the nonhuman animals? We proceed from the position that the animals that were hunted were sentient beings, which compels us to realize that mammals, aviary and reptiles experienced the violence not as big numbers that appear in records, but individually, on their bodies and minds. Needless to say, this is an extremely difficult, maybe impossible, quest to find their narratives. Yet, glimpses of their struggle are at times visible in the records of their killing. These have not received any attention, but as we move toward understanding the nonhuman animals better, attention to the fragments of information is important to at least acknowledge the sentient cognition, courage, curiosity and suffering of the nonhumans in the process of human history of colonialism. Like that of all vanquished people, their narrative has been buried in history. This book attempts to exhume their narrative. It is an attempt to see the tragedy not only in big numbers but also the way it became a tragedy, the way it was executed, the way it was taken cognition of and the resistance that was mounted. Numbers and arguments do not communicate how the perpetrators of violence felt about their own acts, how their fellow men and women felt about their acts and what made them go on. To understand the experience of the destruction of wildlife in a three-dimensional perspective, looking at those destroying, participating/resisting and suffering the loss of life or liberty is important. Crimes against wildlife continue to happen, are reported too, but leave the common people unaffected, unmoved and passive. This is so because they are unable to “feel for the animals”, to use a common expression and, thus, unable to realize that they could play a role in preventing the violence and conserving what they still have left. Given the global rise in human population, it is expected that human–animal conflicts will increase in the future. We need to ask if it is possible to change the direction of this collusion foretold and develop possibilities of a more harmonious multispecies world. Lessons are embedded in the past and learning them might help us to find ways of coexistence and avert the tragedies still awaiting us. Therefore, it is required to bring forth animal sentience on the one hand and on the other, their suffering caused by humans. Since the mutually intelligible speech and language were taken away, as the story goes, their cries are silenced or we can easily pretend not to understand them. How is it then possible to tell the narrative of those who have not written their history? The counter question is: isn’t that what the colonizers said about their human colonized subjects, that they have not written their history and are therefore, people without history? Consequently, they took it upon themselves to tell the history of the colonized. Those colonized subjects have tried and are still trying to tell their history. A changed world is also listening to their history. This is possible because they are human beings and speak languages that can be translated. The nonhuman animals do not speak in languages we can understand; in fact, most humans believe that they do not even have languages. So, how can their narratives be retold?

22 Introduction The history of the vanquished is embedded in the records of the victors. The history of victory could not be recorded without the inclusion of those who were eventually vanquished. Before being vanquished they were there, to be fought with, and the victor must narrate that story to establish the eventual victory. No matter how much the victor manipulates the image of the opponent, the fragments of the reality of those who lost the war yet come across. They come across when we decide not to depend on one single narrative, particularly the official record. In this work, we analyze multiple narratives of victories over the wild and free animals created by many victors. The intention of the authors was to glorify themselves, but along with revealing themselves, they reveal the response of others in their field – animals and humans. As we will see in tiny fragments of information, the nonhuman actors were responding to the situation of stress in their own ways. Animal sentience in these cases is an unverifiable possibility, but these fragments contain the possibility to construct the unheard narratives. This is the method with which I will try to exhume the narratives of the wild denizens of Indian forests and what they experienced at the hands of human beings – British or Indian – as cognizant beings. Another factor important for this research is the Indian folk narrative tradition. An intangible aspect indeed, but significantly important as we will see. Humans make sense of their world through narratives and almost all creatures of Indian wildlife as well as free animals were part and parcel of folk narrative. Considering that some of these have been identified to have been part of Indian narrative culture since the fifth century B.C., it is not farfetched to assume that their grip on the mind and culture in India was strong. Many animals, wild and free, were also part of the religious stories and as such also had religious sanctions and statuses of being considered sacred. When the British officials confronted the Indian jungles and animals, they also found themselves faced with Indian folk narratives in the form of beliefs and practices, and at times, in the form of resistance. This intangible factor was not a weak factor and, in the case of certain animals, became a defense that no guns could penetrate. We will also take this factor into consideration for our analysis while recognizing its fluidity, different meanings for different people and above all, its intangibility. The question is: what is Indian folk narrative tradition? Given the diversity of communities, beliefs, social structures, languages and cultures, it is not possible to have a cohesive understanding and definition. Apart from the modern collections of folklore, compiled since the nineteenth century, Indian folk narrative tradition is identified with older collections of narratives that were not identified as “folklore collections”, yet their source is in the oral narratives’ tradition. Two of the largest compilations of stories that remain in active circulation since the fifth century BC are: Panćatantra and Jataka Tales. Indian narrative tradition started with telling the stories of animals and through them telling the story of the human society as well. The Panćatantra stories did not only use animals as metaphors but was also based on acute

Introduction  23 observation of animals, their behavior and habitat. The images and characters created through these narratives are part of the cultural imagination. They exist as proverbs, as images and as everyday philosophy of the people. The Jataka tales are the tales of Buddha’s many lives. In several of his many lives, he was also an animal, while in others he was a hunter. The stories became the carriers of the Buddhist philosophy of life, allowing the issues to be seen from many perspectives. Both the Panćatantra and Jataka stories are so widely spread that often people do not even know that they are participating in the retelling of a set of stories. The third set of stories concerns Hindu religious stories and myths wherein several animals function as “vehicles” of the gods. Tiger, peacock, bull and others thus gained sacred status. It is well known that cow is the sacred animal of the Hindus, but it is not only the cow that is sacred but several other animals are too. The fourth set of narratives come from certain customs of the people. These customs may be more localized over a small area, but their hold on the local practices is also very strong. As per these customs, people may not have harmed even dangerous animals like snakes. The impact of the folk narrative traditions shows that the stories were connected to practices and customs and as such were challenged by the British colonial state, its policies as well as the hunters’ practices. The job of the tradition is not to keep things the same (Cristina Bacchilega in personal communication), but to keep integrating the changes and becoming new. We shall see in the following pages how the narrative traditions and their places in the lives of the people were transformed under the British practices. The focus of the critique of colonialism has been on the human beings: how people of certain countries exploited people of certain other countries; how some people gained and others lost material wealth; how the gain and loss of material wealth created new identities; how the identities and wealth gained/lost defines the current structure of the world, the power relations between rich and poor countries, the ongoing cultural imperialism of the erstwhile colonizing nations, the ongoing resistance and search for identity of the erstwhile colonized and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, the Earth that the erstwhile colonizers and colonized, rich and poor, inhabit has suffered so much from their activity that it threatens all of them with climate change. And yet, they cannot come to an agreement on how to resolve their differences. While they suffer the consequences of the acts of their ancestors and contemporaries, all other beings on Earth suffer the consequences of man’s actions. Yet, because we have the power to reconsider and reevaluate the narratives of our human ancestors and to tell new and different narratives, we must reevaluate and try to redeem the lost mutually intelligible language. The texts treated as “narratives” in this work can be identified as British writing on the wildlife of India. These are not fictions but “accounts” of personal experience and knowledge of the wildlife of India written by British colonial officers. Historians, anthropologists and some scientists have written about the environmental aspects of the British colonial rule: forest policies, hunting of animals and response of the local populace and similar subject.

24 Introduction They have shown how forest policy was part of the larger resource exploitation of the colonized and how the hunting for pleasure and for commerce negatively impacted the forests and the wildlife of India, leading to severe deforestation and loss of wildlife to the point of extinction of some species and endangerment of the survival of many other. The Indian tiger and the elephants have been at the center of postcolonial research. This book offers a close textual analysis of some of the texts of the British period that are not very well known today, some are almost forgotten, but they were formidable texts of their time which were widely read, particularly in England and elsewhere. They impacted the public imagination and led to the emergence of an image of India as the land of forests and wild animals. Some of the Indian wild animals became world famous through these works. While they reflected policy and their writers might have also gained in the development of their careers within the British colonial state, yet the point of studying them is located in their capacity as widely read books that impacted the common people’s imagination about India and her jungle denizens. They were not identified as works of fiction, and that was their claim to authenticity – people read them thinking they were telling them about reality, but the style of telling was meant to stir the imagination. The writers of these works were not unconscious of the popular appeal of their subject of writing and wrote for the common people. They knew that their works would and could compete with works of fiction and at times surpass the popularity of fictional works. This consciousness guided their style of writing and the works that will be under consideration here achieved that aim. It is because of their popular appeal as also because of their style that these works will be treated as “narratives”, that is, as texts that are not fiction but employ tools of storytelling. They combine elements of ethnography, science, reportage, autobiography, hunters’ accounts and colonial propaganda. They also combine elements of fantasy. These “accounts” were written chiefly from memory and several writers admit to using elements of storytelling while narrating “actual” events. R. G. Burton put this succinctly: How much of this story is fact, and how much is fancy? Certainly, there is in the early part some of ‘the stuff that dreams are made on’, but even where a dream-child haunts these pages, imagination and reality are closely interwoven and every incident is an episode of actual life within the knowledge or experience of the writer. While some liberties have been taken in relation to time and persons, all activities herein described have been arranged in narrative form in order to give cohesion to a tale of adventure which would otherwise have to be divided into disconnected periods. (Burton, 1936, 15) These are indeed the ingredients of the writings discussed in this book: reality/actuality, fantasy, experience and knowledge gained from the experience of others.

Introduction  25 As to why it is important to analyze them as “narratives” and not merely as historical accounts is to be able to the elements that each text is created with and ask whether there is one or more patterns that emerge, that is, is each text unique in itself or does it participate in a paradigm. It is also important to see these texts as narratives to be able to hear more than the voice of the chief narrator. A narrative must construct characters to be able to communicate and these characters gain a personality of their own and sometimes slip out of the strong control of the narrators. While these texts are not fiction, but based on real experiences of the writers, the portrayals are more than what the author intended them to be. While most of the writers on these texts have been focused on the intention of the writer, this analysis is going to focus on that which is beyond the intention of the author. We read the texts differently in that we ask what do the texts tell us more than what the author intended to tell us, or, while author’s intention was rooted in his own time and context, what is the meaning of these texts today, or, how can they be read with a different perspective from that of the author. The intention of this research is to see what exactly was happening in the locations described by the author, that is, not just to see what the author was doing, but how he was doing it, how others actors in the field were behaving toward the author and how all the characters were interacting with each other. These characters include nonhuman animals. There is a problem in writing about nonhuman animals: how to understand what they are trying to say? Folk narrative proceeds from the assumption that they are sentient beings, are cognizant and above all, responsive to the situation. For the more rationalist approach, the problem is that of speech and language at one level, and at another level, the problem is how do the nonhuman animals think? While the first problem can be compensated with an interpretation of acts, the second problem cannot be overcome. So, we have to base our interpretation of the nonhuman animals on their acts, whereby the problem is that their acts are described by human beings, often their adversaries. In a dialectical turn of logic, those describing the nonhuman animals could also not read their mind and therefore were compelled to describe in detail, even if only to justify their own actions. They had to base their description on the empirical, that is, on what they could see the animals doing. This close textual analysis will attempt to understand what the world of nonhuman animals in Indian jungles was before the British entered their space and how it changed for them. Tangentially related to our subject of discussion is the theme of cruelty to animals, particularly with reference to hunting as sport. All the texts we have selected for the analysis in this work are born in the context of hunting in colonial India. The debate, whether hunting is cruelty or not, has been ongoing for a long time and is also a very current one. In her article An Evaluative Review of Theories Related to Animal Cruelty (2014), Eleonora Gullone cites Frank Ascione’s definition as the most famous one. According to Ascione animal cruelty is “socially unacceptable behaviour that intentionally causes unnecessary, pain, suffering to and/or death of an animal” (Gullone, 2014, 37).

26 Introduction Various animal rights groups today, including PETA have argued against hunting being permitted as a sport. PETA’s website says “Although it was a crucial part of humans’ survival 100,000 years ago, hunting is now nothing more than a violent form of recreation that the vast majority of hunters do not need for subsistence” (PETA 2023). Other animals rights activists have also objected to hunting being legally permitted (IDAUSA.org 2023). While academics and hunters may debate and split hair about the value of hunting, to the common people, hunting seems necessarily involving cruelty and not really being required as a form of subsistence today. As we shall see in the analysis of the colonial texts, the common-sensical view will appear to be correct beyond any measure. Even in the nineteenth century, the situations where hunting was a form of subsistence were few and by themselves not capable of causing the decimation of the animals concerned. The other category in Ascione’s definition is “socially unacceptable behaviour”. The question is, in the colonial context, unacceptable to which society? By all accounts, it seems that it was socially acceptable in the hunters’ home country of Great Britain, but was certainly not acceptable to large sections of the Indian society. Moreover, “socially” implies as per human society. Today, we know that animals also live in communities, observe rules of social behavior and grieve the loss of community members. This was certainly the case with some of the animals hunted in colonial India, like the elephants. “Necessary pain” is an ironical category and can be upheld in medical treatment or certain other special circumstances. Otherwise, infliction of pain and suffering can hardly be considered necessary. Other scholars have added to Ascione’s definition of the category of unnecessary suffering and pain caused to sentient beings. Once again, the texts will speak for themselves whether wild animals were sentient and experienced pain. One element that has not entered any definition is whether the hunter was aware of the pain caused and at times also felt moved by it. The close textual analysis will offer us several and varied instances to answer this question. Taking into consideration many definitions of animal cruelty, Gullone formulates the following definition: Animal cruelty is behavior performed repetitively and proactively by an individual with the deliberate intention of causing harm (i.e., pain, suffering, distress, and/or death) to an animal with the understanding that the animal is motivated to avoid that harm. Included in this definition are both physical harm and psychological harm. As with the literature on human aggression, animal cruelty at the more extreme end of the aggression dimension (e.g., burning while alive, torture, murder, rape, assault as compared to teasing, hitting, tormenting), should be considered a violent subtype of animal cruelty. (Ibid, 38) Gullone also discusses theories that argue that behavior involving animal cruelty is also connected to violence against humans (Ibid, 38–40).

Introduction  27 These definitions and questions raised by them will remain in active consideration in the process of the following analysis. Hunting wild animals in the colonial context is part of a far larger paradigm – the paradigm of overall colonial culture. Hunting was an important part of colonial culture. Culture is not merely ways of living, but also ways of killing. Culture is not made up of only creative and productive practices, but of multiples of different kinds of practices. Cultural practices are directly and indirectly governed by the current “worldview” within a society. Culture in totality is created by these multiples. What makes a practice part of a culture is the approval it receives from society, and hunting by officers like Shakespear certainly had not only the approval but also the appreciation of the British society in India and Britain. That is why there is similarity in colonial administrative, academic and hunting practices. British Writings on Indian Fauna The number of books on Indian fauna, authored by colonial British writers is very huge, by one estimate: over 400 books written over two centuries (Divyabhanusinh, 2005, 11). Other forms of narratives on the subject: illustrations, children’s books, letters etc. would make the corpus even bigger. For The Inhuman Empire, five authors have been selected for analysis. Their works cover a century of British writing on wild animals of India. They represent the time period (1860–1947), that is, from the peak of British power in India to its closure as marked by the independence of India in 1947. The oldest of these works was published in 1860. Two of the five writers witnessed India under the rule of East India Company, the revolt of 1857 and the takeover by the British Crown in 1858. Two authors wrote in the period of stability when the British rule expanded its reach across the subcontinent and into the deepest of forests in India. One author experienced the last 75 years of British rule in India, the rise and spread of the Indian freedom movement and the independence of India. Between all the authors then we see Indian wildlife at the time British Crown took over from the East India Company and at the time when it left India. Four authors are known for one seminal work each, but the fifth author is known for several works, all internationally renowned. The authors and works selected for analysis are: Major Henry Shakespear: T  he Wild Sports of India (2nd Edition 1862) (1st edition 1860) Captain James Forsyth: The Highlands of Central India (1889) G. P. Sanderson: Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India (6th Edition 1907) (1st edition 1878) John Lockwood Kipling: Beast and Man in India (1904) (First edition published in 1891) Jim Corbett: All Works (1944–1954) as compiled in Jim  Corbett Omnibus (2023)

28 Introduction The authors of the first two works: Henry Shakespear and James Forsyth were company officials, but primarily hunters. The third author G. P. Sanderson was a government official whose position was that of an Elephant Catcher. The fourth author John Lockwood Kipling (father of Rudyard Kipling) was a professor of architectural sculpture and principal of the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art in Mumbai, later Curator of the Lahore Museum and never shot a single animal. The fifth author Jim Corbett was of Irish descent, born and brought up in the foothills of Himalayas, knew no other place as home but India, worked for long as a railway contractor, but was since his childhood interested in the forest and the animals of Himalayas. He became an official hunter for the purpose of killing man-eater tigers and simultaneously started the idea of tiger conservation. The five writers portray five different regions of India: Shakespear wrote mainly about the Deccan, Sanderson about the south and east India, Forsyth about central India, Kipling about pan India, but mainly north and west, and Corbett about the Himalayas. All, except one, wrote about wild animals and people living in close vicinity of the forests. The exception – John Kipling – wrote about domestic, common and free animals, birds and reptiles. Kipling’s work is different from others in that it is a true ethnography of man–animal relations in India based on peoples’ beliefs and customs, but all writers wrote about human and nonhuman animals with varying degrees of focus on the two. Chapter 1 analyzes the works of Henry Shakespear and James Forsyth with references to their hunting practices. Chapter 2 is a study of G. P. Sanderson’s famous work on elephants and his role as a government elephant catcher. Chapter 3 engages with John Kipling’s book as an animal ethnography. Chapter 4 is intended as a bridge between the first three chapters and Chapter 5 analyzes several works of Jim Corbett. Chapter 6 places the insights gained through the close textual analyses in Chapters 1–5 in reference to the social scientific scholarship on colonial hunting practices and environmental policies. Chapter 7 engages with the question of human–animal relationship with reference to current thinking on the subject in the fields of cultural anthropology, philosophy and narrative studies. Note 1 The scholarship in this field of study will be the subject of Chapter 6.

Works Cited Broom, Donald M. (2016) Considering animals’ feelings: Précis of Sentience and animal welfare (Broom 2014). Animal Sentience. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling. 5(1) DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1015. pp. 1–11. Broom, Donald M. 2020. Brain Complexity, Sentience and Welfare. Animal Sentience. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling. 29(27) DOI: 10.51291/23777478.1613. pp. 1–4.

Introduction  29 Burton, R. G. Brigadier-General. 1936. The Tiger Hunters. London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd. Divyabhanusinh. 2005. The Story of Asia’s Lions. Mumbai: Marg Publications. Gullone, Eleonora. 2014. An Evaluative Review of Theories Related to Animal Cruelty. Journal of Animal Ethics, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 2014), University of Illinois Press. pp. 37–57 Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/janimalethics.4.1.0037 Harnad, Stevan. 2016. Animal Sentience: The Other Minds Problem. Animal Sentience. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling, Vol. 1(1). DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1065. pp. 1–10. Higgins, Jackie. 2022: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of our Human Senses. NY, London: Atria Books. IDAUSA (In Defense of Animals, USA) 2023 https://www.idausa.org/campaign/ wild-animals-and-habitats/hunting/ Accessed on September 17, 2023. Le Guin, Ursula K. 2012. The Unreal and the Real. New Yok: Saga Press. Lefkowitz, Jeremy B. 2018. Reflection: Listening to Aesop’s Animals. Adamson, Peter and Edwards, G. Fay (Ed.) Animals: A History. pp. 59–62. People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) 2023 https://www.peta.org/issues/ wildlife/wildlife-factsheets/sport-hunting-cruel-unnecessary/ Accessed on September 17, 023. Powell, E. B. 1895: Jataka. (This is a six volume text of the Pali stories of the Buddha’s former births. It was originally issued in print by Cambridge University Press and by Luzac and Co. between 1895 and 1907. You can find various print editions on line, but the text itself is now in the public domain). Propp, Vladimir. 1984. Theory and History of Folklore. Translated by Ariadna Y. Martin and Richard P. Martin. Edited, with an Introduction by Anatoly Liberman. Manchester University Press. Rashkow, Ezra. 2015. Resistance to Hunting in Pre-independence India: Religious Environmentalism, Ecological Nationalism or Cultural Conservation. Modern Asian Studies. Vol. 3/2015. Röhrich, Lutz. 1991: Folktales and Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Rowan, Andrew, Joyce D-Silva, Ian J. Duncan, Nicholas Palmer. 2021: Animal Sentence: History, Science and Politics. Animal Sentience. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling. Vol. 31(1). DOI: 10.51291/2377-7478.1697 Sharma, Vishnu. 1995. The Panćatantra. Translated by Chandra Rajan. Penguin Classics. Tortorici, Zeb and Martha Few. 2013. Centering Animals in Latin American History: Writing Animals into Latin American History. 1st ed. Duke University Press. Williamson, Captain Thomas. 1807/1892. Illustrations of Indian Field Sports. Westminster, Archibald Constable and Company. MDCCCXCII (1892).

1 The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives Major Henry Shakespear’s The Wild Sports of India (1860, 1862) and Captain James Forsyth’s The Highlands of Central India (1889) This chapter is a study of two authors and their books: Major Henry Shakespear’s The Wild Sports of India (1860, 1862) and Captain J. Forsyth’s The Highlands of Central India (1889). There is not much information available about Henry Shakespear although his book was widely read at the time of its publication. We learn about him being an officer in the East India Company before 1857 and subsequently in the British Government of India. James Forsyth is recorded in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Forsyth, James (1838–1871), administrator and traveller in India, entered the civil service after receiving a university education in England and taking the degree of MA. He went to India as assistant conservator and acting conservator of forests. In a short time he was appointed settlement officer and deputy commissioner of Nimar, and served with distinction under Sir Richard Temple, chief commissioner of the Central Provinces. Forsyth acquired a wide reputation as a hunter (…) Forsyth, who was attached to the Bengal staff corps, made a complete tour of the Central Provinces of India in 1862–4, penetrating to Amarkantak, near the sources of the Narbada, the Mahanadi, and the Son. (Smith, 2004) According to the same record, he returned to England and died in 1871 and his book The Highlands of Central India was published posthumously, later in the same year. This book is under discussion in this chapter, and it was based on that “complete tour of the Central Provinces of India in 1862–4, penetrating to Amarkantak, near the sources of the Narbada, the Mahanadi, and the Son”. Both the authors – Shakespear and Forsyth – belong to the generation that saw the transition in the administration of India from the rule of the East India Company to that of the British Crown. Another similarity is that they project themselves essentially as hunters and their books were written as manuals for hunting and rifles for the British men desirous of a career in India. DOI: 10.4324/9781032700489-2

The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives  31 Henry Shakespear: Out to Kill Major Henry Shakespear opened the preface to the first edition of his book The Wild Sports of India (1860) with reference to the revolt of 1857. Since the commencement of this work, England has been surprised and horrified by the terrible mutiny and revolt of Bengal army, and by the cruel enormities committed by the men who had taken the oath of fealty and allegiance to the East India Government. (Ibid, ix) The point, however, was not to make a comment on the revolt itself but to further the cause of arms training of the British men. In his opinion, British men had fallen helpless and almost unresisting victims, who, had they been acquainted with the use of their weapons, and accustomed to handle them, as well as manage their horses at speed, might have escaped, or, at least, have sold their lives dearly, and died in arms. (Ibid, ix) His book about the wild sports of India, that is, about hunting the wild animals in Indian forests, was to surpass his expectations in sales and popularity (Ibid, v). Within two years, he was writing the preface to the second edition. While the reference to the revolt of 1857 vanished from the preface in the second edition, he was able to draw the connection between hunting wild animals and being a soldier far more clearly: The training that makes a sportsman makes a soldier; it gives him endurance, and ability to stand exposure to the sun and climate; it gives him an eye for country, in addition to the advantages enumerated in the preface to the first edition, viz, familiarity with danger: and I could mention names of men greatly distinguished for their conduct throughout their entire career in India, and most especially during the late Mutiny; who have been well known for their courage and skill in all noble woodcraft; who have from their early days followed pursuit recommended in this book, with advantage to their own health, and what is of more consequence, to the benefit of mankind in general. (Shakespeare, 1862, vi–vii) It is a rather unique reasoning that being a good hunter will make British young men good soldiers or rather make them fight off the rebellious Indians, were a situation like the 1857 to arise again. There is something akin to killing wild animals and the ability to kill natives. Seen in another way, training

32  The Hunted, their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives to kill wild animals in India is also a training to kill Indians, or defending yourself from wild animals is like defending yourself from natives, for that is the ultimate motive. To say that people like Henry Shakespear belonged to a time and generation that believed in hunting and lived by fighting man-toman wars is to overlook the obvious – that killing was not a natural act for them either, but they had the purpose: the purpose to gain control of another land, another people, including their other-than-human living beings. To people like him, everything looked like it was up for grabs. If one imagines that a hunter is a person who goes out once in a while to shoot certain animals, then one is either wrong or thinking of the pre-British Indian shikaree (more on them later) or the hunters of the twentieth century regulated by laws. Hunters like Shakespear went out every day to familiarize themselves with the region, to rule and along the way shoot any animals, birds and reptiles that came their way. It was not important whether there was any need to do so, whether the being concerned satisfied any need, but just to shoot. They had to practice all the time. It was a constant state of mind. Consider this for example: I had killed to my own rifle sixteen head of large game in fourteen successive days, between the 1st and 14th of April, viz: two tigers, full grown, eight bears, seven of them full grown, five deer, of different sorts, and a wolf. (Ibid, 74) This kind of hunting does not seem to have been practiced by the natives and the two attitudes seem to be confronting each other in Shakespear’s narrative, in spite of himself. He does not tell us in as many words, but the difference, conflict and resistance are visible in many other ways: in the way he portrays himself, his reading of the people and his management of the people. Since this book is written with a dual purpose, as instruction for the British young men planning to go to India and as entertainment for the wider public, the author goes into all kinds of details that he wishes to share with his countrymen. He reflects on what he was when he arrived in India “When I arrived in India, in 1834, an accomplished English sportsman, that is to say, a shooter of small game, what would not I have given for the experience of twentyseven years, now offered in these pages” (Ibid, 1–2). Consider the jump in his life: from the shooter of small animals to becoming an experienced hunter of wild and big animals. This is the thrill afforded by the colony and he knows this will attract his readers – the possibility of personal gain. “The knowledge I would impart to others has been gained by actual experience, or by information derived from native hunters, when verified and proved” (Ibid, 4). His own experience is unqualified, while the knowledge provided by the native hunters has been tested by him. This is not simply colonial logic – but a very manipulated narrative – if he had no knowledge of the kind of forests and animals he experienced in India, how did he test/verify the local knowledge?

The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives  33 He begins his narrative as an instructor by first of all advising the potential travelers on: • the kinds of clothes they should carry – for regular use and for hunting; • the kinds of trousers; • the kinds of boots; • the kinds of saddlery and why it should be made in Britain; • the kind of hunting spur and the reason for it: “With a spur of this kind, you may, (…) even without a weapon in your hand, gallop close to and round any savage animal, and thus, mark him down until your shikarees (native hunters) bring up your rifles”. (Ibid, 8) The biggest section of instruction concerns the rifles. “I consider myself rather an authority in this matter [of rifles]” (Ibid, 19). He tells his readers about rifles: prices, types, weight, length, distances of folding sights, makers and bullets of the rifles. Then he tells them how these rifles will be handled in the real situation: how the Indian shikarees will deal with these rifles “One of the largest men I ever had, the famous Hoorcha of the Neilgherries, used to groan under the only double rifle I ever had; (…) the rifle weighed some seventeen pounds (…)” (Ibid, 16). And yet, the main task will be difficult for the Englishman and he tells them “(…) but he [the Englishman] must bear in mind that he will find it very difficult to obtain native shikarees (hunters) to keep up with him in a long day’s work” (16). Of course, since this is a selfportrait, he personalizes the scene with his own experience: I generally carry the last-described weapon [rifle of ten and a half pounds] myself; my shikaree, Mangkalee, being the strongest, carries the Westley Richards rifle; and my younger shikaree, Nursoo, carries the double gun in a sling, and a strong spear in his hand. Each of us is armed with a shikar or hunting knife, the sheath of which fits into the breast of the shooting-coat. (Ibid, 18) He can almost be pictured: well-dressed, fully armed and with two natives carrying more of his arms. Next, it is important to know what all these two – the native shikarees – should be able to do: Two native hunters of approved courage and in the habit of meeting wild animals of the forest face to face (….) for the purpose of carrying your spare rifles, and of tracking the game both before and after it has been wounded. (…) should also be able to clean your rifles (…) have

34  The Hunted, their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives keen sight (…) not easily be tired by any amount of work (…) patient in thirst and hunger (…) naturally light and silent walkers in the forest. (70) This is a list of qualifications for employing the two shikarees who will be with the hunter all the time. Although he has two shikarees with him, this is not the end of the subject matter. Shikarees are native hunters who have to be employed in a position of his assistants. Others will be required from time to time, depending on where the hunter has gone for the game. He shares knowledge about what these people are, how they behave, where are they useful and where are they worthless. “The native shikarees of that part of the country should be consulted; and if there are not any, the villagers, who always know the whereabouts of the hog” (30). Please note that the local shikarees are to be “consulted”; whether they are to be trusted is another matter. Henry Shakespeare now shares his personal experiences again. Once he had the feeling (because he does not know the local language to really understand their conversation) that the local shikarees got together in preventing him from killing a tiger by advising him wrongly (Ibid, 110). Their directions did not lead him to the tiger. He was of course not to be outdone; so, the next day he asked for their suggestion only to go against it. He tells the readers that by this mechanism he was successful in finding the tiger and killing him (Ibid, 111). He has more opinions on the native shikarees: that they are not to be trusted in the really dangerous situation of the tiger actually appearing close to the hunting party. He has experienced their fright and foolishness in dangerous ways, like “when the shikaree’s sudden moving brought the Simeriah panther” on him! He has also experienced their ridiculously funny responses: Once, when a bear appeared coming towards us, a village shikari (…) started climbing a tree, not much thicker than his own leg, with my heavy rifle in his hand. Luckily, I caught him by the leg, and pulled him down before he got out of reach. (Ibid, 106) So, the native shikarees could be conspiring or subversive, as also awkward in the jungle and fearful in the face of danger. He, Henry Shakespeare, had to manage all these tendencies. He does say that the situation was “new” for these shikaris. New? If they were shikarees, why was the situation new for them? Henry Shakespeare does not give any explanation at this point, but we learn from other instances and other writers that the native shikarees did not “hunt game”, so to say. Their hunting was a form of subsistence and livelihood, and they hunted mainly deer and some birds which could be sold

The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives  35 locally as meat among certain sections of the population. They neither had guns nor all the motivation to simply go out and kill. They also did not enjoy any high status in society as large sections of Hindu populations did not look upon killing of beings as a correct way of livelihood. It was mainly a subsistence level of hunting done for personal use and a very limited level of sale. So, this situation with elaborate weapons, teams of people and scale of hunting was “new” for them. The British hunter required not only the services of the local shikarees but also of entire villages. The plans adopted in India for shooting large game are as follows: Beating for them with elephants; beating and driving the game in the jungle, with large bodies of beaters, either with tom-toms, rattles, gongs, and such like noisy instruments, or silently. (Ibid, 116) The number of people required for his activity depended on the animals to be hunted and yet, was very large, running into hundreds at times. All this organization was so that the hunter can take aim and kill from a vantage point: The shooters in this case are placed on trees at moderate distances, so as to command the usual runs or paths taken by the animal, or else on elevated ground. Taking a station at the head of a ravine, up which the track shows game to have come, is a very favourite position. (Ibid, 117) Then the shooter sat concealed and silent until the expected animal arrived or was beaten out of its place in the jungle and then shot. In spite of all the organization, unpredictable things happened and therefore the outcome was not certain. Before discussing the struggle with different animals, it is important to see the humans and the dynamics of the network created by the British hunter, native shikarees and the local people. Having organized the place of shooting and having driven the animal to a point of being shot, the hunter had to contend with a live and moving being and the shot may or may not strike the animal dead or may strike but only wound the animal. Shakespear warned the would-be shooters If the game is not killed, or so severely wounded as to be disabled, you will but rarely bag or recover it; while following a wounded animal, like a tiger or a panther, on foot, is the most dangerous part of shikar, Never, therefore, fire random-shot at this kind of game. They are very rarely killed by a single shot, and have been known to go several paces after they have been shot through the heart. (Ibid, 118)

36  The Hunted, their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives This warning also shows that it was not always possible to retrieve the wounded animal and kill it, in which case it was left in the jungle in that state. Not recovering and leaving wounded animals is against all laws of hunting, and is undoubtedly a case of cruelty. In the case of tigers, if they survived the wound, they often became incapable of hunting other wild animals and resorted to killing human beings in the villages nearby. This phenomenon was to become extreme some decades later, but Shakespear was already aware of it. He put the blame for man-eaters on someone else. He describes Dares, a caste of people in the villages he knew. There is a class of Hindoos throughout all the villages in the Deccan, Nagpore, and other parts of India, whose duty it is (….) [to be] village watchmen, sweepers and clearers away of all animals that may die in the village and its boundaries. There caste is of course a very low one, (…) which is called the Dare class (…). They have the exclusive right over all animals that die within their village, from whatever cause (…) and they eat indiscriminately all animals (…). The village cattle (…) are taken out to graze upon lands common to the village (…). Now, very commonly this grazing ground is in a dense jungle infested by tigers and (…) cattle are constantly killed by them. (…) out rush the Dares, whose property it has become, to drive away the tiger, and secure the body (…). The hungry Dare will go out on pitch dark nights a mile into the jungle to recover the body of a bullock killed by the tiger (…). (Ibid, 102–104) This exotic, scary and ghostly picture of a community of people, who were apparently deprived and marginalized within the Hindu caste system, is painted by Shakespeare not in sympathy with them, but for another reason altogether: Injuries received by the tiger in conflicts with its own species, wounds from horns, loss of large fangs of the teeth, old age taking away the vigour of the animal, wounds from bullets, all these are causes in a minor degree of tigers becoming man-eaters; but it is my firm belief that the system of allowing Dares to carry away the carcase [sic] of animals killed by the tiger is the primary cause. (…) had they [Dares] left this, the sportsman would have rid the jungle of that tiger. (105) If we accept that Shakespear’s depiction is realistic, then Dare had been a part of a social system that compelled them to this form of existence for centuries. If they were depriving the tigers of their basic sustenance, then either tigers should have become extinct or so many would have become man-eaters that there should have been no human beings left in the region. None of this had happened and the villages, Dare and tigers seemed to have been surviving in

The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives  37 a balance, which was not socially just and humane to Dare, but Dare had also not become the cause of any ecological disbalance. As it will become clearer in later British writing, bullet wounds were the major cause of tigers becoming man-eaters and Henry Shakespeare was a major contributor to that phenomenon, not the poor Dare. By putting the blame on the Dare, Shakespear was simply shifting the blame and using the colonial logic to blame the colonized for the problems created by the colonizers. Henry Shakespear’s self-portrait cannot be completed without the scenes of the actual hunt; everything else is either preparation for it or its consequence. Even his relationship with natives is a means to this end – hunting wild animals. An image of the network involving the colonizer-hunter, native shikarees and native villagers emerges from the above descriptions. The hunter was dependent on the native shikarees and the villagers to realize his plans of hunting in the jungles, but paints himself as the moving, dominating and commanding force. The shikarees and the villagers seem to be cooperating somewhat half-heartedly as if they were under some kind of compulsion to do so. They are required to support the hunter, but at times appear to be subverting the hunt itself. On the other hand, natives in the direct employ of the colonial set-up seem to be caring and often saving the lives of the hunter. With this backdrop in mind, the scene of the hunt itself is most important to understand how and what happened to those who were literally the target of all this planning. Following is a fragment of just one of the many scenes of hog hunting described by Shakespear: “I alone followed this sow, and the ground being covered with bushes, speared her some eight times before she got into a ravine. The bank on one side was about eight feet high and having placed her back against this, she came to bay. The ravine was only eight or ten feet broad at the bottom and up this I galloped, and met the sow in the charge about six times, spearing her every time. At last, she caught hold of the horse by the hock, opening the plate vein, from which gushed a stream of blood. Disheartened and fairly tired out, I stopped, and began shouting, in the hope that some straggling horseman might come up. At length, an orderly of mine came up on a pony, when, pointing to the hog, I said, Tie your pony up, get on the bank above, and see if you can reach her with your spear, for she is not a hog, but a shaitan (that is a devil). I have speared her more than a dozen times through and through, and she won’t die. The man remarked, “How your horse is bleeding”. At this moment, the poor sow put her head between the root of the tree and the bank against which she was standing, and seeing her at this advantage, before she could get her head out of the noose, I made a rush at her, and speared her through the heart” (Ibid, 44–45). After this, the hunter cuts the sow’s tail to show the village before she is brought up.

38  The Hunted, their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives In the course of describing another incident of hunting a wild boar, he says “(…) the boar is the most courageous animal in the jungle” (Ibid, 41). After killing the same boar, this praise becomes something else; now he sneers at the “courageous animal”: There he was, with a broken spear in his withers, the shaft sticking up a foot and a half (…) receiving two bullets (…) the first in his neck and throat (…) the second breaking his jaw (…) defying the dogs, and then, when in the act of charging again, shot to the brain, and dyeing without a groan. (Ibid, 41–42) It is remarkable that in both the abovementioned incidents of hunting, injury is followed by insult to the animal. These long quotations are just a fraction of a glimpse into Shakespear’s writing. He narrates many incidents, many other ways of killing, how those ways are different in different regions of India, what kinds of blades and bamboo are used, how horses sustain injury and above all, what a great sport it is. Cruelty is embedded in the act of killing because it must necessarily be achieved against the struggle to survive on the part of the hunted animal. The emotion that the hunters call “thrill” and attribute “bravery” to themselves relates to this moment when they are able to defeat the other being’s struggle to escape death. There is pleasure and arrogance behind killing. Somehow, more than the act of killing, this act of narration is even more cruel as it gives expression to that pleasure and arrogance. The role of the hunter converted into the role of the narrator begins to reveal not the physicality, but the mentality of the hunter. This is a man ready to go into a strange land, come across strange people who have not harmed him and cut them down. Then go back to his people and boast about it, show off what he looted from them and be appreciated by them. The success of his book was the appreciation that he received from the readers who did not know him personally, but who were as interested as him in going to India and hunting, shooting and killing. The thrill of the narrator in recounting his own acts is apparent; now imagine that this thrill is being felt by thousands of others for whom it has been narrated as “instruction and entertainment”. It is commonplace in scholarship to explain this experience and expression of thrill as an individual act or as a generational matter or as a colonial mentality. Seen closely, it is nothing but the expression of individual brutality in a context where this brutality is normalized and accepted as it is shared with many others. They all would have had a similar attitude toward nonhuman animals, but it is in the expression of one individual that we get glimpses of that collective mentality. The question also is: did Shakespear really treat other humans any better or did he simply not narrate it? If Henry Shakespear is seen as a man whose thousands of clones were going out into the world, we will be able to put those who massacred wild

The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives  39 animals next to those who traded slaves and next to those who killed the socalled aboriginals somewhere else. Then we will see that the progeny of all those humans who were traded or killed in large numbers suffer marginalization and variously precarious existence today. The highest pleasure for all the hunters was certainly hunting the tiger. As we have seen earlier, Shakespear was hunting most indiscriminately, that is, hunting almost any nonhuman animal. When he comes to describing his tiger hunt, it is invariably a man-eater; in this case, two man-eaters – a tiger and a tigress. He was invited, as per what he writes, by the local landlord to come and rid the village of these two tigers. He admits that shooting a tiger was not his area of expertise, so he would shoot from a tree. After organizing the hunting party, having the calf bait tied to a tree, he and his helpers track the tiger and finally see him at the place where the calf is tied. The tiger had thrown the calf on the ground and was at his throat. At this point, Shakespear shoots him from behind a tree: Immediately the tiger sprang to his feet and exposed his broad left side to me, I stepped from behind the tree, looked at him in the face with contempt, as if he had been a sheep, and while he passed me with every hair set, his beautiful white beard and whiskers spread, and his eye like fire, with the left barrel I shot him through the heart. He went straight and at undiminished speed, each bound covering fifteen feet at least, for twenty-five yards, and then fell on his head under the lowest rock of the mountain in which was his stronghold. Up went in the air his thick stumpy tail. Seizing my other rifle, I walked up to fifteen yards of him – for he was still opening his mouth and gasping – and broke his back. (84) When this big tiger with a short tail was brought to the village, it was seen that his fangs were broken, because of which he had been unable to puncture the calf’s neck and the calf was alive. Shakespear does not care to wonder whether the tiger’s fangs had been broken by a former gunshot which did not kill him. While narrating the story of another tigress, he mentions that many of his British colleagues living near Hyderabad in the Deccan “in the years 1847-4849 had hunted and fired” at her and “some of the best shots of Hydrabad [sic], Secunderabad and Bolarum were out after her day after day” (96), but had not managed to kill her. The possibility of this tigress being wounded cannot be overestimated, and the same would have been true of many others. Right after killing a tiger, he acted cool and turned to a villager and said “There is your enemy, old man, and now [tell me] where does the tigress live?” (Ibid, 84). The villager, who should have been impressed by his hunting abilities, said “I know nothing about her”. Did he really not know or was he trying the protect her – we will never know, but it is useful to wonder about it as similar incidents are reported by him and other writers. At the scene of this particular killing, however, “The villagers from all sides flocked

40  The Hunted, their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives to see the man-eater” (Ibid, 85) as the hunter sipped his tea. When they asked permission to take the fat removed from the tiger, he jokes “Of course, it is the fat of your own villagers”. The “ghastly smile” of a villager makes him realize that “it was too true to be a joke, and the memory too recent to be relished” (Ibid, 85). He realized his own insensitivity. Some days later, he shot the tigress too, but only managed a shot at her belly. She managed to escape and could not be recovered. He left the village and was informed “a fortnight or so later” that the dead tigress had been found, but her skin could not be sent to him as it was too decomposed. No British hunter tells the readers what they did with the skins of the animals and whether they earned money from them. Considering all the minute details of the hunt and the related acts that are provided, it is not likely that they just forgot to mention those details. The silence seems deliberate. While narrating yet another tigress, Henry Shakespear tells the readers how he was invited by the villagers who were so afraid of her that their normal life had been disrupted and they themselves (more than 100 men) were willing to be the beaters for him. They also told him that they collected money and paid a local hunter who said he would come and kill the tigress after his marriage. When his marriage procession was returning with the bride on the pony, the tigress attacked and took the bride out of the crowd. All the noise created by the marriage party made the tigress drop the bride unharmed, but the hunter became superstitious about the tiger being a supernatural spirit who knew that he was planning to kill her and had warned him by this act. He backed out from the plan of shooting her (Ibid, 101–102). Shakespear undertook the task; he did not manage to kill the tigress, but did shoot her cub: “After we had killed the cub, the famous tigress left those jungles, and whether she died of wounds, or whether she left off man-eating, and took to living respectably, deponent saith not” (Ibid, 102). He further tells his readers that the “superstitious” villagers generally consider maneating tigers to be evil spirits sent by their deities to punish them for something they had done wrong; therefore, they would spend more time in propitiating the deity and praying for deliverance than trying to kill the beast (Ibid, 102). The difference in the attitude of the two hunters – the local one and Shakespear – was based on the different perceptions of the nonhuman animals and had two different consequences. In the case of the local hunter, the tigress was seen as a sentient being with higher powers than the human beings as she was considered to be aware of their plans; when the hunter decided against shooting the tigress, the existence of the tigress was known to people and they could accordingly act in the future. In the case of the colonizerhunter, the tigress was seen as nothing else but “game” to be shot, a cub lost its life for no reason leaving the tigress perhaps more furious. Her existence became a mystery that people would not know how to deal with. The narratives about man-eating tigers seem to be narrated as a justification for generally shooting normal and healthy tigers, like this one: “He was

The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives  41 a very large tiger, in very high condition, and quite in the prime of life, about eleven feet long, very lusty, with the most perfect teeth I had ever seen” (Ibid, 114). This is the kind of animals that were hunted at the maximum and caused not just the loss of certain numbers of tigers, but impacted their survival as species, by consequently eroding the possibility of reproduction, leading to the overall decline in the numbers of the Indian tiger. Another consequence of colonial hunting was putting animals to unnatural work, for example, this scene following the killing of the abovementioned large tiger: We had the elephant brought up, made her lie on her side, and after much trouble, fastened the tiger to her, when she carried it home most gallantly. Elephants do not like this work generally. Often a good shikaree-elephant is afraid of a tiger tied on its back. (Ibid, 113–114. Emphasis mine) The situation of the elephant is no different from that of a human slave: being made to do things that they never would have chosen to do; expressing unwillingness to do that which is being asked and being compelled to do it for fear of punishment. This would not be hard to understand if we took note of another part of this scene which has not been narrated: that the elephant was witness to what had been done to the tiger. Humans too have faced situations like this: when under fear of a tyrant, they have done things which they never would have done otherwise. The scars left on their minds have been narrated, but the scars left on the mind of that elephant who carried the tiger killed by Shakespear have not even been conceptualized. What is not narrated, it is said, does not become part of history. While the factors of speech and language may be used as a reason to not consider the elephant’s narrative, it is there in other forms of expression – in her resistance and in her fear. Her narrative requires the sentience of human beings and then it can be “sensed”. An unusually remarkable instance occurred when Henry Shakespear was hunting a panther; in the process, a multispecies fight broke out: he had put one shot in the panther who had bounded off and hidden himself in some bushes. The hunter, who was now waiting for him on one side of the bushes, directed the mahout (the elephant driver) to beat the panther out towards me. Directly, the elephant approached the bush, the panther, with one bound was on her back, catching hold of the backbone with his teeth! (…) the elephant, which turned tail to bolt, fortunately shaking the panther off when she swung around. I now fired and hit him a second time, and told the dog-boy to let go the dogs on him. The fresh Arab [horse], just then coming up, I jumped on his back (…) shouted to the native officer (…) to follow the dog. I also, after galloping some three hundred yards, came up (…) when the panther, with a roar, sprang upon my horse from the left side, and before I could get the gun around,

42  The Hunted, their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives was hanging on to his quarters with his claw. The horse, who had been utterly careless until then, now sprang forward, bounding as high as his head; and, after some successive lashes out with his hind-legs, kicked the panther off. (…) I could do nothing; for in such close quarters a gun was perfectly useless against an animal behind me, and it was as much as I could do to keep in the saddle. Before I could wheel my horse, the panther had again hidden himself (…). (…) [I] instructed the duffadar to gallop by, firing into the bush, in the hopes that (…) he [panther] might be induced to come out, when I should be able to kill him with the rifle. This did not succeed. My favourite dog came up to the bush, and the panther, without exposing more than his fore-leg, knocked him over, with a blow, which opened his shoulder, and laid bare the bone of his fore-leg down to his toes. The poor dog shrank back to me, and, dragging him away by the neck, I sent him also down to the water at the river. I fired repeatedly into the bush (…) found that the panther was not in the bush. At this moment we heard a shriek in the distance (…). (Ibid, 136–138) Sun had set by now and on reaching the place where the shout had come from, it turned out that the galloping duffadar found the panther on top of a man on the road. This was a barber who was going his way on the road when the wounded panther being hounded from all sides appeared from the bushes and attacked him. On seeing the duffadar, the panther attacked the horse, but due to being severely wounded could not hold on and disappeared in the dark (Ibid, 139). The barber had lost his arm, could be sent to a hospital only on the next morning and after eight days died of his wounds (140). A keen eye would read a narrative that the hunter has no intention of telling – the narrative of those wounded or killed for no reason of their own. Why did the panther attack the elephant, the horses and the dog? For assisting the men in killing him, it would seem. That they had no choice in the matter could hardly mean anything to someone fighting for his life. His attacking the only unarmed man he saw was perhaps an act of hitting back at the species responsible for all the chaos in his habitat, or perhaps, just the need for sustenance after hours of being wounded and hunted as he was found to be chewing the man’s arm. Maybe he lived many more years to tell the story of his victory to his own species. Maybe his victory was witnessed by many from nearby bushes, rocks, trees and the river. Even the human dwellers got the narrative, for they were left in awe and fear of the panther. Even Shakespear got the narrative for he went on to explain why it is so difficult to shoot a panther and with this narrative reclaim his position as the narrator: In 1852, I speared and killed a small one off the horseback; and in the same year, I brained and killed one with a single ball. He was sitting at the mouth of his cave, looking at me, about eight feet off. In 1854, (…) I killed five panthers and leopard, on foot or horse-back (…). (Ibid, 141)

The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives  43 The narrator sounds bloodthirsty, deranged and on a killing spree. To describe him, the poetic description of a fowler in the words of a crow in the Panćatantra seems apt: He was a man of fierce appearance with splayed hands and feet, bloodshot eyes, bulging genitals, thickset, with a very rough, gnarled frame and swarthy complexion; his hair was knotted in a bunch on top of his head. Why describe him at great length? Suffice it to say that he appeared a second god of destruction, noose in hand; the very incarnation of evil and the soul of unrighteousness; prime instructor in crime and bosom friend of death. (Chandra, 1995, 194) Shakespear had many more narratives about the panthers he shot, just because they were panthers. In another instance, he is trying to shoot two panthers from the back of the camel, when he falls off in front of the camel, who thinking that “the panther was again upon him” (144) struck the hunter with his foreleg in such a manner that he had three broken ribs. His rifle was thrown off, so he drew his sword to either kill the camel or the panther. “Both, however, had disappeared in the jungle” (Ibid, 144). The hunter somehow crawled out, waited for the natives and then as per his order “Some five hundred cattle were driven into the grass: while I was propped up against a tree, rifle in hand, to shoot the panther” (Ibid, 145). This panther too turned out to be smarter and the plan did not materialize. In the meanwhile, the second, smaller panther had hidden himself in a hole in the ground where he could not be shot at. “The next morning, while I was going back to cantonments to have my ribs set, my people smoked this panther to death, and dug him out of the hole” (Ibid, 145). Human meanness, vengeance and cruelty outdid the bravery of the panthers. These were also not the last panthers he attacked. He shot another female when she was eating her kill in the forest, and he happened to pass by. He just went on killing. While killing more big game, several other wild animals were noticed and their habits and habitats were observed. One such animal was the bear, found in several regions in India. “One of my most favourite pursuits in India was bear-shooting on foot” (Ibid, 157), says Shakespear. Then he describes the animal The bear is most tenacious of life; and from his being a cold-blooded animal, I believe he recovers, and very quickly, from very severe wounds. At the same time, he is very soft, tender, the least wound making him howl and roar most extravagantly. (Ibid, 160) Such a keen observer he was of how other beings die: he had earlier told his readers that the boar dies without a groan, and now he tells them that the bear cries a lot. Also: “(…) bears are great climbers. They constantly get up

44  The Hunted, their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives fruit trees, shake them, and descend to eat the fruits”. This way of life becomes the bear’s doom: “This (fallen fruit) usually shows the hunter that Bruin is in the jungle” (190). The bear was actually neither a threat to humans, rarely ever attacking them nor a nuisance of any other kind. He was also short sighted and could easily be killed from a short distance as he failed to notice the hunter from afar. So, of course, Shakespear had fun shooting many of them, including mothers and their cubs. He also shot innumerable wild buffalos and bison, as well as some elephants, but those were not his main sports and, therefore, we will take up their killing in the accounts of others whose chief target they were. This selected list of Shakespear’s victims for analysis also does not include birds and reptiles of all varieties that he shot on a daily basis. James Forsyth: Making Them Suffer Captain J. Forsyth’s The Highlands of Central India was published in 1889, but concerns his travels in central India in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is not a book only about shooting “game” but about the administrative takeover of central India, its forested regions and the tribes living there. Shooting is a regular activity, and he too kills all kinds of animals, birds and reptiles. His hunting is nothing extraordinary: follows the general pattern of jungle shooting, but there was not much big game like tigers or elephants in this region. Two of his shooting expeditions deserve mention here for their uniqueness, and one for its experience. During his time in central India, he reached the town of Jabalpur. What visitor to Jabbalpúr can ever forget the Marble Rocks! In any country a mighty river pent up into a third of its width, and for a space of two miles or more boiling along deep and sullen between two sheer walls of pure white marble, a hundred feet in height, must form a scene of rare loveliness. (…) The eye never wearies of the variety of effect produced by the broken and reflected sunlight (…). (Forsyth, 1889, 40) He remembered this place with great fondness, but not without some disturbance to its enjoyment. “The only drawback to the peaceful enjoyment of the scene is the presence of numerous colonies of bees, whose combs are attached to most of the jutting edges of the rocks on the left bank” (Ibid, 42). The bees were dangerous, particularly in the summer months and when disturbed, they would attack collectively. Forsyth writes that an incident involving two British men had taken place before his time there. On the rocks also nested the blue rock pigeons. The two gentlemen were shooting them, but the bees got angry and attacked them. Both jumped into the water to save themselves, one dived and saved himself, while the other was pursued by the bees and finally drowned (Ibid, 42). While bees made hives

The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives  45 on the rocks on the left bank of the river, the rocks on the right side were occupied otherwise: there were several Hindu temples as well as mythological stories connected with the rocks. Forsyth was equally disturbed by this human presence. “A spot so remarkable as the Marble Rocks could not escape sanctification at the hands of the Brahmans”. Forsyth’s objection was that the Hindus make every remarkable and scenic place “holy”, which implied, among other restrictions, that killing of animals would not be permitted there. To him, the sanctification of spectacular sites reflected Hindus’ lack of “taste for natural beauty” because they implant their legends and mythological stories on the site, as they had done here: “(…) Hanúmán here leapt across the chasm (…) the celestial elephant of Indra left a mighty footprint in the white rock which is still exhibited to the devout pilgrim” (Ibid, 44–45). All these sites and the “picturesque Shiva temples” were on the right bank, while bees and pigeons were on the left bank. It seems that the humans and nonhumans did not need to disturb each other and could coexist. Local people’s concept of “peaceful enjoyment” was different from that of Forsyth. He also mentions how the natives took out honeycombs without killing the bees: by smoking the bees out (Ibid, 44). So, Forsyth was most disturbed by the presence of the bees on the left bank and the local people on the right. He and his countrymen were not going to accept the situation. Forsyth goes on to narrate that the best view of the rocks was afforded on moonlit nights from the right bank and that was when several British residents gathered there I am sorry to say, that in the old Jabbalpúr days, we not unfrequently used to desecrate the sanctuary by unholy moonlight picnics, in which plenty of champagne, brass-band, and songs that were very much the reverse of hymns, bore the most prominent part. It was very jolly, though, like most things that are wrong. (Ibid, 44) The realization of “wrong” was with him, as also the necessary mention that the songs were the “reverse of hymns”, which clearly implies bawdy songs. The pleasure of the wrong was more heightened because it “desecrated” a sight that was marked as holy by the Hindus. This dislike for the “Hindus” expressed by those writing on wildlife is common to most colonial writers and in sharp contrast to the venerable image created by the orientalists. However, in Jabalpur, Forsyth found a way to clear the bees: It is easy to procure a comb by slicing it off the rock with a rifle ball; and I (…) had the gratification of thus operating on the colonies at the Marble Rocks, from a safe position on the opposite bank, sending several large comb-fulls to a watery grave in the depths below. (Ibid, 44)

46  The Hunted, their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives In his own eyes, and presumably in that of his countrymen and readers in England, he looked like a very smart man, outsmarting the bees with his rifle and the Hindus with his parties. Bees were not the only beings he needed to deal with in this stunningly beautiful place. In India “lovely waters are polluted by ghoul-like turtles, monstrous fishes, and repulsive crocodiles” (Ibid, 45). Forsyth’s use of the word “polluted” for the rivers in which nonhuman animals dwell is noteworthy. In this place, particularly where he was, there were a lot of river crocodiles. “I believe the common Magar of the rivers and tanks of central India is identical with that of upper India (Crocodylus biporcatus). (..) The long still reaches of the Narbadá all contain a goodly complement of broad-snouted magars” (Ibid, 45). The crocodiles were there but even Forsyth had never heard of “a case of adult human being having been killed by a crocodile in our rivers” (Ibid, 45). So, there was no real murder charge against the crocodiles, but in his worldview “it is not in human nature to refrain from destroying so hideous a reptile when a chance occurs” (Ibid, 46). The crocodile did not look pleasing to the British eyes and the “human nature” was apparently only their own, because the locals had not gone out to destroy them. Forsyth does not know actually how to hunt the crocodiles; so, he begins stalking them: “There is a spot in the gorge of the Marble Rocks where such a chance [to kill] is seldom wanting. A flat and slightly hollowed rock-shelf invites to noon-tide repose these unlovely monsters of the deep” (Ibid, 46). In cold weather and warm afternoon sun, the crocodiles came under this rock shelf, a place which was not far from the “rest-house” (bungalows typically made for the British on the move). He described his plan and the method used to kill the crocodiles as advise to other interested hunters: go out in the afternoon with your rifle and crocodiles will most likely be already there; their eyes and nose (which Forsyth calls “seeing and smelling apparatuses”) will be visible floating in the river; they are cautious and watchful before coming to the edge of the water, so the hunter must remain silent; if the crocodile finds the scene safe, he will come to a designated spot. This done, he will heave his huge bulk and serrated tail sideways out of the water, and lie extended along the edge, ready to ‘whammle’ in again on the slightest alarm. You will aim at him in the centre of the neck, just where it joins the head; and if you then shoot plumb-centre, but not otherwise, he will never stir. (Ibid, 46–47) Thus, Forsyth killed many a crocodile that had neither harmed him nor had he heard any complaints against them from the locals living there. He had complaints of his own though, that within hours of being killed, they give out a “frightful” smell. He was in the valley of the mighty river Narmada: “At present, plenty for all is the rule, poverty the very rare exception” (50).

The Hunted, Their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives  47 Needless to say, he and his countrymen were there to change the situation for the humans and the nonhumans. Forsyth traveled far and wide in the region, beyond the city of Jabbalpur and the Narmada valley. He writes of the forests: “Of larger game, the principal animal met with in the settled parts is the black antelope” (Ibid, 59). They are numerous and Forsyth says that although native shikaris did hunt them at night, their resources were not enough to matter to the large population of the antelopes. One day Forsyth sees (…) a more than ordinarily magnificent coal black-buck. (…) his horns were perfection, of great size, well set on, twisted and knotted like the gnarl branch of an oak tree. (…) he was the beau ideal of a perfect black buck. (Ibid, 63) In the case of this black buck, his beauty became the reason for the attack on him. Forsyth stalked him for many days, but without success. Finally, one day he almost had the buck in his aim, when he noticed two does staring at him. The buck noticed the does too, got alarmed and ran. Forsyth followed him, and fired at him, even though he was not sure of the shot. He hit the buck, but not fatally and the buck tried to flee. Forsyth fired a second shot, with which the buck rolled over, but again got up and ran. “Their vital power is immense, and nothing but a brain-shot or a broken spine will tumble them over for good on the spot. (…) In the present instance “I watched the antelope to the verge of the horizon” (Ibid, 66–67). The antelope would “slacken his pace, look at his wounded flanks”, and run again. There were other witnesses to his plight: “The two does (…) were now standing on the plain, a few hundred paces from where I stood, gazing wistfully from me to their wounded lord” (Ibid, 67). The pathos of the situation hit even Forsyth. “Such are the scenes that touch the heart of even the hardest deer-stalker, and for a moment I almost wished my right hand had been cut off ere I pulled trigger on this the loveliest of God’s creatures” (Ibid, 67). The deer was too far to be shot by Forsyth, but there happened to be another hunter there who put him out of his misery. Forsyth soon overcame the momentary regret he had felt and kept using his “right hand” to kill all kinds of animals for many more years. “My narrative is now done” said Forsyth at page 441 of his account, and yet had pages of recommendations for the English sportsman. I will here speak only of the glorious field that the country [India] offers to the sportsman – incomparably the finest in the world. As a field for sportsmen, Africa may be thought to be better, but it is not so if India be looked at as a whole. (…) the sportsman will return from India with a collection of trophies which Africa cannot match. (Ibid, 442)

48  The Hunted, their Witnesses and the Hunters’ Narratives He then goes on to list the variety of species that can be shot in India. He went on for another 60 pages talking about the immense possibilities of shooting wildlife, the kind of gear and the rifles required – the subjects with which Shakespear had started his narrative. Works Cited Forsyth, James Captain. 1889. The Highlands of Central India. Notes on Their Forests And Wild Tribes, Natural History, And Sports. New Edition With Maps and Illustrations. London: Chapman and Hall Ltd. Shakespear, Henry Major. 1862. The Wild Sports of India: With Detailed Instructions for the Sportsman; To which Are Added Remarks on Breeding and Rearing of Horses And the Formation of Light Irregular Cavalry. Second Edition, Much Enlarged. London: Smith, Elder & Co. Sharma, Vishnu. 1993. The Panćatantra. Translated from the Sanskrit with an Introduction by Chandra Rajan. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Smith, G. B. 2004. Forsyth, James (1838–1871) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. Revised by Elizabeth Baigent. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref: odnb/9928. Accessed on February 13, 2023.

2 The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty G. P. Sanderson’s Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India (1878)

Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India, first published in 1878, is not only a very famous work. The author – George Peress Sanderson – is credited with having applied the kheddah system of capturing elephants for the first time in south India. While this system was known in ancient India and was in use in Bengal, it had not been used in the southern parts of the country. In Sanderson, we have a man much different from Shakespear as he was open to immersing himself in the Indian reality. His engagement with human and other-than-human animals while living in the place he had arrived was different and we shall see where that difference led him. He also dealt with and wrote about an animal whose sentience has never been questioned – the elephant. In addition, the lore about the elephants was widespread and humans venerated them in many ways. Before recounting the details of his operations in the forests, here is a brief summary of his career in India. G. P. Sanderson was born in India in 1848 to Methodist missionary Daniel Sanderson and his wife Sarah Sanderson. Daniel Sanderson spent 27 years in an around Bangalore and Mysore in today’s state of Karnataka. He authored the first Canarese–English dictionary and a collection of stories from the Panćatantra and Hindu mythological tales (Katha Sangraha or Canarese Selections. Prose. Printed at the Wesleyan Mission Press, Bangalore. 1863). George Sanderson was sent to England for education and returned to India at the age of 16. He arrived in Madras, India in 1864 and from there went to the same region where his father had worked, Mysore, as a free individual. He was interested in shooting game, but did not have a job. There was some plan of his joining a friend who had coffee plantations, but it did not materialize. Instead, he spent a year learning “Canarese” (Kannada) language. Proficiency in the local language got him a government appointment as Assistant Channel Superintendent, which meant that he had to look after “150 miles of river drawn irrigation channels, all works of antiquity” (Sanderson, 1878, 2) in the Honsoor (now Hunsur) city. The work had an added benefit: it came along with the possibility of hunting: “I had only to carry a rifle or gun with me to the channels to get frequent shots at spotteddear, pig and jungle-fowl” (Ibid, 2). He was happy with that, but was waiting to shoot big game. Soon an opportunity came and he was invited by one of DOI: 10.4324/9781032700489-3

50  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty his friends from Mysore to join in the hunt for tiger. There he shot his first tiger (Ibid, 2). Within two years, he became the head of the channels department and was stationed at Mysore. In Mysore, he started developing a plan of catching elephants and received support for it from the British officers stationed in the court of the Maharaja of Mysore. “(…) Mysore government was induced to undertake the capture of some of the herds, which roamed, useless and destructive, through various parts of the province of Mysore, and I was appointed, to carry out the experiment” (Ibid, 2, emphasis mine). It is noteworthy here that big plans are based on a certain view of other beings – here reflected in Sanderson’s view of wild elephants as “useless and destructive”. These “useless and destructive” elephants had been portrayed in the Panćatantra as “In a wooded region lived an elephant king named Four Tusks surrounded by a large retinue of elephants. His time was all taken up with the protection of his herds” (Sharma, 1995, Panćatantra.pdf 345/532). Sanderson’s success in capturing a large number of elephants led to his being made responsible for a while for the operations in Bengal and northeast of India. Here too, he introduced the kheddah system. This introduction to Sanderson’s official life is meant to communicate that here we are not dealing with a British officer individually interested in hunting wild animals, but with the state itself appointing people for the job. This had consequences for the animals as well as local populace and their rights to forests. Sanderson defined his account of the region, the wild life in general and of the hunting practices: “I claim one merit (…) that they are all strictly true” (Ibid, 3). Sanderson’s account records the humans and the nonhuman animals who were living in the forests near Mysore. First of all comes a list of wildlife present in the forests around Mysore, then a list of wildlife not present in the forests, then of birds, and finally, of fishes. The list of wildlife present, which in his table of four columns includes their common English name, scientific name, Canarese name and an indication of their numbers. In the following, I give the first and the last columns, that is the English name and the indication of their numbers: “List of Mysore Game: Elephant – Very numerous in border forests Bison or Gaur – Abundant throughout the ranges frequented by elephants. Tiger – Plentiful in suitable localities Panther – Less common than the leopard. A black variety is sparingly found in Mysore. Leopard – Vey common. Cheetah or Hunting Leopard – Exceedingly rare in Mysore – almost unknown.

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  51 Bear – Plentiful in certain localities. Wolf – Not numerous. Hyena – Common. Wild Dog – Do. Sámbar – Common in the forest tracts. Spotted Deer – Very common. Barking or Rib-faced Deer, Muntjac, Kákur, jungle sheep – Common. Indian Antelope – Not common. Indian Gazelle or Ravine Deer – Not common. Wild Hog – Very numerous. Crocodile – Not numerous and seldom over ten feet long. Jackal – Very numerous. Common Jungle-Cat – Very common. Leopard-Cat – Less Common. Otter – Plentiful. Porcupine – Do. Mouse-Deer – Do. Hare – Do”. (Ibid, 13) While a list of wildlife present in the forests around the writer seems relevant, he also made another list – of the wildlife not present. Seemingly needless, but reflective of the fact that Sanderson’s is not just a local record, but a record of India, what Forsyth defined as “India (…) as a whole”. In the larger colonial context and the awareness of each British officer of the whole of India as one colony explains why an apparently irrelevant and needless list was actually relevant and required. “The following animals of Indian sport are not found in Mysore: Rhinoceros – Not found in Southern India Wild Buffalo – Do. Neelgai – Found in the Madras Presidency. Ibex, or the Neilgherry Wild Goat – Found in the Madras Presidency”. (Ibid, 14) Next comes the list of birds: Birds – Jungle-Fowls, pea-fowl, and spur-fowl are common in the woods; bustard, floriken, red-legged partridge, quail, and rock-grouse in the open country; and wild-duck, teal, snipe, wild-geese, flamingoes, pelicans and cranes in the lakes and rice-fields. Doves of several varieties are common in the woods and open country. (ibid, 14)

52  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty And finally, the fishes: “The rivers and artificial lakes in Mysore abound with excellent fish” (Ibid, 14). He mentions carp and silver-fish by names and records that there are several other varieties (Ibid). Sanderson mentions river crocodiles too. The list above is an indication of an environmentally well-balanced food chain. The presence of herbivores and carnivores in sufficient numbers points to a healthy system within the forest and also indicates that the human population is not making excessive demands on the forest. This is the state in which Sanderson found the forests near Mysore in early 1870s, which was certainly not an early stage of British colonialism in India. We shall see in the following how Sanderson fulfills the needs of the state and changes the harmonious situation. Sanderson listed the humans too, first in the city of Mysore – the seat of the then displaced Hindu Maharaja and British establishment: The Hindoo people of Mysore are peaceful, orderly, and good-natured, but lacking in enterprise. The Bráhmins are intelligent and ambitious; they have always filled most of the posts in Government offices. The Mussalmáns have sunk into deep poverty, chiefly through their own laziness, since the overthrow of the Mussalmán power in 1799. (…) many are enlisted in Mysore Horse and Sepoy Corps; they also find employment as elephant and camel attendants, and horse-keepers. The domestic servants of Europeans are all Madrassees, as the Canarese people have not taken to indoor service. (Ibid, 7) It is interesting how every section of the humans earns a negative point. From among the Hindus, only the topmost caste – Brahmins – are mentioned with some positive adjectives “but” also with a big negative. The Muslims earn no positive points and the clue is in the reference to 1799 – the year Tipu Sultan of nearby Seringapatam lost the battle to the British. The challenge that Tipu had presented for the British in India is the subject of legends and history. A negative view of the Muslim population by the British in the aftermath of the war and their consequent decline may have led to the “poverty” mentioned by Sanderson almost a century later. Sanderson’s list includes “domestic servants” of the Europeans – the migrants from Madras; that the local population did not take to working in British homes may be significant in ways that are beyond the scope of this work. The next lists of nonhumans and humans emerge when he changes his job to that of the elephant catcher and accordingly the location of his residence. To commence his operations on the elephants, he moved closer to the forests,

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  53 to a place called Morlay. He writes in details about the geographic location and features of this place. From the point of view of his mission, he says Such a place as Morlay for sport surely never existed, at least for the diversity of game. Within a radius of half a mile of my bungalow, elephants, tigers, panthers, bears, pig, and spotted-deer; and a little beyond, bison, sámbar, two kinds of antelopes, and bustard are to be found; whilst good duck, pea-fowl, jungle-fowl, and snipe are at my very doors. (Ibid, 20) There was one drawback: “Morlay is not, however, a very healthy place, and my people and myself have all suffered severely from fever at various times” (Ibid, 20). Sanderson also gives “short accounts of the jungle-tribes with whom [he] associated” and thought the wild animals of the region were “scarcely wilder” than them (Ibid, 4). These people were known as Oopligas and he begins to call them “my Morlayites”. They became his chief associates. Living on borders of the jungle amongst the game, the Morlayites have for generations applied themselves to hunting. They have no guns, only spears and nets. They have strict caste rules on the subject, and maintain excellent discipline in their hunts. Each house has to supply a man with a net and spear when big game is followed, and a net and cudgel in hare-hunting. (Ibid, 22) He told his readers that Oopligas have nothing but a piece of cloth to wrap around their loin and a blanket. They eat just twice – at 10 am and 8 pm, do not consume alcohol although make toddy for sale elsewhere. They also do not eat cow meat, and therefore, also not bison. “Their women are mostly very ugly” he adds (Ibid, 26). Some more information is provided: “There is never any violent crime amongst these simple people”. According to Sanderson, infidelity among women is common, but the matter is settled by the panchayat by fining the defendant. To keep litigation low, they often fine the man too for having an adulterous wife. If a woman wants to leave her husband for someone else, then she or the other man has to pay the husband Rs. 45 and it is decided. “(…) marriage in Morlay is purely an arrangement of convenience; and though it is literally so with ourselves, a halo of religious feeling has come to surround this civil contract, and moral turpitude is connected with any breach…” (Ibid, 27). As regards their help in hunting, “I shall never forget what an untutored lot my Morlayites were, when I first knew them (…). They needed an immense amount of training…” (28).

54  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty They were trained to go elephant-tracking and to do other related jobs as we shall see later. “From their constant experience with the game, the Oopligas soon became excellent assistants in elephant-catching” (Ibid, 23). In spite of this, Oopligas had treated animals differently: “The Oopligas of Morlay had seldom molested dangerous animals before I hunted with them, but I showed them how Torrea caste in Heggadévan-korté surround and kill tiger, &c., and we soon disposed of a good many” (Ibid, 23). The Oopligas, therefore, lived close to the forest, hunted small animals for their own survival and did not kill the big animals. They knew the forest meant they knew about more than what they took from the forest. They knew about the habits and habitat of all the wild animals that they did not kill, they knew how the movement of these animals varied over the day and from one season to another. They knew what these animals ate and they recognized their tracks in the forest. Sanderson uses this knowledge for his own purposes and trains them further for the fulfillment of his plans. He teaches them to kill big animals. Sanderson’s horizon of knowledge was wider and he compares the “jungle people” of India internationally “The skills of some of the American Indians in following a trail is proverbial, but I engage to say it cannot excel that of jungle-people in India” (Ibid, 29). For himself, he says that he was a “judicious master”. “I laid down this golden rule early in my sporting days and it is a great pleasure to me to think that I have never had a man killed in encounters with wild animals” (Ibid, 30). Thus, Sanderson reached that point in his career which he had been looking for. His job was catching elephants for the government. The rest of his life is what his famous book Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India (1878) is about. In the following, we will analytically examine his life with reference to other beings, mainly wild nonhuman animals and what he did to them. Rocking the Life of Elephants While hunting in forests, he finds various long abandoned monuments, sculptures and temples that “are as grand in conception as they are admirable in execution” (15). He sees highly developed irrigation systems and dams, ruins of villages and temples, that are now forest. He imagines how life was lived here: “The elephant rests at mid-day under the sacred peepul-tree, once in the centre of the village (…) bears and panthers find shelter in the very temples where offerings were presented to the village gods (…)” (Ibid, 15). Sanderson further describes the geography, waterways, irrigation system and the panorama in great detail. The irrigation channels in his charge were of great antiquity, but still functional. He does try to find a reason as to why so many villages were abandoned. From the account of the people of the Sholaga tribe, he understands that these villages were subjected to ransacking “during Hyder and Tippoo’s days, and during the early days of the British (1780– 1800) at the hands of the Brinjarries (gypsy grain-carriers)”, that is, when the

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  55 latter carried grains for British troops stationed between Mysore and Coimbatore (Ibid, 38). Sanderson was writing for the general public in England and accordingly, his explanations are simple, although there was much expert knowledge available about the irrigation system and other subjects. This expert knowledge has grown considerably by now and can be accessed. What concerns this chapter is the style of writing and the images that British writers like Sanderson are creating for the general readers in England. As per Sanderson’s account, Mysore and its surrounding regions are geographically beautiful, with enough signs of a far more developed society than the present one. There are lush forests with an abundance of wildlife and tribes of very poor and “simple” people that live in the forests. It is also interesting to note how the local people – rural and urban are living with all this wildlife around them. Evidently, there is not much killing going around, particularly not on a regular and large scale. The hunters mainly hunt small animals for their own survival. The largest animal they look for is the deer, and that too, more often look for dead ones than hunt live ones. Large and powerful animals like elephants, tigers, bears and bison are generally left to themselves. Humans try to remain careful of them, avoid them during their own visitations in the forest for wood and fodder and have developed ways of driving out those that like to ransack the agricultural fields from time to time. “Natives who live in localities frequented by elephants become very bold in driving them away from their fields in the night” (Ibid, 53). The prevalent belief is that the wild animals do not disturb human beings unless they are disturbed. Accidents do happen, but their frequency is low, and are taken in a matter-of-fact manner. This way of life led to not becoming great hunters, but becoming knowledgeable about wild animals. It was knowledge about them that helped in maintaining one’s own life. In Sanderson’s view Jungle-people in India are under constant necessity to avoid formidable animals, as they have neither the means nor the stomach to oppose them. They thus become preternaturally quick in noting sights and sounds which do not attract the attention of ordinary persons. The slight ruffling of the surface which alone marks, in hard ground, where tiger’s paw has passed; the horns of a deer lying in grass, matching so closely with twigs and undergrowth as to be undistinguishable from them to the inexperienced eye; the bee, scarcely larger than a housefly, entering a hole high in a tree overhead (…) alike attract the glances of Kurraba and Sholaga. (Ibid, 29, emphasis mine) When footprints cannot be seen for a variety of reasons, they see other signs of movement and can even tell how many hours or days ago the animal had passed from there (Ibid, 30).

56  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty Sanderson’s engaged and detailed writing is able to reflect, even if unintended by him, that the British hunter enters not only a forest but also a space defined by a certain kind of human–animal relationship, which is completely foreign to him. “Humanity as understood by us is a feeling of which they have no conception” (Ibid, 24), says he. He believes that he has a good conception of what the natives think. This confidence in the self of writers like Sanderson has been interpreted by contemporary scholars as a result of their authoritative position and that of their country’s dominance of the location where they are. That may very well be so, but the point here is not to explain the reason for his attitude but to see how it is going to go to work in this location and how it will impact the human–animal relations. As noted earlier, he trains the jungle people to go hunting with him. He acknowledges that to go hunting, he needed their knowledge. It is through their knowledge that he becomes an expert on elephants. This transfer of knowledge transforms the very nature of that knowledge as it becomes integrated in another way of thinking, leading to another type of human–animal relationship. The situation of forests and wildlife therein changes. If we remain focused on the narrative nature of this record, we must wonder, whether the jungle folk shared their knowledge for the purposes it was used, whether they cooperated because they were waiting for someone to come and make them hunt the animals they did not hunt, or, whether they found themselves compelled to do so. What does Sanderson mean by saying that the jungle folk “have neither the means nor the stomach” to hunt the wild animals? The jungle folk, in this case the Oopligas, Sholagas and Karrambas, did not write books to record this history from their point of view, but when Sanderson’s text is read closely their responses can be seen as embedded in his record and when highlighted, they may answer our questions. Sanderson is a sophisticated writer and assumptions like his text being a “colonial construct” will be an impediment in asking the correct questions. So, Sanderson moved into Morlay around 1870. A two-roomed bungalow was built for him with the help of the Oopligas and he called this bungalow “Morlay Hall” (Ibid, 33). It was here that he learned from the Oopligas everything about the forest and all the animals living there and trained them in hunting. He learned about the seasons and how the forests and the movement of animals were aligned with it. Slowly, the forest became open to his view and he saw how the elephants moved during the day and the night, during the hot or rainy or balmy weather of the region. He saw how and when the tiger moved, where the bears were to be found, how the bison roamed free, how the birds sang and nested, how the monkeys never let the tiger move alone and followed him from up above in the trees, shouting and squealing to inform all the other inhabitants of the movement of this predator and how the tiger hunted in spite of them. The forest, the animals and the jungle people were not unconnected objects simply existing without taking cognition of each other, but were a dynamic network of relationships, interdependencies and ways of life. Everyone had some space of their own, left

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  57 some spaces they left exclusively for others and some space of others that they transgressed from time to time. The common, unwritten and unsaid law was that everyone took what they needed to continue their own life, which involved killing others. What they did not do was trade and kill out of viciousness. Perhaps a telling example of how nuanced their relationships were is: the Oopligas took the sap from the palm tree to make the toddy drink, sold it too but neither created plantations nor drank it themselves. While Sanderson became introduced to this space and its inhabitants, he was not just learning. Hunting, shooting and killing was going on simultaneously. In this, he shared Shakespear’s instinct: if he saw a wild animal, a bird or a reptile, the immediate response was to try and shoot it. If it could not be done there and then, he came back for it. If the being escaped, he chased it until he had shot it. With several animals, the resultant products were coveted – skins, teeth etc. With many others, nothing was to be gained, but they had to be shot because he had seen them. He constantly asks people about their knowledge of animals in the vicinity. In this quest, he learns of an unusually large bison bull that lived in the vicinity of Sholagas’ region. They knew of him, but had done nothing to him and he had done nothing to them. The description of the bull itself induces Sanderson to hunt him. He asks the people to show him the bull, to track the bull for him and after several attempts, as the animal kept escaping, he finally killed the large bull (Ibid, 39–40). In his long travels into the forest to see and understand the herds and habitat of elephants, he comes across a man called Bommay Gouda, 55 years of age, of “good caste” living alone in the forest, doing cultivation and selling cattle. Everyone else of his village had left the place and gone elsewhere, but he had continued to live. He was very knowledgeable about wild animals and Sanderson spares no effort to get into his confidence and finally uses his knowledge to shoot tigers and other animals (Ibid, 40–41). Sanderson also narrates of a temple in the forest, somewhat far from any human habitat, but people from a particular village occasionally come to offer prayers there. On those particular days, their priest comes, the temple is cleaned up, offerings are made, prayers are chanted and sung with small bells as accompaniment. Simultaneously, some rice is cooking in a pot. At the end of the ceremonies, everyone eats the cooked food, shares the offerings and then they close the temple and go home (Ibid, 41–42). Sanderson observes them and is charmed by their kind of religion and its practice, but he is there to study the herds of elephants that hang around in the forest behind the temple. On the day of shooting the elephants he is concerned that the bells of the faithful might disturb or warn the elephants and convinces them to move their worship down toward the stream. They agree as they do not have an idol of the deity in the temple. The deity was “represented by a circle” drawn on the floor which they could draw elsewhere too (Ibid, 44). Based on these and many other such journeys in the company of the jungle folk, he gains knowledge about elephants that he shares with his intended

58  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty readers. From what he writes about their behavior, it comes out that elephants are sentient social beings living in communities of their own. Elephants make use of a great variety of sounds in communicating with each other, and in expressing their wants and feelings. Some are uttered by the trunk, some by the throat. (…) An elephant rushing upon an assailant, trumpets shrilly with fury, but if enraged by wounds or other causes, and brooding by itself, it expresses its anger by a continued hoarse grumbling from the throat. Fear is similarly expressed in a shrill brassy trumpet, or by a roar from the lungs. Pleasure by a continued low squeaking through the trunk, or an almost inaudible purring sound from the throat (…). (Ibid, 49) A rather elaborate system of communication is visible here, as also the ample opportunity of observation and learning for Sanderson. He also learns that “The ranges [of movement] of wild elephants are very extensive, and are traversed with considerable regularity” (Ibid, 50). Sanderson is of course showing off his knowledge and providing narrative entertainment for the readers. Incidentally, Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book was first published in 1894, that is, after 15 years of Sanderson’s first edition. This implies that a vast reading public of such literature existed in England for a long time and the success of Kipling’s fiction was not without this context. The narrative elements of Sanderson’s account and that of other writers like him, created and responded to a huge demand. India is the most important colony of the British Empire at the moment, not only because it can be captured, but because its wilderness is well populated and it can be narrated. The images created stick to India’s image more than a century after their creation and are used commercially and politically. Sanderson’s major contribution was catching large numbers of elephants in south India for the government establishment. He describes the methods of capturing elephants then prevalent in south India and elsewhere in India. Sanderson lists four methods: Driving into kheddahs or enclosures Hunting with trained females Pitfalls Noosing from trained elephant’s backs The Kheedah plan is the only one adapted for the capture of whole herds, the others being for single elephants. It is the method in vogue by the Government hunting establishments in Bengal (…). (Ibid, 70) The kheddah was the method by which an entire herd of elephants could be captured at once and it was executed in the following manner as per

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  59 Sanderson’s account: a kheddah party consists of 370 men and the total cost of the party is Rs. 3800 (Pound 380) per mensem. Sanderson gives a breakup of the types of roles, numbers of men and their payments (70). The maximum number of people – 280 – were employed as coolies, whose main role was to drive the elephants out of the forest into a certain direction. The process in short was: a large fenced enclosure is made for the beaters to drive the herd into it. There is ample food within the enclosure so that the elephants do not panic or realize that they are in an enclosure. Once the whole herd enters, a heavy gate closes the entrance and the elephants cannot return to their freedom. After a couple of days, mahouts atop trained elephants enter the enclosure; the wild ones are separated one by one by the trained elephants and mahouts tie the hind legs of the wild elephants. Once this is achieved, they are captive (Ibid, 71–73). However, large elephants usually roam a little away from the herd and are often not caught in the kheddah. Captive female elephants and mahouts trap them separately in the forest and tie chains to their legs. The elephant makes every effort to free himself and, in the process injures himself. “A large proportion of the fine elephants captured in this way die from the injuries they receive from the severe restraints necessary to control them during the first few days” (Ibid, 74). These fine male elephants had been portrayed in Panctantra too, in this passage from the point of view of a hare: [The Hare] saw the King of Elephants coming towards that very lake, surrounded by thousands of lordly elephants whose flapping ears looked like silken pennons dancing gaily in the breeze. His whole frame tinged yellow with masses of pollen of flowering golden campā whose tender twigs made a carpet for him to rest on, made him resemble a rain-swollen cloud streaked by flashes of lightning. His trumpeting had the deep-toned resonance of thunderbolts clashing in the rainy season and emitting fiery, scintillating gleams of lightning. Having the sheen of radiant blue lotuses veiled in their leafy sheaths, he displayed the majesty of Airavatā, the celestial tusker. His trunk was beautifully coiled to resemble the foremost lord of serpents. Honey-coloured and glistening, his two pair of tusks, grown to their full length looked gorgeous. The round of his face with the hum of bees drawn by the heady scent of ichor trickling down the sides of his temples was most captivating. (Sharma, 1995, Panćatantra.pdf, 348–49/532) The difference between the two portrayals is a matter of different perceptions of nonhuman animals. In spite of the fact that Sanderson is making effort to show the kheddah method as the best one, the inherent violence involved comes across rather starkly from the text. We will see further in the text what exactly happens when the elephants are driven into the enclosure. Notice the information mentioned above that a “large proportion” of elephants who did not enter

60  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty the kheddah died. They were actually the most desirable specimens, due to their large size and were trapped by another method in which human beings ride the female elephants but hide themselves by lowering their bodies and lure the large male elephants. The hidden human then slips down and chains the feet of the free ones. To show the relative advantage of the kheddah method, Sanderson compares it with the method used by the Maharaja of Mysore before the introduction of kheddah. Maharaja’s method was called Pitfalls. “A most barbarous method of catching wild elephants is by pits dug into their paths” (Ibid, 75) of the elephants. The Maharaja of Mysore and the government maintained a network of pitfalls that were regularly checked by Sholagas and Kurrabas, employed for the purpose, and it suited them as they also found deer and other animals trapped there and these animals were food for them. Referring to the great depths of the pits, Sanderson says “an immense majority of elephants that make the descent have their limbs dislocated or broken, or receive permanent internal injuries, even if they are not killed on the spot, as sometimes happens. (…) An immense proportion [dies]” (Ibid, 75). Whatever the method be, more elephants were dying in the process of capture than were being captured. The irony of an elephant being made to fall in a pit becomes evident when we learn that, whether in wild or in captivity, “Elephants very rarely stumble; should they even do so they never fall from that cause” (Ibid, 89). Sanderson’s contribution was that he advocated the kheddah method and the discontinuance of the pitfall method. The Commissariat and the Forest Department soon gave up the pit plan; but the Maharaja required a few elephants annually, and even though ten or twenty were killed for every one that lived, it was his only method of procuring them. (…) Since the Maharaja’s death the pit system in Mysore has happily been given up. (Ibid, 76) The third method in use was: noosing from trained elephants’ backs. In this method, a rope is tied around the tame elephant’s girth and the other end of the rope is a noose; there are three riders on the elephant: the mahout on the neck, second man on a small pad on its back and the third seated near the tail to cause pain at the tailbone area to make the elephant move in the stressful situation. Wild elephants are literally chased through the forest and separated from each other. Thus, they become alone and at one point, the noose is thrown from the back of the domesticated to encircle the wild elephant’s neck. The struggle that follows seriously injures both the animals, and the tame one has a really bad time, being goaded in the neck and the tailbone and being pulled by the wild noosed elephant (Ibid, 76–77). Sanderson was critical of this method and in his opinion “It is far from an economic method, as the wear and tear of the tame elephants engaged is very great, nor can the full-sized wild ones be captured by it” (Ibid, 76).

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  61 It is evident from Sanderson’s descriptions that a large number of elephants died in the process of their capture. Even in the kheddah method, casualties were high, of those who had not followed the herd into the enclosure and had been chased individually, and of those who were in the enclosure but had to go through the process of being chained. The violence of making pitfalls in the ways of the elephants killed up to 20 elephants for every one elephant caught alive. In spite of this ratio, temples and Indian kings used to have a large number of elephants. Just to imagine how many others died for them is maddening. The method was practiced by the British all across the subcontinent. A large number of elephants died in the process of capture; they also died in captivity, particularly in the early days, and later on too. Sanderson gives statistics for one year 1874–1875 of the number of casualties among the Commissariat elephants: altogether 114 elephants died of various diseases and neglect. Ceylon and Burma need to be included too, because they were also part of the British Empire in South Asia and actually two of the major sources of elephants. In Ceylon, elephants went almost extinct by the end of the nineteenth century. The violence, brutality, cruelty, callousness and greed of the human species is astounding, and that of the system of the colonial establishment absolutely criminal. Sanderson induced the government and the Maharaja of Mysore to allow him to try the kheddah method for the capture of the elephants, which according to him the Maharaja’s mahouts had never heard of (Ibid, 101). Due to this, the Chief Commissioner took some time to make a decision in favor of Sanderson’s proposed plan. “The proposals originated entirely with me” (Ibid, 102), says Sanderson. When he was permitted to execute his plan, his first act was to send for his “old friends, the Morlayites” (Ibid, 102). From them he learned about how many elephant herds were there, how and when they were moving and accordingly constructed the kheddah before the elephants arrived in a certain location (Ibid, 102–105). His first attempt was not really successful, as one man fired just when the herd was moving into the kheddah, driven by the beaters. The elephants fled back into the forest. Sanderson was “maddened by the ill-luck” and “Morlayites now lost their heads, as everyone else appeared to do on that memorable occasion. They pursued the retreating elephants with shouts and brandishing of clubs (…)” (Ibid, 105–106). The only solace was that no one had been killed. “I mounted my elephant and rode home, followed by my chop-fallen heroes” (Ibid, 106). Sanderson planned again for a kheddah after a few months. In the intervening time, he trained the men for the operation. Training and disciplining them was accompanied by shooting of several animals on a daily basis, both as practice in disciplined behavior and in following commands. Finally, they were ready for the next season when the elephants came into a certain area. They could now hear the elephants arriving in their region and feeding in the jungle at night. “What a night of pleasant anticipations and merriment it was! (…) I certainly felt that I now had a very different following to the undisciplined band that frustrated the first attempt” (Ibid, 110). The operation involved a huge area near a river and had a planned sequence. First of

62  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty all, the elephants are driven by beaters in a certain direction and their return is blocked by men. The elephants do not exactly realize that they are being trapped and still feel they are free. On this occasion, two of Sanderson’s British colleagues joined him and that night they drove 54 elephants into a certain part of the planned area from where they would be driven into the enclosure four days later. By 11 p.m. the defences [sic] were thoroughly secured and I had the leisure as I stood by a log-fire with nothing but my trousers on (…), a piece of bread in one hand, and a bottle of claret and water in the other, to reflect on our complete success so far. (Ibid, 111) After four days, the elephants had to be driven into the exact enclosure. The enclosure too, though fenced from all sides, except one, was still too large to be visible to the elephants. As per the plan, once they would move into that enclosure, a fabricated heavy gate would be dropped to completely lock them in. In the meanwhile, many British visitors came from the city to watch the action. “A screened platform had been erected for the ladies at a point near the gate, where they could see the final drive into the enclosure from a place of safety” (Ibid, 112–113). When driven, all did not go as smoothly as planned, because the elephants “when near the entrance, made a stand and refused to proceed; and finally, headed by a determined female, turned upon the beaters and threatened to break back down an open glade” (Ibid, 113). Sanderson got into action and along with his colleague whom he calls P. jumped into the fray. P. and I intercepted them and most of them hesitated; but the leading female, the mother of the albino calf, which had been evilly disposed from the beginning, rushed down upon me, as I happened to be directly in her path, with shrill screams (…). When within five yards, I floored her with my 8-bore Greener and 10 drams; (…) the shot was not fatal (…). I gave her my second barrel (…). The poor beast moved off a few paces and halted, a stream of blood issuing in a parabolic curve from her chest, and making a loud gushing sound as a pool was made in front of her. For some moments she swayed from side to side, and then fell over with a deep groan, to rise no more. This was a painful scene; the elephant had only acted in defence [sic] of her young; but shooting her was unavoidable, as our lives, as well as those of the beaters, were in jeopardy. (Ibid, 113) This painful scene was being watched by the visitors, including the ladies perched high up. Interrupting our own anthropocentric view, we may notice that the rest of the elephants and other nonhuman denizens of the forest also witnessed the scene.

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  63 The rest of the elephants were successfully driven into the kheddah. The female that had been killed by Sanderson had an albino calf, protecting whom she lost her life. Sanderson had described earlier how lovingly and with how much care elephants bring up their young one and how until a good enough age of two or three years the young elephants walk almost sheltered under the towering body of their mother. What would have happened to the motherless albino calf in the mayhem of the herd being driven into the enclosure? The most noisy animal of the herd was the little albino calf (…)which continued to roar lustily for its mother, and in pain at the kicks which were freely administered to it by the other elephants when it endeavoured to push its way among them. (Ibid, 114) At this point, Sanderson decides to tell his readers that it is a myth that other female elephants take care of motherless calves, because here, in front of him none did, instead the poor fellow was regularly pummeled. He judges the female elephants of a herd being driven into captivity for not being kind to the calf he had made an orphan. No matter the crying calf being bullied, the kheddah operation was a huge success. “I often think of the rapture of the moment! How warmly we ‘Sahibs’ shook hands. How my trackers hugged my legs, and prostrated themselves to P. and B.” (114). Next day, he went to catch the wild ones, that is, the big elephants who would have been roaming a little distant from the herd and would not have entered the enclosure. The earlier described procedure was followed, leading to injuries and deaths. No matter that too. “In ten days, during which time the visitors remained, and we had a merry camp, we secured all the elephants” (Ibid, 115). The juxtaposition of the two scenes – capture of the elephant herd and the celebration among the British group – is there in Sanderson’s text and highlights the moment of victory. In an ecological-historical perspective, this juxtaposition is defined by cruelty and highlights the inherent, normalized cruelty of British colonial plunderers of wildlife in the forests of India. It is ridiculous to say that they were not aware of it; notice: “How warmly we ‘Sahibs’ shook hands” is how the event was concluded in Sanderson’s memory – he and his countrymen as rulers of India. After his success in south India and more such kheddah expeditions, Sanderson was sent by the government for a year to lead the elephant-catching operation in Bengal, which actually meant being stationed in Dacca (now Dhaka) and then leading the expedition into the dense rain forests of Assam and northeast India where the largest numbers of elephants were caught. In Bengal, he reached a beautiful country where the green rice fields stretched as far as the eye could see. He took over the charge of the station and in the months that the expedition is planned, he explored the countryside on the back of an elephant and shot all kinds of animals and birds on a daily basis. After the rainy season was over, the elephant-catching operation started,

64  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty which above all required very difficult travel through regions without roads. The journey involved going by boats and on the backs of the elephants through the forests. Catching the elephants involved similar kinds of brutalities as seen above. There are other facts divulged by the writer which add perspective to elephant catching. A hunting party to catch elephants required hundreds of men. In Bengal, Sanderson reveals these men are hired by the government on temporary employment. The men who are willing to take this employment are poor, outcast and generally petty criminals. All such men were, as per Sanderson rascals of various degrees, as it was only this class who cared to take such dangerous and irregular employment. (…) The men were generally of miserable physique according to our notions, but they had the patience and endurance of mules. (Ibid, 136–137) Several of them would desert the operation midway when it got too difficult for them. Such “runaways” were either caught by the team itself, or if they did escape, they were pursued by the police and punished. The punishments were frequent and harsh to control the tendency. So, the catchers were made of the leading “Sahib”, some responsible native officers from the government establishment and hundreds of poor, emaciated and nearly naked men, almost compelled into the job owing to their circumstances. They lived through the jungles and camps as per their rank. Sanderson lived like this: I had provided myself with every comfort and convenience, and amongst other things (…) was a tin of 100 lb of ship’s biscuits and a keg of salt Bengal humps and tongues. I had an ample supply of tin provisions, plenty of books, and comfortable camp-fittings. I also had tents and everything as comfortable as possible for my servants – Madrassees – who had accompanied me from Mysore, and who comprised a headservant, a cook, a table-servant, and four Bengalee peons. (138) In addition, was his trusted aide from Mysore who took care of his guns and rifles. While they camp in the forests, they light enough fires at night to keep the wild animals away. Yet there were instances of elephants and tigers that came to look at them at night. Some were insistent and came back again and again. Once an elephant nearly entered Sanderson’s tent. Apart from catching the elephants, several other animals are killed for sport. Tiger was of course the big trophy and if one was seen or even heard of, he had to be hunted and killed. Amid all this, a dog takes a liking for Sanderson, follows him from camp to camp and finally swims eight miles following Sanderson’s boat, who then adopts him and brings the dog back to Mysore, “a thousand miles from

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  65 the land of his birth” with him (Ibid, 172). In the northeast of India, the elephants that were caught also had to finally swim to their captivity in the Commisariat in Dacca. The elephants caught were then trained. The elephant is essentially a native’s animal. Natives alone have fully studied his peculiarities and classified him into castes; his capture, training, and keeping are in native hands, as well as the trade; and the native standard of merit regulates the market. (Ibid, 83) The essential of the training was to make the elephants used to life in captivity. Further, it included training into the works that would be required of them. Those who were to work in the timber depots would learn to carry or pull logs of woods in several ways. Those who were to be deployed for transport had to learn to carry howdahs, men and goods. The natives require elephants for decorative purposes at courts and temples, but British require them for economic purposes (Ibid, 83). “(…) Government uses them for the transport of troops, for provisioning outpost station not connected by roads. They are advantageous when great exertion is required for a short distance” (Ibid, 86). The government elephants are expected to carry 1640 lbs of weight and 300 lbs extra may be added (Ibid, 88). One of the unnatural things they had to learn was something that public displays required and are remembered by viewers as something naturally done by the elephants: trumpeting. Elephants are taught to trumpet by the extremity of their trunks being tightly grasped between the hands, when they are obliged to breathe through the mouth, in doing which they make a loud sonorous sound. They are rewarded and made much of for this, and so learn to “speak”, as it is termed, on an indication of what is required. (Ibid, 121) As noted earlier, elephants were not allowed to breed in captivity, which had implications: “As elephants are not bred in captivity, the demand for them is unwavering” (Ibid, 90). Yet, every now and then, a female elephant was found to be pregnant, as a result of necessary forays they had to make in the forests and were left alone for grazing for a while. The government elephants were registered and were named by their mahouts and attendants. Some of the names of female elephants, given to them by their mahouts and mentioned in Sanderson’s book deserve a mention here: Dowlatpeare, Bheemrutty, Champa, Tara Raanee and Pounpeary. The names reflect affection and respect of their handlers. However, Sanderson says “Native attendants are very careless” (Ibid, 87) in taking care of elephants’ ropes and wounds caused by them. He further states that Europeans are completely dependent on

66  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty native attendants for information. “The men are rascals, more often than not, and all are invariably grossly superstitious and ignorant” (Ibid, 96). According to Sanderson, the attendants do not do the required caretaking, are lazy in cutting enough grass for the elephants or in bathing them. They also steal from the rations provided by the government for the elephants (Ibid, 96–97). Interesting, an account provided at another point in the book shows that government itself provided lesser fodder than required by an elephant depending on the season and the place. An elephant needs 800 lbs of food on a daily basis, and was provided anywhere between 560 and 250 lbs (Ibid, 99–100). For example, in Madras there was hardly any natural grass available as fodder, whereas there was more than enough in Bengal. This meant that in Bengal the elephant could simply be taken on a walk and s/he would not only eat but also uproot tall grass and hand it to the mahout sitting above on its back for carrying the fodder back to the camp. In Madras, the fodder had to be provided by the government. If an elephant is well fed, says Sanderson, it is hardly liable to sickness (Ibid, 98). There were several markets where the captured elephants were sold. The chief mart in India was the fair at Sonepoor on the banks of the Ganges. In 1870s, the price had increased enormously (Ibid, 91). The government paid in 1835 – £ 45; in 1855 – £ 75; in 1874 – £ 132 and in 1875 – £ 150 generally, and the price for good working-class female elephants was between £ 200 and £ 300 (Ibid, 92). On other uses of the elephant, Sanderson says The elephant’s use in tiger-shooting is well known, and speaks volumes for the tractability of an animal naturally so timid and disinclined for such work. (…) Unless they are well trained, there is danger of some male elephants attacking the tiger when they see him, which is a dangerous habit, as the occupants of the howdah may be shaken out during the animal’s endeavours to crush the tiger. (89–90) Such incidents did happen, but this use also meant that elephants were required by ordinary British officers across India. Sanderson also had a personal account of shooting elephants. “My own modest experience in elephant-shooting rests only upon twenty elephants bagged” (Ibid, 194). He describes the incidents in elephant shooting over two chapters. In one instant, he had wounded an elephant by a body shot which of course did not kill him. Then he followed the elephant and saw The elephant seemed almost exhausted as I observed he panted heavily. I felt a pang at the suffering which the cruelty of giving him a body-shot was occasioning, and I resolved never to shoot another elephant except in the head. (…) the cruelty of subjecting so grand and harmless a creature to unnecessary pain must make every sportsman shun it. (Ibid, 226–227)

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  67 It is somewhat strange that while calling the creature “grand and harmless” it is not the shooting itself which is seen as cruel, but only shooting in a certain manner. Another remarkable fact connected with elephants in the wild was “the extreme rarity of any remains of the dead one found in the jungle” (Ibid, 57). This concerns the natural death of the elephants. Nobody ever saw a dead elephant or its remains in the jungle. This was such an established fact that Sholagas believed they never die and Kurrabas and Kakankote believed that there is a place, unseen by human eye, to which they retire to end their days (Ibid, 57). Europeans too, who went into jungle for all kinds of reasons, including surveys, saw hundreds of elephants, but never any dead ones. However, elephants were dying by gun shots and during capture through any method. So, Sanderson did see dead elephants. “A dead elephant is soon a disgusting spectacle. The carcass swells to an enormous size… hundreds of vultures gather” and even “(…) lowest classes of natives also do not eat [elephant]” (Ibid, 199). Even so, dead elephants could also be made useful Elephants’ feet make unique footstools; the forefeet being round are better adapted for this purpose, than the hind, which are oval. The feet should be cut off a few inches below the knee, and the bones and flesh must be taken out. This is hard work, and strong knives are necessary. (Ibid, 200) Sanderson goes on to describe the whole process until the filling of the skin with coir, covering the top with panther skin, then velvet and then painting it over. He does not mention the removing and sale of the tusks, but that was a given and was one of the main reasons for shooting male elephants. In 1879, even the colonial government had prohibited shooting of elephants, except of very dangerous ones. The last clause enabled hunters to declare an elephant dangerous and then go shoot it. Sanderson was not even convinced of the need for the prohibition. It is disconcerting how enamored he sounds of the elephants and how enthusiastically he contributes to their decimation. He considered the elephant to be the true king of the forest, and not the tiger or the lion. Comparing hunting elephants to the “much vaunted pursuit of the tiger”, he found the former more challenging. According to him, anyone with influence could organize a team of beaters, sit in the tree, wait for the tiger to be pushed out by the beaters and then have a broad area to shoot at. “Tiger shooting is no criterion of a sportsman’s attainments. Many men have bagged their fifty tiger who never succeeded in stalking an old stag Sámbur” (Ibid, 188). On the other hand, shooting an elephant required knowledge of the forests, admiration for the trackers and the hunter experienced beautiful scenery. Sanderson then describes how difficult it is to shoot down an elephant and what are the few spots where the aim has to be taken. “The shot requiring most accurate calculation is the shot to kill a

68  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty charging elephant from in front” (Ibid, 189). That is how he had shot the female elephant with the albino calf. Thinning the Wildlife Sanderson had been successful in fulfilling his dreams, his plans and having a career doing so. In other words, he had been successful in disrupting the ecological balance in the forests of south India. He was indeed not the only official with such duties and success; there were others like him in all parts of the subcontinent. Sanderson’s autobiographical account, however, is a record of how much extermination one single individual could cause and an indication of the overall scale of loss of life of nonhuman animals. Sanderson’s book was titled Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India; it’s correct title would have been: Thirteen Years Killing the Wild Beasts of India, because he certainly did not spend that time “among” them. In those 13 years, thousands of elephants suffered painful deaths, were enslaved and made to labor under harsh conditions and starved. Although the focus of his life, of his book and of this chapter is on his annihilation of elephants, they were not the only denizens of the forest that he killed. Sanderson shot tigers too. As mentioned above, many British men had shot 50 tigers (sounds like it was some mark to be achieved), it was no secret that the number of tigers was dwindling too. “At all times, tigers are, or were before I thinned them, numerous …” (Ibid, 41, emphasis mine). This “thinning” had been done in spite of knowing the tiger’s role in maintaining the ecological balance of species in the wild (Ibid, 268). He saw the need for shooting tigers as “His [tiger’s] pursuit affords excitement and recreation to many a hard-working official, whose life, except for an occasional day in the jungles, would be one of uninterrupted toil. (…)” (Ibid, 269). For the entertainment of the British official, it was justified to shoot tigers. As a good hunter himself, his only regret was “It is a pity to see the tiger proscribed and hunted to death by every unsportsmanlike method that can be devised, in response to popular outcries – chiefly in England – without foundation in fact, about his destructiveness” (Ibid, 269). This destructiveness of the tiger had been popularized in England by the state itself and by books like his own. So, the general English public wanted the destruction of the Indian tiger. Being in India, he made his approach more nuanced “Trace-out and slay every man-eater by all means possible, and at any expense; but ordinary tigers are exceedingly inoffensive and have their uses. May the day be far distant when the tiger shall become practically extinct!” (Ibid, 269). In the region of his residence, however, he says “Man-eaters are extremely rare in Mysore and the surrounding territories. In the past fifteen years there has been only one …” (Ibid, 272). As noted in the case of other animals, shooting often resulted in creating orphans of elephants, bears and tigers. At times, they were even stolen.

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  69 Tiger-cubs are very handsome little beasts, and exceedingly good-tempered; but it is essential that they be taken very young (…) or they cannot be tamed. A month is the outside age for taking them. (…) A pair which I gave to His Highness the young Maharaja of Mysore, were kept loose until eight months old (…). I had one of considerable size that used to be loose in my room at night (…). I sold a pair of cubs eight months old, as I was ordered to Bengal and could not keep them, for £ 100. (Ibid, 282) These seem to have been the side benefits of shooting, which is much like others shooting tigers. He adds new information when he tells the readers that the government had promoted killing tigers by poisoning them with Strychnine. This method was also used in Mysore by the order of the government. Sanderson “(…) only poisoned three…” (Ibid, 289) and he informs the readers of the details of how the poison works. The difficulty in this was how to feed the poison to the tiger, because tiger does not eat a kill that has been disturbed by someone else. Sanderson brags that he hit upon the best method to feed the poison to the tiger, and it was so precious a knowledge that he did not want to divulge it (Ibid, 290). In addition to poisoning, he tells the readers “Traps are now often used for tiger” (Ibid, 291). Sanderson describes the incidents of his shooting tigers over several pages, and shooting of panthers and leopards over two chapters. “One of my most fortunate days with panthers and leopards occurred in May 1872, when I had the luck to bag three before breakfast” (Ibid, 352). He devotes an independent chapter to shooting bears and bisons too. Of the bears, he says Bears are exceedingly affectionate animals amongst themselves, and are capable of being most thoroughly tamed when taken young. Either wild or tame, they are very amusing in their ways, being exceedingly demonstrative and ridiculous. Though hard to kill they are very soft as to their feelings, and make the most hideous cries when shot at, not only the wounded animal but also its companions. (366) And yet, “I shot several bears in 1872–73 at a place called Sakrapatam in the Kuddoor district of Mysore” (Ibid, 372–73). Of the bisons he says, “I have never known a case of herd-bison attacking man, except such individuals as were wounded, and, being pursued, found themselves unable to escape, even these more often die without resistance than otherwise” (Ibid, 246). Bisons also did not survive in captivity and none “reached England alive” (249). And yet, shooting bisons was the best sport after elephant shooting (Ibid, 253). It is noteworthy here that he declares elephant and tiger both to be harmless in their own ways: elephants did not kill humans and could be easily

70  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty driven away from the agricultural fields, which were anyway not their chief food. Man-eater tigers were too few and others were not interested in the human beings. Bears ate white ants, roots and fruits and had no reason to attack human beings. Bison did not attack human beings. The few crocodiles that are found in the Mysore rivers very rarely attack people; and fishermen – who pay no heed to them – have told me that if they come upon a crocodile whilst following their employment, it will skulk at the bottom and not move though handled, apparently believing it escapes observation. Crocodiles are, like all wild creatures, very timid when not encouraged, as is sometimes done by superstitious natives. (Ibid, 14) Sanderson of course killed them or wounded them and had them dragged out of water (Ibid, 15). There is this narrative, submerged in the big fat book, that most of these wild animals which were in abundance, or otherwise, were neither any great threat to human existence nor were being relentlessly hunted by the so-called natives. In fact, general people – agriculturists, rural and urban – are not interested in hunting. The majority populace of Hindus are committed to not taking life. So, hunting was either practiced by the rulers or by people living on the borders of the forest. The former was occasional, and the latter was subsistence level and mainly involved hunting of small animals. The large-scale hunting of big wild animals as sport came into the Indian forests with the British. Every official wanted to become a “sportsman”. Even Sanderson was no hunter when he came to India, but already aspired to go hunting the big game – that was his great dream in life as a young man. He and those like him learned to shoot in India. They were enabled by their British colleagues and by their positions of power, which included power to order around natives. The learning happened by the hit and trial method and not only caused much cruelty being unleashed on harmless animals and great agony being experienced by them but also left a lot of wounded animals in the jungle. In the case of tigers, this led to the steady increase in the numbers of the man-eaters, which became a phenomenon in the early twentieth century and had to be dealt with. This rise in the numbers of man-eaters has to be seen together with the simultaneous decrease in their overall population, and that has to be added to the simultaneous decrease in the population of all other big wild animals. The result can be expressed in numbers, but it will be unable to tell of the suffering of those huge numbers of beings who were wounded, maimed, orphaned, chained, robbed of their bones, skins, teeth and fur and ultimately killed. The accounts of hunters are filled with inadvertent references to those who witnessed these acts of brutality. Every elephant killed was seen by many others, every tiger stalked and killed was seen by monkeys and others, every bear killed cried out loudly and informed his fellow-bears and other denizens of the forest, every running

The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty  71 panther and leopard was seen by many, including the trees and the bushes which hid them. As the new scientific evidence suggests, trees not only have cognition but also communicate with other trees; when one is harmed, others get to know it too (Simard, 2021; Wolhlleben, 2016). The eyewitness accounts of the many more-than-humans are out there in the universe, maybe stored in some form that we do not yet know of. Sanderson came back to Mysore from Bengal in 1976 and would have liked to return to Bengal in 1877, but cholera broke out there and many men died. A storm wave in 1876 also caused much destruction and loss of life in Chittagong (Ibid, 174). He could also not go much elephant catching in Mysore due to the widespread famine caused by drought. The population was too stressed and the government had to assist agriculturists to take their cattle deeper into the forests for grazing. Sanderson does not say that this was an extraordinary famine caused by the land tax policies of the colonial British government. Almost five million people died due to this famine in the presidency of Madras of which Mysore was a part (Dutt, 1901, 1). Sanderson returned to England on a year’s leave and wrote this book. He came back to India and resumed his duties. He married in 1892, but soon after passed away in Madras at the age of 44. Two obituaries were published in the British newspapers. One of them read: Death of the Elephant King. The elephant king, as he was justly called, Mr. G. P. Sanderson, has died at Madras, and it will be impossible for Government to fill his place as superintendent of kheddah or elephant catching operations. (…) Many thousands of elephants must have passed through his hand in the last twenty years. He fascinated the elephant with some incommunicable power. His books, which are as valuable to the naturalist as to the sportsman, do not reveal the art. He had transferred his skill to the Maharaja of Mysore where he lived in the little hut in the hills a simple vegetarian life. When the late Prince Victor visited the solitude to witness a catch, His Royal Highness went too near an infuriated tusker which, when rushing full tilt against the Prince, Mr. Sanderson stopped short at once by throwing up his arms and shouting to the beast. (…) If Africa had a Sanderson, its elephants might be preserved and trained for work, instead of being exterminated by the ivory-hunters. (Aberdeen Evening Express, Friday, June 17, 1892) For the British public, Sanderson had become the “elephant king”, had magical powers over the beast (for elephants had now becomes beasts) and it seems caught elephants just by talking to them! And of course, it was not the Indian mahouts with a long tradition of training elephants, but Sanderson, who could have caught and trained them in Africa too. The characteristic elements of folk narrative had entered the description of the man: he had magical powers, and, as the second obituary said “was a man of the most

72  The Majestic Elephant Meets the Government of Her Majesty abstemious habits. A small wooden house, a little rice and vegetable food, and a good rifle almost summed up the total of his needs” (The Middleton Albion – Saturday, June 25, 1892). Works Cited “Death of the Elephant King”. Aberdeen Journal. 18 June 1892. p. 7. Retrieved 1 October, 2014 – via British Newspaper Archive. Dutt, Romesh. 1901. Indian Famines. Their Causes and Prevention. London: P.S. King & Son. Sanderson, Daniel. 1863. Katha Sangraha or Canarese Selections. Prose. Printed at the Wesleyan Mission Press, Bangalore. Sanderson, G. P. (1878) 1907. Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India. Their Haunts and habits From Personal Observation; With An Account of the Mode Of Capturing And Taming Elephants. Sixth Edition With Illustrations Reproduced From The Original Drawings. Edinburgh: John Grant. Sharma, Vishnu. 1995. The Panćatantra. Translated by Chandra Rajan. Penguin Classics. Simard, Suzanne. 2021. Finding the Mother Tree. Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest. Kopf. “The Elephant hunter and the prince”. The Middleton Albion – Saturday, June 25, 1892. Wolhlleben, Peter. 2016. The Hidden Life of Trees. What They Feel, How the Communicate. Discoveries from a Secret World. Canada: Greystone Books.

3 The Multispecies World of Indian Householders John Lockwood Kipling’s Beast and Man in India (1991)

John Lockwood Kipling’s Beast and Man in India (1991) is a very different kind of book, but one that would put the texts discussed until now in a new perspective. This book shows the world of the Indian householder, the world in which the hunters had landed but did not understand, and yet, comment upon. This book also completes the bigger picture with reference to the one portrayed in the previous chapters. This book is not about the jungle and the wild animals, but mainly about free animals that live close to human habitat and how they are conceptualized in the language, lore and daily practices of the Indian people. It is also about those brought from the jungle and now under human supervision, and minimally about the domesticated animals. This book is about the relationship between nonhuman animals and Indian householders. Like all relationships, the human–animal relationship is also a matter of culture and a subject of cultural anthropology and ethnography. It is expressed in language, arts, beliefs and practices. This book portrays the multispecies world of India and lets us also see how human life was conceptualized with reference to the free animals living close to humans and the wild animals in the jungle. It is about the people and their lore that the hunters and the colonial state were confronted with. Beast and Man in India. A popular sketch of Indian animals in relation with the people by John Lockwood Kipling, C.I.E., was first published in 1891, and then in 1904. The author does not merely share the name with Rudyard Kipling, the famous author of a super famous work – The Junglebook; he was the father of Rudyard Kipling. John Lockwood Kipling spent most of his career in India. He first came in 1865 as a professor of architectural sculpture at the Jeejeebhoy Bombay School of Art and later became its principal. He also held the positions of the principal of Mayo School of Art in Lahore and of the curator at the Lahore Museum, now in Pakistan. One of the most interesting assignments that J. L. Kipling undertook was a commission by the Government of India to tour Punjab, North West Frontier and Kashmir in 1871–1872 and make sketches of Indian craftsmen. “Through his published drawings and accompanying articles Kipling became a champion of traditional Indian architecture, arts and crafts, and teaching methods at risk from British exports to India” (Oxford DOI: 10.4324/9781032700489-4

74  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders Dictionary of National Biography online). His drawings are preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum, have been exhibited in this century as well and have been critically studied by scholars of art history. This particular assignment especially, and others as well, must have brought him in contact with a number of Indian people, not only living in the big cities of Bombay and Lahore but also in small towns and villages. As his book shows, he must have been interested in them, their life and particularly their relationship with the animals around them because the kind of information this book carries can only be gained through communication with people. He is different from all other writers in many ways, but most importantly – he was not a hunter. His own description of himself reads “… a man who has never been able to find pleasure in the chase, and who never possessed the gun…” (Kipling, 1991, 52). This book Beast and Man in India was first published in 1891, that is, four years before his son’s world-renowned The Jungle Book, which is not the subject of discussion here. Father Kipling was the illustrator of the son’s books and also used his son’s poetry as citations in this 1904 edition of the Beast and Man in India. There is indeed a lot of give and take between the two as authors and some of it will be visible in the citations below. Rudyard Kipling’s work is not a subject of this discussion because it is a work of fiction. However, this chapter will provide insights into the context which inspired The Jungle Book. John Lockwood Kipling’s book has 18 chapters; 12 chapters are dedicated to one species each: birds, monkeys, asses, goats and sheep, cows and oxen, buffaloes and pigs, horses and mules, elephants, camels, dogs, foxes and jackals, cats and reptiles. Five chapters are about associated matters: animal calls, animal training, animals in Indian art, beast fights and animals and the supernatural. The remaining one chapter is the first chapter: “Introductory”, which will come up for analysis here after all the other chapters have been discussed. Other chapters will be analyzed in the sequence they are placed in Kipling’s book. The second chapter is called “Of Birds”, where Kipling lists narratives, beliefs and everyday practices of the people about more than 20 types of birds. In the following, the contents of his texts on birds are condensed into short summaries. All the information provided and opinions expressed are those of John Lockwood Kipling. Beings and Beliefs The Parrot is very important in folklore and is regarded as “a guardian of domestic honour” (Ibid, 17) and as an auspicious or lucky bird. In Hindu lore, the parrot is the “váhan or steed of Kama, or Kamdeo, a Hindu god of love” (Ibid, 17). Hindus teach the names of their gods to be chanted by the parrot. They lovingly call their children “little parrot”. A mother divides an almond between her child and a parrot so that the child does not stammer and has free and bold speech (Ibid, 19). “Parrot eyed”, on the other hand, is

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  75 a phrase for an ungrateful/deceitful person (Ibid, 19). Parakeets are trained as “public performers” and are able to carry out little acts on command. The relationship between parrots and Indians makes Kipling comment “(…) in India we are nearer to the time when creatures spoke and thought” (Ibid, 17). He is also referring to the folk narratives around the world that once upon a time all creatures could talk to each other. Kipling’s comment has a tone of humor, or even sarcasm and implies that people in India “still” believe in the old lore. The Baya is a bird that makes elaborate hanging nests. According to Kipling, the bird is appreciated a lot for its house-making skills. She exists in proverbs for excellence and her industry and is admired all around (Ibid, 22). Song Birds are kept caged by workmen to sing along during their work (Ibid, 22–23). Fighting Birds are kept by some people, mainly in Deccan, like the Nizam of Hyderabad. They also have a place in metaphor and poetry (Ibid, 23). The Crow acts as a messenger in folk stories and is still believed to announce approaching visitors (Ibid, 27). The crows are emboldened by the beliefs of the people and peer into windows and doors. They are also fed as propitiation for departed spirits (Ibid, 27). People believe that crows hold “punchayat” (council meeting) and inflict summary punishments on offenders of their own kind. Crows appear very frequently in sayings of the people, as also in lullaby for children. The Roller (Coracias indica) is called blue jay in India and is considered sacred because of its connection with God “Vishnu, who once assumed its form” (Ibid, 33). The Maina (Acridotheres tristis) “is sacred to Hindu God Ram Deo and sits on his hand”. Maina is very popular as a character in folk and literary stories (Ibid, 33). The Kite (Milvus govinda) “was held in esteem by Muslims in “former times”. It is treated respectfully in many sayings and is generally not disturbed (Ibid, 33–36). The Saras Crane (Grus antigone) is considered a “model of conjugal fidelity” (Ibid, 37). The Heron has an ironical Hindu phrase attached to it: “The saintly heron”, generally used for hypocritical religious medicants (38); this is so because heron is often seen standing still on one leg with eyes closed in shallow ponds, waiting for fishes to come to the surface and catch them. Hindus consider the Poultry unclean and do not domesticate hens nor do they eat eggs. Hindus of Rajput caste are fond of cock fighting and train them for the purpose (Ibid, 38). The Goose has lost its place in the popular lore, although it was sacred in early Buddhist and Hindu times (Ibid, 40), but now it is not taken notice of. “The Peacock is the Váhan or vehicle of Karttukeya, a god of war, and also of Saraswati, goddess of learning, and is sacred” (…) peacocks run wild, and are as common as rooks in England…”. (…) The peacock is credited with violent antipathy to snake (…) The bird is said to scent the coming of rain, and to scream and dance with delight at its approach” (Ibid, 41–43). Peacock feathers are considered lucky to have at home. The bird is known by its Hindi name Mor and Arabic name Taus. There is also a peacock-shaped string instrument called Taus in north India (Ibid, 43). People are very protective of peacocks and “Many of the troubles between villagers and English soldiers out shooting have arisen from the ignorance of the latter of the

76  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders veneration in which the peacock is held” (Ibid, 41). The Owl is a bird of good as well as ill omen (Ibid, 43). The Pigeon is the bird of Mecca, is almost as much a Hindu as a Muhammadan bird, and was chosen by Shiva, the third person of the Hindu Trinity, for Incarnation as Kapoteshwara. I was assured (…) that in a small temple in Kashmir, the image of Mahadeo at times takes life as a pair of pigeons which flutter and disappear in the roof. In cities, where Hindus preponderate, large flocks of pigeons are regularly fed by the Hindu merchants and shopkeepers. (Ibid, 44) Although pigeons are not trained as messengers, this quality of theirs is very well recognized in stories (Ibid, 45). Kipling compares the Koel with the cuckoo of Europe. According to him: “unlike the westerners who find their cuckoo sweet, but not the perfection of music, the Orientals have ‘officially adopted the Koel as the figure for exquisite sound’” (Ibid, 46). The koel starts its calls at the end of spring and the beginning of summer. The Indians immediately think of the mango season as the mango trees start to flower at the same time; Kipling does not mention this Indian association, but tells of a new one: “The Englishman has grudge against the Koel” as it tells him to prepare for the Indian summer (Ibid, 46–47). The Sparrow is considered a “thing of naught”, that is, of no great significance. “But on no account to be starved or harmed” (Ibid, 47). Both Muhammadans and Hindus place earthen saucers of water and food for it. There is a just “appreciation of the essential triviality and impertinence of the bird” (Ibid, 48). In England and America, the bird is considered a plague and killed. In the west, a bird in a church is a rare sight, but in Indian Churches “sparrow perches on the organ pipes, and chatters loudly through the sermon” (Ibid, 49). Falconry is a favorite sport in Sind and north India according to Kipling. People in Punjab carried Falcons on their arms and possessed elaborate sets of falcon gloves and other paraphernalia. When Lord Dufferin, Duke of Connaught visited Lahore, many Indian dignitaries came with their falcon. They also brought their falcon to the Lahore Museum where the author was in charge. When asked to leave the bird outside, they just covered it with a hood and then the falcon was “as well behaved as a child” (Ibid, 50–51). Kipling concluded: “The attendant circumstance of Indian falconry is not without its charm, especially during the clear cold weather of the Punjab winter” (Ibid, 51). Finally, there is a section called “Bird Crumbs” (52) in which some birds are clubbed together. Kipling talks about the way beliefs and stories about Sandpiper, Drongo and Chukors endear them to Hindus and Muhammadans. In the Hindu epic Ramayana, there is an army of birds that marches with the God Rama in his fight against the evil (Ibid, 53). Kipling reports that there is a huge variety of Bats in India, but the people “seem scarcely to notice them” (Ibid, 54).

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  77 From the summary of the chapter “Of Birds” by Kipling, the following conclusions can be drawn. Hunting birds was not a common practice. Some birds were sacred as they were intimately connected with some gods in religious and mythological stories, and therefore, were protected. Some birds were admired for their special qualities and included in songs and stories. Some birds of no particular quality, like sparrows, were protected because they were small and required care, which was provided. Some birds were simply ignored and left to live as they pleased. People’s language was full of bird metaphors, as were their songs and stories. At an overall level, there was no social sanction for killing birds – sacred or not. Kipling also cites the problem that British men faced when they went out to shoot peacocks. These incidents were widely reported and have been the subject of study of Ezra Rashkow’s recent work (2015) wherein we learn that villagers intervened against the shooting of peacocks in every possible way, including throwing stones at the British hunters. The fact that both the Panćatantra and Jataka narrate stories of “fowlers” a few centuries before the Christian era is evidence that bird-catching was practiced in India, but the negative portrayal of the fowlers reflects the lack of social approval for the same. Tales are reflective of differences between different sections of society. The next chapter is “Of Monkeys”. Two of the internationally most famous sacred animals of the Hindus are the monkey and the cow. Kipling narrates here a lot from his own lived experience of monkeys in India and their treatment by the people. He starts this chapter, like all others, by quoting a few lines from a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The last two lines of this poem on monkeys are: “His hide was mangy and his face was very red, And ever and anon he scratched with energy his head. His manners were not always nice, but how my spirit cried To be an artless Bandar loose upon the mountain side”. (Ibid, 56) The spirit of a free monkey, called bandar in Hindi, and the joy of watching it is so palpable in these lines. The poet wishes to be a monkey. A similar sense of humor colors John Kipling’s chapter on monkeys. John Kipling starts the chapter with a strange information: that (Indian) people even believe the English to be descendants of the Monkey God Hanuman because of the redness of their skin. According to the author, a notion exists among Hindus that the English may be Hanuman’s descendants through a female servant of Ravana, who was so nice to Sita that Ram blessed her, “(..) prophesying that she would become the mother of a race that would possess the land” (Ibid, 57). John Kipling would have the readers believe that the English were being inserted into the Hindu epics. He admits, that “this can scarcely be made out from the poem [Ramayana]” (Ibid, 57). Then he comes to ethnographic realities of his times.

78  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders Indian shops are like open cupboards, says he, and “in towns where Hindus preponderate (…) bulls, calves, parrakeets, sparrows and monkey take tolls which the dealer would fain prevent” (Ibid, 59). In the late nineteenth century, reportedly, some traders felt that there are too many monkeys and the government took action. Kipling was witness to the proceedings: Numbers of the marauders have been caught, caged and dispatched on the bullock carts to places many miles distant. There they have been let loose, and as the empty carts returned, the monkeys quick to perceive and defeat the plan of their enemies, bounded gaily alongside, and trooped in through the city gates with the air of a holiday party returning from a picnic. From some riverside towns boat-loads have been taken across the Ganges; but they dislike being marooned, and when they have failed to board the returning boats, have found others to carry them back. (Ibid, 60) And this was not all to the story of colonial administration catching monkeys and deporting them elsewhere. Even “Railways (…) offer facilities for deportation (…). The Stationmaster of Saharanpore was recently (…) requested to” unload the monkeys and free them in the nearby Shivalik hills. The cages were broken in unloading and monkeys escaped to the fruit gardens for which the town is famous and to the Government botanical gardens of Saharanpur (as spelt now). Before that, they created havoc on the railway station. The fruit gardens were largely owned by Muslims. According to Kipling, the Muhammadan garden-owners “took measures of their own against the invasion” (Ibid, 60–61). What were these measures? He does not say. He narrates another “amusing instance”: “in Shimla a [British] bridecake was left in a locked room but the window was open and the monkeys trooped in and ‘whitened the hill side with its fragments’ although they dislike food mixed with butter and sugar” (Ibid, 61). The author’s family fed a troop of monkeys with biscuits, but one day gave them some stale biscuits which they recognized, threw them away and made faces. The author’s own pleasure in narrating the monkey stories is self-evident. He goes on narrating monkey incidents over many pages. “The way of a ship on the sea may be strange, but the path of a monkey through tree-land is no less surprising” (Ibid, 68). That’s exactly what Rudyard Kipling was charmed with, when he wished to be “bandar on the trees”. John Lockwood is surprisingly nonjudgmental, although laughing “at” Indians is not ruled out. He narrates how on a highway parao (open place for travelers to make a stop), monkeys constantly carried away food and belongings of travelers who shouted at them. “Yet, it had never occurred to (…) the robbed travellers to take measures against it [one famous monster monkey]” (Ibid, 71). “To take measures” means to do something about it. In Europe, as will be clear from other instances, people would have killed that monkey and scared others, but

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  79 the author implies and will state more clearly elsewhere, that the Indians go on tolerating such nonsense from animals. The protection for monkey did not mean that people did not have proverbs and saying that reflected him as a “thief” or trouble-maker, but they realized that this is the natural behavior of the monkey; it’s what being a monkey is about. With the same characteristics, however, he had helped and served God Rama with great devotion. Those characteristics have their use too. The protection for monkey was so strong that even the government and the powerful officers had to be very careful in their dealings with the monkeys. Kipling states that the officers of government are careful not to wound the feelings of the populace with regards to monkeys and peacocks (Ibid, 71). He narrates of “a collector and magistrate” who was returning from a hunt in the evening and seeing a monkey on a tree just pointed his gun at him to scare him away, but ended up shooting him dead. “Fortunately, no one was near…” The magistrate returned at night alone with a lantern, found the dead monkey and disposed of the body “and returned to camp determined never to point a gun at a monkey again” (Ibid, 71–72). The story is completely identical to a murder tale with a cover-up by the murderer. This was no monkey-business, but a very serious compliance to an unwritten cultural code, compliance by colonial rulers whose power knew no bounds, otherwise. Through this long chapter on how Hindu people treat monkeys and how they live with them, one more thing was clear that they saw the monkey as the ancestor of human beings. Kipling was writing after a few decades of Darwinian theory of evolution. He had actually received the theory fresh from Darwin’s mind as a young man and was intelligent enough to wonder thus: “Does the survival of respect for monkeys, amounting at times to a definite acknowledgement of kinship, indicate the early arrival of Hindu philosophers at the latest conclusion of European Evolutionists?” (Ibid, 74). An important question, indeed! An affirmative answer would turn the tables of intellectual power structures of the colonial world. Kipling does not answer his own question, but reports that Hindu students of Vedas often imply an affirmative answer. In his opinion, they will have to provide more solid proof “that the philosophy of the East has for ages sat in tranquil occupation of a peak of discovery to which the vanguard of Western science has but now attained” (Ibid, 74). After a chapter on monkeys, Kipling comes to donkeys. “Passing from the free to the fettered, we come to a beast which in India serves at once as an expression of wild liberty, more complex than that of the monkey, and of utter and abject slavery” (Ibid, 76). He tells us how badly this beast of burden is treated. Donkey was the working animal for the washermen and other load carriers. Kipling tells us that the donkey was made to work mercilessly and on top of that insulted through nasty saying about it. “If injurious reflections or vile phrases were all he had to bear, there would not be much cause for complaint, but it is hard to write with patience of the constant and cruel

80  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders beating the poor creature receives” (Ibid, 79). Kipling’s text is believable, and it is sad that this poor animal received no love or mercy. The next chapter is “Of Goats and Sheep” and Kipling had nothing significant to say. Then comes the chapter “Of Cows and Oxen”. Spiritually and materially, this animal has a status in Hindu society that is well renowned. This status had religious significance and was the most important animal for a society dependent on agriculture. The presence of cows and oxen, however, was not limited to the rural landscape. “One of the first sensations of the tourist in India is the ubiquity of the bull, the cow, and the ox. They are, in fact, foremost figures in both the rustic and the urban scenery of the country” (Ibid, 103). Kipling finds that The people have a passion, – no other word is strong enough, - for the possession of cattle. Indian cities full of folk, are also vast cow byres or mistals, (…). The cattle come and go at their own pleasure, and rub shoulders with humanity with an ineffable air of security and fellowship. (Ibid, 104) Hindus’ love of cattle, particularly cow is the overall theme of the chapter. He narrates that this love is not without friction in the local society. Lower castes who work with leather often poison the cattle of the upper castes in the villages and thus acquire leather for their work. At one time, there were 1,500 prisoners of this caste in a prison for this very crime (Ibid, 108–109). The fact of poisoning was confirmed by “a class of English medical officers known as Chemical Examiners to Government” (Ibid, 109). Religiously speaking, “The bull receives high honours as the vahan or steed of Shiva, and as such is known as Nandi, the happy one” (Ibid, 110). The bulls were used for reproductive purposes and left to roam around free. When English officers tried to put the stray bulls to work as cart pullers, people went to court to challenge the action. Kipling narrates “The decisions of the courts are contradictory” (Ibid, 111) as one judge affirmed the action saying a stray bull was not anybody’s property and therefore could be seized by the authorities and put to use, while the other judge said the opposite – even if left to roam around the bull was someone’s property. Essentially, the Government did not want to mess with the people on this sensitive issue, like that of the monkey, because it could make the situation volatile. The Government could not “take measures”, so to say. So, apart from using the oxen to work the fields and cows to provide milk, what else did the people do with the cows, bulls and oxen? “Cattle are made to take part in curious rites, and enjoy many holidays of semi-religious kind, when they are adorned with necklaces of marigold and jessamine (…)” (Ibid, 122). The author refers to the importance of milk in Indian food and its reflection in the abovementioned rites as also in many sayings that he cites (Ibid, 122).

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  81 However, colonial rule had brought in new paradigms of thought and science through education, and the society was under change. Hindus of the old school complain of the decay under our educational system of the pious household rituals and beliefs. Among these is a rustic observance of bread breaking. The first piece is for the cow, the second for the dog, and the third for the crow. (…) Regret for the old order as it changes is natural enough, but with the harmless and the good some evil is also passing away; for God fulfils himself in many ways. (Ibid, 124) It is not very clear what the author means by the last part of the text. Maybe, that it was good that there was a break in the tradition and younger generation was not following the practices and in the process some “harmless” traditions like bread breaking were also vanishing along with other “evil” ones. As in the case of donkey, Kipling finds that the oxen are treated cruelly while being made to work in the fields or carry load. “The cultivator is the backbone of the country, and depends on the ox for working the land, while the bullock cart in great variety of forms is the main factor in the Indian traffic” (Ibid, 132). In both these roles, the oxen are not treated with kindness in spite of their religious significance: “The cattle are but a machine whose motor is the stick” (Ibid, 133). In this case, however, he does express sympathy for the farmer and the bullock cart driver too: “The truth is, the bullock, without a good training, is not an easy beast to drive” (Ibid, 134). Since cows, oxen and bulls were intimately connected with the rural folk, as in England, Kipling finds a point of comparison. He says that unlike European peasantry and countrymen who were hugely invested in the wars their rulers fought, Indian countrymen have been indifferent to wars and changes of rulers (Ibid, 138). There is more to this than mere stupidity. The Mogul, the Afghān, the Pindāri, the Briton, and the mutinous sepoy, with others, have swept to and fro as the dust-storm sweeps the land, but the corn must be grown and the folk and cattle must be fed, and the cultivator waits with inflexible patience till the will of the heaven be accomplished and he may turn again to the toil to which he has been appointed. (Ibid, 140) Kipling seems to have reached a significant trait of the nature of Indian peasantry, and this can be illustrated with a folk tale that was collected from the north Indian villages in the same years as Kipling was writing this book. William Crooke and Ram Gharib Chaube were collecting folktales in early 1890s and their collection had this tale: a farmer working on his fields is informed by God Shiva himself that his labor is of no use, since there are going to be no rains for the next 10 years. The farmer replies, that rain or no

82  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders rain he must work otherwise his children will forget their skill in farming “and when the good times come again and the rain falls they will not be able to take advantage of it” (Naithani, 2006, 292). Kipling’s texts on cows, oxen and bulls portray the well known at one level, and at another, show that this animal was such a part and parcel of human life that it was indistinguishable from the human beings. It was, as if, the human and the cattle lived together – physically, emotionally, spiritually. Moreover, not only the human beings knew this, but the animal knew it as well and expressed it in his/her behavior. A comparable depiction has been presented very recently by Radhika Govindarajan, in her book The Animal Intimacies (2018). She shows how rural folk in Himalayas literally live with their cattle, think of them as persons, talk to them as fellow-beings and the cows, oxen and bulls respond in the like manner. Communication between the humans and the nonhumans happens intensely. In his next chapter “Of Buffalos and Pigs”, John Lockwood Kipling does not have much to say except that buffaloes are eaten by the Muhammadans and pigs are considered dirty by Hindus and Muslims. In the chapter “Of Horses” he finds that the knowledge of Indians about horses is insignificant in comparison with the Europeans. Yet, Europeans consider India a paradise for horses, because the Europeans use horses and have a large retinue of servants who keep the horses in luxurious comfort (Ibid, 164–165). Kipling has an interesting observation to narrate: horses are not native to India and the common man is not so concerned with them, but in “spoken lore [horse] takes such fantastic forms that you would think some fabulous creature was being talked of” (Ibid, 180). He is correct, stories of fantastically loyal and sensitive horses abound in the folk narratives of India. Kipling’s chapter “Of Elephants” is one of the two biggest chapters, the other one being “Of Birds”. The chapter on birds is about many types of birds, but an equally long chapter is dedicated to elephant alone. Kipling references religious and ancient Indian conceptions, narrates from his own ethnographic knowledge and experience, as well as comments on Sanderson’s portrayal of elephants and their keepers. Summarizing all his sources of knowledge, he begins the chapter thus The elephant has always been one of the wonders of the world, amazing in his aspect and full of delightful and surprising qualities. Nor does familiarity lessen the hold upon the imagination of the mankind. Next after the cow (…) the elephant has an immense hold on the affections of the [Indian] people. (Ibid, 207–209) He sees this affection reflected in the names given to domesticated elephants and gives a longer list than we found in Sanderson’s work, and Kipling lists these names in translation:

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  83 No beast has so many names: Pearl, Diamond, Necklace of Beauty, Lightning, Lily, Rose, Jasmine, Lotus, Silver-Star, Garden of Flowers, Golden One, Black snake, are a few, and the hero and heroine of poetry also lend their names to my lord the elephant, and testify to the esteem he is held. For female elephants the word piyāri, love or darling, is often added to some pretty female name, as Radha Piyāri; (Radha is Krishna’s wife). Mahouts also claim that he is the only animal in man’s service who is told in so many words to eat and sleep. (Ibid, 217) In short, the domesticated elephants are pampered by their keepers, according to Kipling. He was well aware of the status of the elephant in Hinduism and Buddhism and describes the elephant-headed Hindu God with a sense of humor: “If Ganesha stood, he would be the very image of many fat, rupee worshipping Baniyas” (Ibid, 211). Indeed, this God is always visualized sitting. Baniyas are the trading caste in the Hindu caste system and Kipling’s description is on the mark. However, as an artist Kipling goes ahead and “with some irreverence – I have ventured to draw him [standing]” (Ibid, 211). He offers an original sketch with the title “If Ganesha stood” (Ibid, 212). His view of Ganesha is secular and intercultural: “Although at first sight merely monstrous to Western eyes, this quaint personage grows in interest as one learns his attributes and becomes familiar with his character and person” (Ibid, 211). In the same breath however, Kipling declares Vedas to be dead, a construct of orientalists like Colebrooke, and no Hindus left “in any real sense” (Ibid, 214). Similarly, he declares “Buddhism, now dead and done with as far as India proper is concerned, – and so overgrown with fungous growth (…)” that the image of an elephant in that religion is all but lost (Ibid, 215). Kipling’s text can be defined as animal ethnography. He is really not interested in the lore of the orientalists or the very religious minded Indians. He remains true to the title of his book Beast and Man in India and writes on the way ancient ideas exist, or not, in the late nineteenth century India. And in this, he excels as he observes the reality not only for its practical but for its esthetic, poetic and narrative dimensions. Talking of the decorative use of elephants by the local rulers, temples and even the British Indian state, he says The beast is a pageant in himself, and when arrayed as only the oriental knows how, he is splendid in colour and majestic in mass. The finest part of the ceremonial at the Delhi Imperial assemblage, was the great fleet of elephants riding at anchor, so to speak, among the serried waves of troops and people. (Ibid, 217–218, emphasis mine)

84  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders The mixing of the Indian and British pomp and show in the Delhi Imperial Assemblage of 1877 which Viceroy Lord Lytton organized to announce Queen Victoria’s assumption of the title of Empress of India in 1876 (Prinsep, 1877–80) is the point of reference for Kipling. He does not forget to tell the readers that at a later part of the great pageant, canons were fired leading to panic among the elephants. In the ensuing commotion many people were killed, but that happened so far from the dignitaries that it was just a “slight stir we saw in the distant host as when a breeze stirs the growing corn” (Ibid, 218). The love for elephant and the pageant, however, was not limited to mega events of the state, instead it came to the British from the Indians. Kipling tells the story There is a Raja in the hills, – a very small Raja, – with a very small income, exactly four-fifths of which are spent in maintaining an elephant, the awe and admiration of his handful of subjects. They all spend much of their large staple of leisure over the elephant, and rightly too, for he is a more imposing symbol than a crown or a sceptre or a diamond plume, and when their Raja rides forth, they follow him with pride and shouting. (Ibid, 218) The juxtaposition of the two events in the same paragraph reflects a panoramic view of the relationship between an animal – elephant – and man at a very small and intimate scale; and between the animal – elephant – and imperialism. It starts becoming visible too, where the two authors – Sanderson and Kipling – are placed in this very large picture. Sure enough, Kipling writes about Sanderson. The real character of the elephant has been studied exhaustively and described by Mr. G. P. Sanderson in his admirable book, Thirteen Years among the wild beasts of India. Mr. Sanderson is not only a master of Indian woodcraft and Nimrod of varied experiences, but a most sympathetic observer of animal life and character, and yet, as acute and discriminating as a Judge on the Bench. (Ibid, 221) It sounds like high praise, not the British understatement, but what does he mean by “and yet” “a Judge on the bench” (emphasis mine)? A judge judges, issues sentence and determines people’s lives by unemotional and impersonal judgments. While it is an important work, but not always “sympathetic” to others, in this case, those “others” would be elephants. Kipling soon comes to establishing the difference between Sanderson and himself. He refers to Sanderson’s comment that “the natives of India never speak of the elephant as a peculiarly intelligent animal, and it does not figure in their ancient literature for its wisdom as do the fox, the crow, and the

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  85 monkey” and then offers his own reading: “My estimate is that the popular estimate of the elephant’s intelligence is a high one (…)” (Ibid, 221). Kipling knows personally about this “popular estimate” and he also knows the difference between popular estimate and literary representations. He and Sanderson are referring to folk narrative, and Kipling says There is a polity of animals [in narratives], so to speak. The jackal is cunning and clever; the tiger is fierce and deadly, but may be most ignominiously deceived by jackals and old women; the crow is sly and ready; the parrot is wise, a tale-bearer, full of resource; the monkey is intelligent and kin to man; the serpent, when he is not a prince bewitched, is secret, malignant, and powerful; the dove is gentle; the deer and antelope tender and affectionate, pious Brahmans of the jungle (…). (Ibid, 221) In other words, he is talking of a typology of animals in folk narrative: different animals are known for different characteristics and become characters determined by them. This may or may not match exactly with the reality of those animals or people’s perception. According to Kipling, in narratives the elephant invariably emerges as the image of power and might in war. Kings are elephants and so are great warriors. Ticketed, as it were, with this lordly label, the poet and the storyteller of the prime, whose means were simple and whose discriminations were broad, would hesitate to notice in the elephant the homely qualities already assigned to the jackal, the crow, and the monkey. (Ibid, 221) Ticketed, as it were, with this lordly label, that is, the elephant represented grandeur in Indian folk narrative and that was its defining narrative quality. For the “popular estimate”, it did not imply that the elephant was not intelligent. On the contrary, grandeur was perceived as an internal and external attribute. Intelligence was not equated with cleverness. The permanent retention of the elephant as the type of martial prowess is another illustration of the (…) literary (…) quality of much of the work for which our admiration is challenged by the scholars. The real fact of the animal’s nature is gentleness. (Ibid, 221–222) Appreciation of literariness, Kipling implies, is not the same as deriving factual conclusions from it. In his opinion, it is not even grandeur that defines the real elephant, but “gentleness”. His critique of Sanderson continues at another level too. Mr. Sanderson speaks of “mahouts as rascals more often than not” and as “invariably

86  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders superstitious and ignorant”. This is something we have noted in the previous chapter. Kipling’s critique of this is important as he speaks as a contemporary and compatriot of Sanderson. Kipling has experienced the mahouts differently: They [mahouts] tell and believe of the beasts in their charge more wonderful stories than in any in our children’s books. These stories have spread and are so firmly credited that I venture to question his [Sanderson’s] assertion that natives of India never speak of the animal as peculiarly intelligent. (Ibid, 222) Kipling then proceeds to tell wonderful stories of elephants’ intelligence and sensitivity told to him by mahouts: of vengeful elephants, of elephants who refused to work when his mahout did not return from leave on time and of elephants’ dance (“ball”, “ballroom”) in the forests of Assam (Ibid, 222– 225). Kipling’s India is as full of stories about the elephant as hunters’ India is “abundant” in elephants. The natural death of the elephant and the mystery surrounding it was recorded by Sanderson and we have noted it in the previous chapter. Kipling talks of natives’ beliefs about the death of elephants. Citing that Sanderson also could not account for the absence of dead elephants in the jungle, he quips that here Sanderson gives us leave to share for once in an oriental mystery, dim and inscrutable. The free-thinking native, who solves it by boldly claiming, that the great beasts, left to themselves, do not die at all, does not diminish the marvel, which still remains to delight all those who wonder. (Ibid, 225) As an artist, Kipling takes pleasure in the ways of Indian folk narrative. In the absence of facts, narratives do not reflect stupidity, but a creative sensitivity to reality. He gets so taken up by the art of the Indian folk narrative, that his own observations are narrated in a similar style. Over the next 12 pages, Kipling narrates how elephants’ nature is like that of native human beings, how elephants are celebrated in proverbs and sayings, how their presence is synonymous with being wealthy, how there were pathways specially for elephants in the forts and palaces, how docile they are, how they are dressed up for the pageants – the process, how the mahout dresses up after the elephant has been dressed up and finally, stories of how captured elephants suffered while being transported from Chittagong hills etc. (Ibid, 225–237). Kipling knows how to tell the story from an all-round perspective. By the end of his chapter, there is only one narrative dimension left – that of the government’s perspective. After entwining the elephant and the native, Kipling turns to

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  87 the account of him (elephant) that the paternal Government of India has to give. (…) It is officially stated that, - “all who have had to deal with elephants agree that their good qualities cannot be exaggerated; that their vices are few and only occur in exceptional animals; that they are neither treacherous, nor retentive of injury; and that they are obedient, gentle, and patient beyond measure. Kipling comments on the government’s statement and affirms it: “This is higher and more sympathetic than is usually tied up in the pink tapes of the Secretariat, and it is all true” (Ibid, 237). However, he does not leave the government with just that much. He also notes that the same documents also declares the elephant to be “stupid” and once again, he refutes the charge: “Simplicity of character were a better word than stupidity” (Ibid, 237). In contrast to the government’s assessment, Kipling narrates in details the works that the elephants do for the government (Ibid, 237–241). The details are harsh and he shows it with an unexpected turn in his narrative “Rum, brandy, or arrack, mixed with ginger, clove, pepper, and treacle, and made into a paste with flour, provide the elephant with a sort of tipsy-cake that cheers and comforts him when suffering from fatigue and cold” (Ibid, 241–242). He also knows that mahouts steal their ration, no doubt, and neglect their care most often, but shows how entangled the lives of mahouts and their elephants are. Kipling’s perspective zooms out further to take the international picture into account. Outside India it is believed that elephants are dying out of the land. The example of America, where the men and creatures natural to the soil have been exterminated to make room for a too triumphant civilization, has taught the world a lesson of anxiety. But animal lovers may rest content, for the elephant of India, like the people, are increasing in numbers. (Ibid, 243) As a true Briton, he offers his appreciation of the English officers and the kheddah system as a sensible way of drawing supplies from the jungle. He also sympathizes with the Government of India “Like a strong ass between two burdens, the British government has been beaten with many staves, and also with fool’s truncheons of pantomime paper, but, at least, it has tried to husband the resources of the country” (Ibid, 243). The reference here is to the emerging discourse in the British and the western press regarding the ruthless exploitation of the wildlife in the colonies. Concerns about possible extinction of several animals were beginning to appear. Kipling clearly states that the Government of India is not insensitive to the issue, and drives home the point with a comparison with Germans who are “said to be” thinking of copying the Government of India in equatorial Africa and hopes that the news is

88  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders correct, because “slaughter (…) has hitherto been all that [German] civilization had to bestow on these blameless Ethiopians”. In other words, British colonial rule is better and humane, while the German colonization is brutal. The expanse of Kipling’s chapter on Indian elephants is truly impressive. He leaves no dimension unexplored and creates a multidimensional view of the animal in relationship with local people, folk narrative traditions, colonizers and colonial government. His lack of interest in hunting seems to have allowed for a complex, sympathetic and even a poetic ethnography of elephants in India. After elephants, camel was another large and wild animal that had been domesticated. The chapter “Of Camels” tells the readers about popular sayings related to camels. The animal apparently cooperated with people and was an excellent beast of burden across the desert and other landscapes, but did not show much emotional attachment. Camels also had decorative purposes and there were elaborate ways of decorating them “Camel trappings are not so gaudy in India as in Egypt or Morocco, where riding animals are bedizened in scarlet and yellow” (Ibid, 259). Done in soberly colored wool, beads and shells, these pastoral ornaments linked Balkans to Central Asia and India. “Camel housings may be the beginning of the nomad industry of carpet weaving” (Ibid, 260), says Kipling. He also informs that the work of making woven decorations for camels was done by women. When English ladies in London find that their Turkoman or Bilochi rug is not very straight, they do not realize that the crumpling “marks the time when camp was shifted to follow the pasturing flocks, and the loom with its unfinished carpet was rolled up to be staked anew with Oriental carelessness as to straightness” (Ibid, 260). Decorated camels were used in state pageants too. This impressed Kipling the most “He [the camel] was made for a sequence, as beads are made for stringing. On the Indian horizon, a long drove of camels, tied head to tail, adorns the landscape with a festooned frieze of wonderful symmetry (…)”. At this point, he reminds the reader that he was in India as a professor of architectural sculpture and had done work on important building in Bombay. “If I had a very long and lofty hall to decorate I should pray the architect to let me loop it around with camels, with here and there a Biloch driver, as the frieze turned a corner or was interrupted by a bracket or a girder” (Ibid, 247). In 1877–1878, during the British–Afghan war hundreds, perhaps thousands of animals had perished, including elephants and a very large number of camels. This was well reported at the time. Kipling comments on it too In that of 1878–79, about 50,000 camels were paid for by the British Government. But this was in no wise the fault of the brutal Briton, for the beasts were deliberately sacrificed by their owners, who were guaranteed compensation for their loss. (Ibid, 252) This is clearly a partisan opinion and it is beyond the scope of this chapter to determine whether Kipling was correct.

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  89 Dogs were also free animals in India that lived alongside the human society. The idea of the “pet” was not much in existence, although people fed them. Kipling naturally compared the status of dog in India with that in Britain and found that they were treated cruelly both by Hindus and Muslims. He knew of the story in the Indian epic Mahabharata where the character Yudhistir – the paragon of virtue – was the only one taken to heaven bodily, but he refused to go until the gods admitted his dog also bodily. In a minor sense, but dog also had this story to back its status. Kipling says this story is all but forgotten. He felt that positive things were happening for the dog under British influence. “British influence, however, is the main factor in a slow but indubitable revolution now taking place in favour of the dog” (Ibid, 274). He makes an interesting connection between the British Empire and its future memory in India. A modern philosophical writer says the British Empire in India is but “a romantic episode” destined to pass away and leave no recognizable trace. Traces of the Briton will long survive in the animal as in the vegetable world. The dog and the horse accompany us everywhere, for it is part of our insular vanity to declare that no other dogs or horses are half so good as ours. (Ibid, 275) Spread of English breeds was a phenomenon in India. Their breed names already had vernacular versions and English dog names were to be found spoken in vernacular accent. Moreover, “A new science, the care and lore of dogs, picked up by the menial servant from their English masters, is being formed and spread upwards among the people” (Ibid, 276). Kipling seems to have seen the future in this case, as until now pet dogs in India are of foreign breeds, while native dogs roam the streets – sometimes very well cared for and other times, neglected. “So, though we may pass away and be forgotten, the dogs will remain as permanent colonists. But it appears to be a fact that creole dog, born in India of imported parents, develops some of the characteristics of the indigenous animal” (Ibid, 277). Kipling paints an evening soundscape of Indian towns and villages as filled with the howls of jackals. He cites … a North-West Provinces rhyme translated by Mr. Crooke in his valuable Agricultural Glossary: “A donkey on the left, a jay (the roller is meant) on the right, and a jackal howling in the distance – all omens of wealth and happiness. (Ibid, 278) He tells us that there are many stories in old books and folklore about this animal, who is neither sacred nor venerated. Writing about dogs, jackals, wolves and foxes, he preempts his son’s piece of world literature: “India is probably the cradle of wolf-child stories, which are here universally believed

90  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders and supported by a cloud of testimony, including in the famous Lucknow case of a wolf boy the evidence of European witnesses” (Ibid, 281). For some unexplainable reason, he does not say anything about the fox although stories about the animal abound in Indian folk narrative. Similarly, the chapter “Of Cats” is also short and does not contain anything relevant to this chapter. The chapters “Of Animal Calls” is interesting in itself, but of not much avail to us, except noting that there were people in India who were experts in producing different kinds of sounds/calls for different animals. Kipling starts the chapter “Of Animal Training” like this “India, - land of waning wonders – has a great name for the training of animals, a pursuit in which the people are popularly believed to attain marvellous [sic] success by reason of special aptitudes and faculties” (Ibid, 293). In opposition to this fame, Kipling differentiates between taming and training and says that Indians are only good at taming animals, but not training them (Ibid, 293). He tells of the free otters that followed commands, cheetahs that not only lived with a human, but even slept on the same bed, and talks of their taming as a mindless process of tying and starving the animal (Ibid, 294–295). He acknowledged that a “curious intimacy” (Ibid, 295) exists between tamed animals and their keepers. The bear, the monkey, the goat, and sometimes the bull are led abroad to fairs by men of low caste. (…) A goat and two or three monkeys are the actors in a little play that goes on unceasingly all over India. (Ibid, 299) According to Kipling, all these animals do a couple of routine acts and earn some pennies for their keepers, but do not have any extensive training. “No, the oriental is not the first-rate animal trainer. With almost boundless patience, he has almost no steadfastness of aim, nor has he the sufficient firmness of hand and will to secure confidence and obedience” (Ibid, 302). While they are not good trainers, but tribal people understand the jungle animals well and are great trackers. “Many English sportsmen in their talk, and some sporting writers in their books, fail to do justice to the courage and skill of the unarmed assistants on who they depend for success” (Ibid, 302). He appreciates Sanderson for not making this mistake. John Lockwood Kipling’s chapter “Of Snakes” deals with another animal that was not only abundant but also had a special status in Indian folklore. In Kipling’s time, snakes were caught between the attitude of the colonial state and people’s opposition to the state’s attitude. The Secretary of state for India is anxious for the extirpation of the poisonous snakes and the deadly wild animals. From the smooth pavements of London town the task doubtless appears easy. In reality nothing is more difficult, for in addition to the protection of Nature is the no less protection of superstitious respect and deeply rooted apathy on the

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  91 part of the people. This last quality (…), absolutely incomprehensible in Europe, - is an immense factor in the Indian affairs which Government and eager reformers are apt to overlook. (Ibid, 310) What the Europeans are unable to understand is that although people know the deadly nature of snakes and are scared of being bitten, they are not willing to exterminate them. On the contrary, they have developed ways of living with them, appeasing them and even worshipping them (Ibid, 306). There were instances of ordinary people stopping Englishmen from killing snakes (Ibid, 308). Among many other beliefs was that to see a copulating snake pair, which is like a dance of two graceful bodies, is a fortunate event. In reality, it is a rare sight, and an Englishman who happened to see it also found it “surprising and beautiful”. “Then he fetched his gun and shot them both dead. A Hindu would have folded his hands in adoration and considered himself made lucky for the rest of his life by this auspicious sight” (Ibid, 310). The difference between the two responses noted by Kipling encapsulates the two attitudes that were at war in the colonial context. On one side is the simple assertion of human power over everything else on this planet, and on the other, a sense of wonderment and awe at the beauty of other living beings. Kipling, as also the colonial government, was focused on the cobra. To induce the “extirpation”, the government offered rewards for killing snakes. “The offer of rewards for dead snakes has naturally developed a new and remunerative industry (…) in the Bombay Presidency where large numbers are killed at a cheap rate, and where death-rate by snake bites is decreasing”. (…) “During the last eleven years Rs. 2, 37, 000 (say Pound 20,000) have been spent on rewards for destroying snakes…” (Ibid, 311–312). The inducements worked best in Bombay which was a city established by the British and full of migrants. Kipling gives the statistics of the snakes killed in 1889: Bombay Presidency: 400,000 Punjab: 68,000 Bengal 41,000; Oudh less than 26,000 North West Provinces: 6445

(Ibid, 313)

These figures were disappointing from the government’s point of view, and the main cause were people’s beliefs around snakes and their powers. The local lore was also full of the stories about the cobra and the mongoose – the two formidable opponents. Amid this scenario was the snake charmer that had fascinated the Europeans since forever. These men were cobra catchers, not killers. There were many stories about their ability to remove the snake’s fangs/poison and treat snake bites (Ibid, 314). Their special skill was to keep

92  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders cobras in baskets, open them for public and play a wind instrument, waving it in rhythmic movements in front of the snake, which the snake perhaps tried to attack, but it was seen as a graceful dance between the snake charmer and the snake. Many human dancers tried to copy the smooth movements of the snake. Interestingly, the instrument called “been” was played only by the snake charmers. They were a community with “copyright” to their skill/art and had the protection of tradition to their way of life and livelihood. Nobody else could do the same. Kipling writes almost nothing about other snakes. “Serpent tales are too numerous to be told at length” (Ibid, 305) says he. Animals in Artistic Abstraction Kipling takes his ethnographic writing from empirical to the reflective with Chapter XVI: “Of Animals in Indian Art” and Chapter XVIII “Of Animals and Supernatural”. In between these two is Chapter XVII “Of Animal Fights”: this is a short chapter recording the existence of various animal fights, but what comes across is that animal fights were mainly organized by local rulers and had been done at a large-scale by Mughal rulers. There were scattered traditions of making animals fight among the populace, but the scale was not great. This chapter sits uncomfortably between the chapter on animal in arts and animals in supernatural. In Kipling’s representation, there is a rich Hindu tradition of animals in art since the ancient times, carried on in the nineteenth century by Muslim artists. He sees these representations from arts’ point-of-view, being an artist himself. He finds that generally the details are good for the representation of animals and certain conventions of sketching are consistently followed. The work of the ancient Hindu painter and sculptor is full of life and variety. Monkeys and elephants are always goof, while buffaloes come next for truth and naturalness. Lions, tigers, peacocks and swans are conventionalized according to a somewhat restricting but still consistent decorative canon with great propriety and admirable effect. Nothing can exceed the freedom and facility with which elephants are drawn and painted in Ajanta Cave frescoes, in every conceivable action. The wonderful suppleness and acrobatic capabilities of the beast have never since been so skilfully [sic] indicated. (Ibid, 321–322) John Lockwood Kipling argues that the consistency in artistic style and artistic visualization of animals is synchronous with the way the animals are narratively perceived in daily life through beliefs and saying. This consistency, according to him, created a worldview that is reflected in the great temple complexes of Hallibeed in Karnataka and Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh. The distance between the two locations1 implies a consistency across India.

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  93 In the Hindu temples as at Hallibeed and Khajuraho, friezes of sculpted animals occur in regular sequence. Near the base of buildings are elephants, then lions or tigers, over these horses, then cow, then men, and lastly, winged creatures. (..) The sequence indicates an elemental scheme in which Hindus see more than strikes a European observer. The elephant supports the world, the lions and tigers inhabit the jungles of it, the horse is a tamed wild creature, and the cow, next to man, is his benefactor and half a divinity, while the bird courses fly above his head, parrots first, then the swans. The swan (or wild goose) is an accepted image of the soul, hence its high honour among Hindus. (Ibid, 322) The elephant’s place is a post of honor, but he is also shown above with uplifted trunks and showering “lustration” over Goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati (Ibid, 323). “In an architectural sense (…) it is curious that the elephant should be treated with so much feeling for nature, while the equally familiar horse and ox are always wooden in character” (Ibid, 323– 324). Kipling’s interpretation of the multispecies world order of the friezes matches with what he has cited in individual chapters on all these beings, except the human. Human being is the perceiver, the narrator, who sees the self as part of everyone else. The vertical hierarchy does not symbolize lower and higher forms of life. On the contrary, those below provide the bases for others to exist. The temples referred to were constructed over two centuries around the turn of the first millennium, but, asks Kipling, what is the status of representation of animals in Indian art since then? Kipling’s study says that the Muslim rule, which started around the time of the completion of these temples and many other monuments across India interrupted/repressed the process as it was forbidden in their faith to represent life. However, according to Kipling again, the Islamic tenet was never “thoroughly accepted in India” (Ibid, 324), as also in Iran. “Even the Muhammadans themselves do not obey the law; the Persian Shias have never considered themselves bound by it; and modern Indian art is mainly Persian” (Ibid, 325). The decorative use of calligraphy in arts and architecture became the media of representing life. Calligraphy was also used to draw the form of animals (Ibid, 326). Several such examples are included in Kipling’s book. Returning to ethnography, he tells the readers that in reality Muslim artists have adopted Hindu notions and many lithographs of Hindu gods sold on the streets are the work of Muslim draftsman. Kipling’s observation of ethnic arts is also very insightful. He writes about the small clay animals that are made by women at home at a very “humble” level of art, but are very good. He explains that by “humble” he does not mean to comment on their artistic nature, but the process in which they are made. Comparing them with folks in England, he feels that they (English) never found any such way of expressing themselves. Clay animals were also

94  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders made by potters. The work of women and potters was for decorative purposes as well as mainly meant as toys for children. Metal workers also created animal figures. Muslims produced lithographs of animal images. The very last chapter of Kipling’s work is about natural animals and their supernatural representations. “All Indian animals are more or less concerned in the Hindu mind with the over or the under world” (Ibid, 352). Other anthropologists and folklore collectors of the time also said that the world of the “rustic” Indian consists not only of the real and the visible. Every indoor and outdoor space is animated with supernatural presence and visions. The point to understand is – do these two remain neatly divided spheres or do they merge with each other? One way of their merging can be seen in the socalled “superstitions”, that is, belief in phenomena that cannot be rationally explained. Another level of merging is when the presence of the supernatural can be shown to “exist” in real, but is still rationally unexplainable. Kipling has already told the readers about the merging of the real and the imagined in superstitions by citing the narratives connected with animals that ensure their status in real time and space. Next, he tells the readers of this second level of merging where the belief in the supernatural powers of the nonhuman animals finds evidence. You can be shown to-day forest shrines and saintly tombs where the tiger comes nightly to keep a pious guard, and you may hear in any Hindu village of jogis to whom the cruel beasts are as lapdogs. In the native newspapers, as in popular talk, cases are reported in complete good faith where a Raja out hunting is endangered by a mad wild elephant or a ferocious tiger. At the critical moment the jogi appears and orders the obedient beast away. (Ibid, 356) The presence of these stories in the newspapers and in the public sphere also points to the simultaneous existence of two spheres of relationships between human and nonhuman animals. In one sphere, there are observers like Kipling, hunters like Shakespear and Sanderson and government measures to eradicate certain nonhuman animal species. In the other sphere, the boundaries between human and nonhuman animals are fluid, and the possibility of interspecies dialog belongs to everyday stories. Kipling stands not in between these two, but in the first sphere from where he is keenly watching the other sphere. In his all-round ethnography, Kipling does not forget to narrate incidents from his life and those living near him. It is evident that most of his knowledge about Indians and their narratives about animals came from people working at his home, office, assistants during travels and certainly in the time when he traveled to sketch artisans across a huge territory. Newspapers were also a source of his information. His own position is that of a person who receives information, also experiences parts of it and then narrates it.

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  95 So, among many other real stories influenced by the supernatural, he narrates incidents connected with a tiger in the zoo of Lahore and that he experienced at close-hand. There was a tiger in the Lahore Zoo named Moti. Once a fakir put his arm in the tiger’s enclosure claiming and believing that, being a fakir, he will not be harmed. Moti started chomping at his arm. The man was pulled away by the zoo staff, but died in a couple of days (356). Kipling obviously takes this, the fakir’s death, as evidence of the fakir having “no supernatural power”. The natives, however, felt differently from him. Being a good narrator, he tells the readers that natives’ thought looking down upon the fakir as a fool was not a correct way of judging the incident. According to them “Moti was a demoralized, denationalized tiger (Ibid, 356), for he was captured when a few days old and brought up by the officers of a British regiment, and it was only to be expected that he would make a mistake” (Ibid, 357). The belief in the supernatural then, was actually a belief in the process of culture. Had the tiger grown up in the jungle or among the Indians, he would have treated the fakir differently and been cognizant of his spiritual status as a fakir. He had, on the other hand, grown up in the “sarkari”2 culture. The native members of the staff even proved this in another instance. Once Moti escaped from his enclosure. The Jemadar, or the head keeper, ran to the government office across the street demanding an official order from the Sircar for the arrest of the truant. Somebody gave him a large official envelope with a big seal, and thus armed the Jemadar went in chase. Moti was found on the public promenade or Mall, very much alone, as was to be expected. (Ibid, 357) The Jemadar waved the arrest order in his face and then tied his turban around his neck and brought him back. Moti had been weened away by the British officers from understanding a fakir, but his upbringing made him understand the power of the government system as symbolized by a sealed envelope. Kipling commented about this and similar incidents that “Which things are an allegory of the Empire, as well as a true tale” (Ibid, 357). Kipling also could not explain how and why the tiger behaved as he did, but it was a tale of supernatural that he was witness to and could not deny. When Moti died, his skin was preserved in the Lahore Museum, where Kipling was in charge. He also had a Moti-tale of his own “[Moti was] the only animal of my acquaintance that really liked tobacco. The smoke of a strong Trichinopoly cheroot blown in his face delighted him (…)” (Ibid, 357). In a certain context, even the unbelievers can start seeing things in another way, as Kipling was led to conclude “That supernatural beliefs should sit so lightly on the souls of men is a phenomenon as wonderful as the beliefs themselves” (Ibid, 359). Such stories, of animals behaving in unusual and sentient ways, continue to be narrated and “shown” in India of the twenty-first century.

96  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders Debunking the belief in supernatural powers of the nonhuman animals as nonsense was not the response of all British individuals. Some tried to understand it, cross-check it and explain it. Regarding the mad elephant being scolded away by an ascetic in the jungle, Kipling says: There may be some ground for this belief. An anchorite, living in the forest among well-nourished beasts of prey who were plentifully supplied with antelope and wild pig, could come and go unharmed. When wild things are let alone, they are not so shy as sportsmen fancy. (…) it is conceivable that a bored hermit (…) might amuse himself with the easy feat of training a wild animal; but here, surely, the miracle would begin and end. (Ibid, 356) A little unconsciously, perhaps, Kipling too narrates an animated jungle life of which solitary human beings are part. He also participates in the Indian folk belief that wild animals, if left alone, are not really a threat to human beings. Ecologically, the most important comment in the above quoted passage is “the forest of well-nourished beings”. This points to an ecological balance where all animals, carnivore and herbivore, are able to find sustenance. Their behavior is determined by this ease of existence, and they are not vicious toward human beings. We shall return to this subject in the last chapter of this book. This ecological balance, however, was already seriously disturbed, even destroyed, by the British colonial rule and generations of hunters over two centuries. “Of Animals and the Supernatural” is a chapter in Kipling’s book that draws from the experiences of the people reported in the public sphere. It shows how genres of narratives continue to exist, making people even noncognizant of their changed reality. “That supernatural beliefs should sit so lightly on the souls of men is a phenomenon as wonderful as the beliefs themselves” (Ibid, 359). Reality and Ethnography Kipling’s book Beast and Man in India is a wonderfully narrated animal ethnography of the late nineteenth century. As per the author’s claim, it is based on the knowledge he gathered from popular discourse, from his own interaction with Indians, from the important books of the time written by his British colleagues and from the newspapers. It is important to note some features of this work to be able to place it in a narrative context, for it is but a narrative of its author. One of the most important features of this book is that John Kipling does not identify exact places or people for the stories narrated, but leaves it as a narrative of Indian life. Given the geographic and faunal diversity on the Indian subcontinent, such generalization cannot be loyal to reality. Further,

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  97 he often specifies his portrayal of the relationship between human and nonhuman animals as Hindus’ way of life. Kipling also presents Hinduism and Hindus as a homogenous group and his generalization does not reflect the diversity within the so-called Hindus. He maintains almost complete silence over other religious and indigenous communities. The title Beast and Man in India is misleading at one level, and at another, reflects a colonial paradigm of superimposing homogeneity over a heterogenous reality. The postcolonial readers need to remember this generalization and consequently problematic representation of the “Indian people” while reading the well-composed text. John Kipling is sensitive to the facts of the British Empire in India in multiple ways. What concerns him is not the political structure so much. He is actually concerned with three things: 1. Indians’ way of life; 2. how that way of life appears to British eyes, including his own; and 3. how that way of life is transforming under the British rule. He is sensitive to the perception of his colleagues and does not shy from disagreeing with them. The difference that he was an artist and not a hunter imbues this book with an unaffable charm. In spite of the abovementioned generalizations, he comes across as notunsympathetic and somewhat patronizing to the perspectives of some sections of the Indian populace. There is a view of the native way of life concerning the relationship between human and nonhuman beings that emerges from this book. The worldview of the people, particularly the householders of the agricultural communities, seems to be thus: observe every animal around and based on their characteristics include them into proverbs and sayings. Further in turn, treat them as the way they appear in your proverbs. About the wild animals in general, the common precept is – leave them alone. Then there are animals who have had important roles in mythological and religious stories, which are even more popular in their folk versions than in their classical ones. As per the role of these animals in those stories, their treatment is determined in reality. So, if an animal had helped a god or a hero, then the people have to be thankful for it and show their gratitude in treating them as sacred, that is, forbidding any harm being done to them. In this range, there are animals from all species. They are also from all spheres – those living close to human society and those living in the jungles. Pancatantra seems to carry the poetic encapsulation of this view: To the home of the self-disciplined, Friends full of affection come daily, Bringing delight to the householder’s eyes. (Chandra, 1993, Panćatantra.pdf 258/532) The native worldview seems premised upon the idea that there is no essential difference between one life form and another, between human and nonhuman animals. All are sentient beings and that has to be remembered while treating them. This friendly view did not mean that inconvenient aspects of

98  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders multispecies relations were not acknowledged. Monkeys were seen as thieves and as troublesome, snakes as dangerous and so on, but that did not imply that humans had the right to kill them. This is a fact noticed by all writers on animals in India, that the natives have abundant patience or passivity as in how they tolerate the animals that bother them and do not take action. Most of the writers saw it as their stupidity. Nonetheless, it seems to have been a fact. Kipling is able to narrate it critically and sympathetically. His chapters reflect an openness of mind not so common in British writers. Therefore, it is surprising as to why the introduction of his book is in another tone, and I reserved it to discuss it at the end of this analysis. His Introduction opens When on the 21st March 1890, under the auspices of the Hon. Sir Andrew Scoble, the Legislative Council of India passed an Act (XI. Of 1890) for the prevention of cruelty to animals, some surprise was expressed in England that legislation should be necessary for a people who have long been quoted as an example of mercy. It was hinted that Orientals must have learned cruelty, as they have learned drunkenness, from brutal Britons. Those who know India need not be told that this insinuation is groundless, since both vices have for ages been rooted in the life of the Eastern as of all the nations under heaven. (Ibid, 1) He starts with the theme of cruelty, when his next 17 chapters are going to present it as a relatively minor part of the whole relationship. He further goes on to explain why this image of the merciful Indian is based on the conventional picture of Scholars working from a dead and donewith literature (…). Some of the most authoritative of these writers have never ventured to disturb their dreams by contact with the living India of to-day, and their gushing periods have, in consequence, as much actuality as Gulliver’s Travels. For nearly all, the last few centuries of this era do not exist. To judge from their writings, the English power in India might have succeeded that of the Gupta kings. No mention is made of the horrible hole of the pit from which the country was digged (sic); and the events that really shaped the character and habits of the people are ignored in favour of ancient lawgivers and forgotten Vedas. (Ibid, 2–3, emphasis mine) “Scholars working on dead and done-with literature” seem to be the orientalists and indologists like Max Müller who were also writing around the same time and had gained a lot of importance. Typically, Max Müller is the renowned scholar who studied the Vedas and did not ever visit India. Kipling also points to the fact that the insistence on ancient India for the

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  99 understanding of India makes it seem that English came right after the Gupta period (which existed from the fourth to the sixth century CE and is considered the golden period of Indian history). Regarding Medieval India, Kipling, however, shares the official version that the Mughal period was “a horrible hole pit” from which the British took India out. In other words, India was white man’s burden when the British took over; they brought it out of the depths of degeneration and civilized it. “It is not a pleasant subject to dwell upon, but there is no more fitting adjective than ‘cruel’ for the India of the late Mogul and the Pindāri” (Ibid, 3), says he. Following on the heels of criticism of Mughal India comes the ultimate critical portrayal of the Hindu The reluctance to kill, which is the main fact of Hindu animal treatment, is of itself, from a European point of view, a cause of needless suffering. We speak of putting injured or diseased creatures out of their misery. To the mind of the orthodox Hindu there is no such thing as euthanasia, and it is impious to attempt to bring it about. (Ibid, 5) This was another aspect of the human–animal relationship commented upon by all the writers: that Hindus let their cattle die a natural death, no matter how painful, and do no kill them. The veterinary hospitals of India had been known and written about too, but Kipling says they are too few and instead of being hospitals, they are places of refuge before the animal dies. He is quick to compare the Indian mind with the English one and admits “that a more humane temper prevails with regard to free creatures than in the West” (Ibid, 11). In the treatment of free animals, he cites the way farmers deal with birds: One of the most surprising things in the country is the patience with which the depredations on the crops are endured. With far less provocation the English farmer organizes sparrow clubs, and freely uses the gun, the trap, and the poisoned bait. And the Indian farmer suffers from creatures that earn no dole of grain from the occasional insecticide. The monkey, the nilghai, the black-buck, the wild pig, and the parrakeet fatten at his expense, and never kill a caterpillar or a weevil in return. He and his family spend long and dismal hours on a platform of sticks raised a few feet above the crops, whence they lift their voices against legions of thieves. The principle of abstaining from slaughter is pushed to an almost suicidal point in the Hindu regions, and becomes serious trouble at times. (Ibid, 11–12) The fruit growers too employ elaborate arrangements to scare off birds but do not kill. The bird catcher/hunters belong to a particular cast, and not only

100  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders do not receive any gratitude from the farmers and gardeners (fruit growers) but also are looked down upon (Ibid, 12). He seems to be writing in awe of the farmers’ patience but concludes “The tolerance or indifference which leaves wild creatures alone is unfortunately an intimate ally of blank ignorance” (Ibid, 13). The Introduction to the book leaves a reader hardly in a state of mind to expect what is coming in the chapters. The Introduction is really by a Brit and a Brit alone. Both John and Rudyard Kipling have been seen as “imperialists” and the latter’s fame has suffered from that evaluation. John Kipling is not a well-known writer today, but the “Introduction” of his book would paint him as an imperialist. There are glimpses of sensitivity that are to come in the following chapters, but overall, he writes off the country as the farmers, reportedly, wrote off their old and diseased cattle: “India has a larger inheritance than most other countries in sacred and legendary lore of animals; but much of it has now only a literary interest, and but a remote connection with the actual life of the people” (Ibid, 15). Once again, the same argument: India was “once” great, but now requires the British to come out of its degeneration. It is indeed puzzling why the Introduction is so vitriolic, even if we consider that it may have been factually correct. Obviously, his heart was touched by the treatment of domestic animals, but as his chapters on the same animals show, the picture was much larger. Although veterinary science has roots in ancient India, its presence in the nineteenth century seems insignificant. The colonial impoverishment of the Indian peasantry and society by the end of the nineteenth century is as advanced as it could get (See Jeffrey, 2017, 11–33 for a lucid discussion). It is worth wondering whether some of these “cruelties” were a part of the larger malaise, for how could people depicted as compassionate even to dangerous animals like snakes, let their domestic animals die such terrible deaths? A research work on veterinary medicine in colonial India might throw some light on the issue. Saurabh Mishra discusses the attitude and practices of the colonial state toward various animals and finds that the diseases that concerned the horses, primarily used by the British, received immediate attention while “cattle diseases that were quite widespread did not receive an equal degree of attention, despite leading to disastrous consequences for the rural agrarian economy” (Mishra, 211, 589). Mishra’s writing is with reference to the Cattle Plague outbreak in the third quarter of the nineteenth century which had impacted regions of Punjab as well. Kipling had also done his project of craftsmen in this region. There is no way to ascertain what he saw and where, but maybe what he witnessed was a period of cattle epidemic. “A series of epizootics in the Ferozepur district of Punjab in 1894–95 left, according to cautious official estimates, nearly 84000 animals debilitated and unfit for plowing, while killing more than 20,000” (Ibid, 590). John Lockwood Kipling, though making a few critical remarks about the British society and some appreciative remarks about the Indian society, was at the core appreciative of the British Government of India, justified

The Multispecies World of Indian Householders  101 colonization of India and believed that Indian civilization was long dead and could only be replaced by a western one. These positions at the end of the nineteenth century are not so matter-of-fact because a nascent modern independence movement was building up in India and there were critical voices against colonial rule in India and the British media. The question is how to read John Kipling’s text. An anticolonial reading of postcolonial orientation would highlight how he makes fun of Indians, considers them ignorant and unscientific and is therefore imperialist. A more eclectic reading of John Kipling’s text-as-narrative reflects a complexity that cannot be contained within a label. There are several voices within his text – that of human and nonhuman animals. The human voices include his too, but submerged under his voice are other voices – of Indian folk, folk narrative and at times, of nonhuman animals. Kipling’s work can be considered rich in information and complex in attitude. While he laughs, jeers and looks down upon some facts of Indian life, he gets completely immersed in certain others. In the case of elephants, Kipling almost gets immersed in the logic of Indian folk narrative. Over many pages, Kipling narrates how elephants’ nature is like that of native human beings. On certain matters, he clearly seems not to understand the attitudes of Indians, for example, regarding snakes. On some matters, it is difficult to believe Kipling’s narrative. In the case of monkeys, he seems to be enjoying the show, just as he also ridicules the tolerance of Indians. He also records that people had proverbs and sayings that reflected the monkey as a “thief” or troublemaker. If we put all this together, it appears people were tolerant because they realized that this is the natural behavior of the monkey; it’s what being a monkey is about. An evaluation of John Lockwood Kipling based on the 18 chapters of this book without the “Introduction” to them is different from an evaluation that included the “Introduction”. Those 18 chapters reflect keen observation of the Indians’ perception of free, wild and domestic animals, and provide lots of information for us to construct the multispecies world of the Indian householder philosophically and historically. He also records people’s resistance to the killing of peacocks and monkeys, and above all records British compliance to it out of fear of the local populace. British knew well that pushed beyond a point, Indian masses could not be controlled. Decoding other voices from Kipling’s narrative, one can say two things about the human–animal relationship in India: one, that the narratives about nonhuman animals determined the reality, and two, that people who could not save their country from the colonial plunder were seen fighting to save their peacocks, monkeys and cobras. Notes 1 The distance between Khajuraho and (now) Halebidu is 1,794 km. Khajuraho is located in northern central India and Halebidu in southern India. Both towns are renowned for temple complexes constructed between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries and are today UNESCO World Heritage sites.

102  The Multispecies World of Indian Householders 2 “Sircar” means government; in the colonial context, it means the British government. “Sircari” meant officials as well as implied a culture defined by the laws and customs of the British state in India in contrast to the local culture defined by different customs, beliefs and religion.

Works Cited Capra, Fritjof. 1975. The Tao of Physics. Boulder: Shambhala Publications. Govindrajan, Radhika. 2018. Animal Intimacies. Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jeffrey, Craig 2017. Modern India. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kipling, John Lockwood. 1907. Beast and Man in India. A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals In Their Relation With The People. With Illustrations. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd. Mishra, Saurabh Beasts, Murrains, and the British Raj: Reassessing colonial medicine in India from the veterinary perspective, 1860–1900. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85: 587–619. Naithani, Sadhana. 2006. In Quest of Indian Folktales. Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube and William Crooke. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Prinsep, Valentine Cameron. 1877–80 https://www.rct.uk/collection/407181/ the-imperial-assemblage-eld-at-delhi-1-january-1877

4 The Tiger Obsession Henry Shakespear, James Forsyth, George Sanderson, J. C. Fife-Cookson

“The Tiger Grips the Narrator” provides a bridge between all the previous chapters and the next chapter. The writer we will discuss in the next chapter is Jim Corbett, who is known for his writings on one animal alone – the tigers. This bridge is required because the narrative about the tiger, which we have not yet paid special attention to, does have a unique place in all the literature created about India’s wildlife and also in the lives of the British in India. This unique place was not without tragic consequences for the tiger: while the animal was admired, feared, celebrated, poetically narrated, artistically represented and made the hero of the Indian jungle, it was hunted across the length and breadth of India. Trophy hunting and its deeply unethical practice was a blow that the Indian tiger, called the Royal Bengal Tiger by the British, took without ever losing its fearlessness of the human animal. Panćatantra expresses the tragic irony: In persons endowed with qualities most admirable, most often, those qualities themselves become their worst foe. (Panćatantra.pdf. 178/532) Tiger – The Trophy In the hunting of the tiger, one method of hunting with two variations was followed by all the hunters throughout. It is important to understand this method, its practical execution and its fallouts before we can understand what makes Jim Corbett different from all other hunters and writers and how he changed the narrative of hunt to something else. All the writers we have discussed until now, except John Lockwood Kipling, shot tigers, but their passion lay elsewhere: Henry Shakespear was passionate about pig sticking, Forsyth shot anything and everything and George Sanderson was focused on elephants. They did, however, shoot tigers too and, in this chapter, we see what they wrote about the method of hunting tigers used by them. A new writer will be added in this chapter, Lt. Col. J. C. Fife-Cookson, who has been brought in as the representative of the average British official as the shooter of tigers. DOI: 10.4324/9781032700489-5

104  The Tiger Obsession British hunting and extinction of Indian wildlife was at its peak from the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century to the first quarter of the twentieth century – a subject we will discuss in Chapter 6. Here, suffice it to say that one animal that remained at the top of the hunting aspirations of the British in India right since the beginning and until the very end was the tiger. The animal known for its bravery, intelligence and magnificence had been treated as an enemy both in realistic and symbolic terms. In realistic terms, it was the animal that was the biggest danger to the free access to forests. James Forsyth was a forest officer and says “I devoted a day now and then to the sport of tiger-shooting (…) the numerous tigers, which at that time rendered working in the forests and carrying timber so dreaded by the natives, and consequently costly to the Government” (Forsyth, 266). In symbolic terms, the subjugation of the Indian tiger implied Britain’s victory over India (more on this in Chapter 7). Shooting a tiger was the biggest trophy an Englishman could award to himself. The trophy came with a material gain too – the valuable skin. Tigers were found in several parts of the Indian subcontinent and were hunted all over. The number of British accounts of shooting tigers, if put together, would be bigger than any epic in the world. The aspiration to shoot a tiger was so high that it amounted to an obsession. Perhaps, the best reflection of this obsession is the title of a book published two decades after India’s independence, namely: Have You Shot An Indian Tiger? by R. D. Mackay. The book itself is the usual hum drum writing of a British official, but the title signals that it was a defining characteristic for the British officials – whether or not someone had shot a tiger. Forsyth gave words to this obsession too. there is a stirring of the blood in attacking an animal before whom every other beast of the forest quails, and an unarmed man is helpless as a mouse under the paw of a cat – a creature at the same time matchless in beauty of form and color, and in terrible power of offensive armature – which draws men to its continued pursuit after that of every other animal has ceased to afford sufficient excitement to undergo the toil of hunting in a tropical country. (266–267) Tiger hunt involved the wish of a British official, and then hundreds of men to be employed as “beaters”, that is, those who would go into the jungle from a predecided direction, create noise to drive out the tiger in a certain direction, generally toward an open glade in the forest. Above them were dozens of men who were there to manage the beaters. Then came the elephants and their caretakers – the mahouts. Finally, the assistants who will stay close to the British hunter and carry his guns; some of them were armed too, just in case their services were required. A writer described the expedition to shoot the tiger in a telling way: The expeditions after tigers which I organized myself became in course of time like a military campaign in miniature. The hunter was the

The Tiger Obsession  105 general; the shikaris were the staff; the beaters formed the army. The range of country over which it was proposed to conduct campaign against the great beasts was first determined. Maps were studied, information collected, and a tract of country selected as the theatre of operations. (Burton, 1928, 110) This analogy between the tiger hunt and a military campaign exposes the two as interconnected – that tiger hunt was yet another form of waging war on India. Every other official with access to government elephants and power to order a couple of hundred men went to shoot tigers and collect trophies for display in drawing rooms. Shooting a tiger on foot was rare. An expert hunter like Sanderson said Tiger shooting on foot is very generally condemned, but as in most matters of choice there is something to be said for, as well as, against it. It is never followed systematically by any man, but circumstances occasionally arise when it must be resorted to, or sport be sacrificed. Tigershooting on foot can never be, of course, safe sport. (Sanderson, 293) Shakespear summarized how the majority of the hunters functioned: Tiger-shooting in India, as is generally known, is a sport commonly pursued by men in houdahs, on the back of elephants, this is the method employed by those who can afford to keep elephants for the sport, or can borrow them for the occasion. Tigers are also killed by shikarees (hunters), European or native who make mechauns up in trees (platform of boughs, with a charpoy, or native bed, fastened on them, and tie a bullock below – when the animal kills the bullock, or returns to eat, then they shoot him. These then are the usual ways of destroying tiger – I might say common tigers: for if the tigers are man-eaters, they are generally so cunning, that they will not come near a mechaun on the tree, or the country they live in may probably be too rocky and mountainous for elephants to be used. (Shakespear, 73) These were the two variations of the same method – shooting from the back of an elephant or from a platform in a tree – and thus many tigers were shot by men who were not even regular hunters. The danger to the hunter was immense, even after the tiger had been wounded. If a hunter has shot an animal and it has not dropped dead right there, then the hunter should go and retrieve the animal – that’s the thumb rule and ethics of hunting. In the case of the tiger, however, a wounded tiger was often left because searching had to be done on foot and the threat of

106  The Tiger Obsession attack from it scared all the hunters. “None but the utterly ignorant would think of following a wounded tiger into long grass or close cover, where it has every advantage, and the sportsman may be seized before he has time to use his rifle” (Sanderson, 294). In addition to the precaution was the method of tiger hunting as described earlier – several hundred people beat the tiger out of the jungle by creating noise of every kind and then the hunter on the elephant or the machan shot at him, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. The wounded tigers or those that managed to get away after being shot were not always retrieved. Sanderson also shot several tigers in south India. While he, Shakespear and every hunter talked of man-eaters and having shot them, it is not always very clear whether they had shot a man-eater. Moreover, all of them shot large numbers of tigers, and generally, indiscriminately. During the time Sanderson’s book was published and went into several editions, tigers were being shot across the subcontinent by all and sundry British officials, whether they had any remarkable skills or not. The result was wounded tigers being left in the jungles. James Forsyth who was active in Central India and shot bees and crocodiles on the river Narmada also shot tigers. One of the incidents went thus: I waited behind my little green bush, the beaters creating enough din to deafen a dozen tigers, till at last I saw a striped form glide across an open spot in front, and advancing in my direction. With finger on the trigger I was awaiting his appearance at the next break in the low jungle. When suddenly I hear the bushes crashing on my left, and a large tiger bounded into the jungle pathway on which I was standing, and cantered towards my position. Wheeling round I delivered the right barrel of the Jacob in his left shoulder, on receiving which he rolled over like a rabbit. At the moment I fired my eye caught the glimpse of the other tiger close by, in the direction I had first seen him; so, seeing the first disposed of, I again fronted, and, with a steady aim, gave No. 2 the left barrel through the neck. As luck would have it, the spine was broken, and he dropped on the spot. (Forsyth, 230–231) When Forsyth looked back in the direction of the first tiger, he saw him disappearing into the jungle with an injured right leg. He and his men tried to chase the tiger but did not find him. It was getting to be evening, so they decided to find him the next day, when again they could not find him. “On walking up to the second ‘tiger’ what was my disgust to find that it was not a tiger at all, but only a huge striped hyaena I had shot” (231). That was the result of a beat: a tiger was pushed out and given a deadly wound and a hyena was shot dead, even though Forsyth was an experienced hunter. It is also relevant at this point to reflect how the local people lived with the tigers in the nearby jungles. Some examples of this have been discussed in

The Tiger Obsession  107 earlier chapters and will come up again in the next chapter. Here, an account by Forsyth from Central India is noteworthy for itself and also for its similarity with other locations. Forsyth says that people identified tigers to be of two types – those that lived exclusively in the forest and preyed upon wild animals and those that hung around closer to villages and killed cattle. Obviously, these were not different varieties of tigers, but probably more aged ones attacked the cattle. Tigers that prey on cattle are perfectly well known to the cowherds (…). They seldom molest men, and are often driven away from their prey, after killing it, by the unarmed herds. Frequently they are known by particular names; and they really seem in many cases to live among the villagers and their herds much like a semi-domesticated animal, though, from a mutual consent to avoid direct interviews as much as possible. (Forsyth, 271) The difference in the worldview of the British hunter and the local people could not be more different. The local people who actually suffered the loss of precious cattle still considered the tiger to be justified in its natural act of hunting other animals, including domesticated cattle. They tried to save their cattle, the tiger tried to attack it and once in a while was successful. That was the local people’s idea of “game”. Considering that it was only some tigers who were interested in the cattle and did not depend on one village alone, a natural balance was maintained. At the center of nature’s law was the tiger’s lack of interest in killing human beings, or rather, the two animals, powerful in their own ways – the human and the tiger – steered clear of each other. Forsyth says that there were some shikaris who would get into action as individuals if a tiger became too troublesome and would try to shoot it from a tree, now that the crude guns had become locally available, but they rarely succeeded in killing a tiger. One can easily imagine that before the spread of guns, thanks to the British, what would the humans have done – protected their cattle as far as possible. On the other hand, since the jungles were well sufficed in terms of many animals of prey, cattle attracted the attention of only some tigers. Hunter – The Average One of the main habitats of the tiger was the foothills as well as the upper reaches of the Himalayas. To get a general picture, we will briefly refer to an account of tiger shooting in the region: the account is by J. C. Fife-Cookson: Tiger Shooting In The Doon and Ulwar with Life in India, published in 1887. This account is chosen not because it is by a renowned hunter or writer; on the contrary, it is chosen because it represents the average British official who had no special skills as a hunter, had huge lust to shoot tigers and had the power to organize the whole show.

108  The Tiger Obsession Fife-Cookson was appointed to the Indian army and left from England on January 10, 1871 with a regiment (Fife-Cookson, 1887, 1). Changing ships in Alexandria and Suez, he arrived in India. Although the date is not mentioned by him, he says it was still winter in India and the hot weather was approaching. So, he arrived probably in late February or March. He had been dreaming of this and was already eager to start shooting tigers (Ibid, 3). While acclimatizing and training in Agra, he starts his inquiry and gets information about Dehra Doon [sic] and Mussourie, “although I was told it was difficult to kill them [tigers] owning to the thickness and extent of the jungle” (Ibid, 4). In May he gets leave and proceeds to Dehra Doon (Ibid, 5), which is on the foothills with the Shivalik range of mountains on one side. The foothills, also called Terai, were heavily wooded. “The game in the Siwalix and the Doon includes the elephant, tiger, bear leopard, and hog, besides sambur, cheetal and many other varieties of deer” (Ibid, 10). He describes the place as of “picturesque scenery”. Dehra Doon “is a valley bounded by the great Ganges and Jumna, covered with luxuriant forests, and lying at the foot of the gigantic Himalayas. Dehra Doon has the shape of a parallelogram” (Ibid, 20–21). From the last station in the plains, Saharanpur (where the monkeys had escaped from the train station as narrated by Kipling), he travels in a government horse carriage. As the mountainous region starts, it is men pulling the carriage. Suddenly they stop and he descends to find they had stopped because a big cobra was crossing the path. The men would have just waited for the cobra to go, but Fife-Cookson gets into action and asks them to come along with him. As he does not have his gun ready while the cobra is going down the hill, he throws stones at it and kills it (Ibid, 11–13). The incident is deeply reflective of his state of mind – he has come to kill. Along with informing the readers of his arrival in Doon, he describes the weapons he has: “A twelve-bore pin-fire rifle by James Dougall of Bennett Street, St. James’s. I used it with four drams of powder and hardened shells. A twelve-bore pin-fire shot gun, which I [used] as a second gun for tigershooting”. He also had a retinue of two personal servants (Ibid, 13). He had hired servants in Bombay from among the people who waited at the docks, were hired by arriving English men, they spoke a little English, accompanied the officer to his station, helped him buy furniture etc. to set up his living quarters, received payment and went back to Bombay (Ibid, 14–15). The two men with him also identified themselves as Christian and demanded leave on Sunday to go to Church, which he doubts that they actually did (Ibid, 15–16). Anyhow, his focus is on shooting tigers. He learns “that Eastern Doon was by far the best for tiger-shooting” and decides to go there [toward Haridwar]. He reads reports of some Englishman coming accidentally upon a sleeping tiger in the grass, who just growled and went away. Apparently, the grass was so high and tigers so many that such encounters were common.

The Tiger Obsession  109 The most dangerous part of tiger-shooting consists in following up a tiger, as he will certainly kill a man if he gets a chance (…). The same tiger, if unwounded, would probably try to get out of the way of any man whom he saw approaching. (Ibid, 18) He decides to go toward the eastern side of the Doon Valley. His account narrates that he is traveling along with his assistants and trackers, but is unable to even see a tiger. He learns of another English officer camping nearby and joins him, also to learn something about tiger shooting. While they are unable to come upon a tiger, he sees a python coiled up in the jungle and immediately proceeds to kill him with sticks. He has it skinned: 17 feet of valuable skin which he gets “permanently cured in Rajpoor”; shortly afterward, the precious skin is stolen by one of his two servants (Ibid, 31–32). Tiger keeps eluding him and the people are not very helpful: “The natives were very loath even for a liberal remuneration to give up their bullocks. (…) because the taking of life was distasteful to them” (Ibid, 54–55). He thinks that these people do not understand that killing one tiger will save many bullocks. He notices that they go about bare feet even though the place is full of cobras: “Yet they are even averse from these snakes being killed”. One officer wanted to pour boiling water into the hole of a snake and his servant “declined to assist him, and he was obliged to exercise his authority in order to carry his point!” (Ibid, 56). Cookson’s own servant picked up a scorpion by his hand and threw it out of the window before Cookson could kill it (Ibid, 56). “Cows, pigeons, peafowls, nylghaie [sic] and monkeys” are protected as sacred, he learns. He realizes that owing to the large quantities of deer and wild hog in the Doon, the tigers there interfere comparatively very little with the cattle of the villages (…). It is no doubt owing to the abundant supply of animals upon which the tiger preys that a man-eater is so rarely found in the Doon. Not only is their prey plentiful, but it is easily caught owing to the denseness of the jungles. (Ibid, 91) Finally, from a machan he presses the trigger on a tiger (Ibid, 60). Cookson was sure he had hit the tiger and the tiger had stumbled down the bushes, but a thorough search did not find a wounded or a dead tiger (Ibid, 62). On another occasion too he shot at the tiger, who could not be found nearby: “I now remounted the elephant, and continued beating the grass. Suddenly up jumped a tiger, close to the elephant’s trunk. He gave a loud ‘Wough! Wough!’ and instantly disappeared in the long grass” (Ibid, 94). At another point, he again believes to have shot a tiger, but nothing is found (Ibid, 201). On yet

110  The Tiger Obsession another day, Cookson and his friend B.M. both fire at a tiger, find the blood at the place, but not the tiger (Ibid, 212–215). A Small Detail Cross-referencing has been a feature of the writers selected for analysis in this essay. Fife-Cookson also refers to Sanderson (Ibid, 171), but to say that he does not agree with Sanderson’s preferred gun for tigers (Ibid, 172). That is another one of the common features: acknowledging the presence and expertise of other contemporary writers, but disagreeing on some point to assert independence and perhaps, better knowledge. This feature makes them a selfaware community and justifies them being analyzed together and seen as representative of many others who also wrote on wild animals of India. There is one apparently small, but crucial detail, mentioned by all the three hunters: Shakespear, Sanderson and Fife-Cookson. Kipling would not have known of it because he was not a hunter. This small detail has been intriguing as if it was a sign of something. Reported by all, this detail is that the native companion sitting close to the British hunter while stalking the tiger from a machan in the jungle “coughs” at the most critical moment, that is, when the tiger is in sight and near enough to be shot, but also near enough to hear the cough and be alerted. Shakespear reports it happened throughout his expeditions, Sanderson experienced it and so did FifeCookson. Shakespear and Sanderson both explained it as the “nervousness” of the natives and found it irritating, disturbing and often robbing them of the opportunity to shoot the animal. Fife-Cookson gives words to the intriguing feeling one gets as a postcolonial reader while reading the recurrence of the cough: they often cough at the critical moment when the tiger is approaching, and if they do so the animal instantly takes alarm and escapes. One naturally asks, why do they cough? Of course, they will say, if afterwards asked the question, they could not help it. But although nervousness may have something to do with it, they are probably influenced by the wish to warn the tiger off for some reason or another. They may fear that they will have to incur danger while following up the animal, if it be wounded, or they may wish to protect it, owing to the superstitious belief which prevails amongst natives that the spirit of the tiger pursues those who have assisted in its destruction. I have also heard of cases in native States where the rajah was fond of tiger-shooting, and the shikaries received a hint which they dared not disregard, that the tigers were to be reserved for their own chief. (Fife-Cookson, 208–209, emphasis mine) Fife-Cookson is insightful here and provides evidence that perhaps the cooperation of the natives during the hunt was not without resistance. This subtle act, often hidden behind another act, may not have been mentioned by other

The Tiger Obsession  111 writers. In keeping with the colonial paradigm, the account of the hunt also had to reflect the complete authority of the hunter over the forest, the animals and (native) humans. Most of the writers achieve that portrayal, but Fife-Cookson’s writing includes the account of his own failures at the hunt as well as several references to natives’ resistance. The “cough” at the most critical moment of the shoot is something that all writers feel compelled to mention. It is unconvincing that all natives in these varied situations and different regions suffered from nervousness. In several situations, there was no “rajah” to worry about. Coughing functioned like an act of subversion. It managed to deconstruct all the planning to kill and very often gave the animal a chance to escape. Coughing as an act of subversion becomes more plausible when seen in combination with all other forms of unwillingness, noncooperation and open refusal to act in certain ways. This is a feature present in every hunt, and it would not be wrong to assume that the writers have systematically not mentioned acts of dissent. Their portrayal is that “most” of the natives were impressed with their bravery and were thankful that the Englishman had come and relieved them of the dangerous animals. This constant assertion seems to be hiding a knowledge contrary to this, which gets expressed in some other context: when they have to show how they had to “manage” the undisciplined, superstitious and ignorant natives or when they have to abuse the Hindus for their unwillingness to kill. There are several instances or forms of reluctance of the natives mentioned, and almost none, of their gratitude (except in the writer’s own estimation). It is like, the “cough” of the natives saved many lives, even if it could not completely counter the tsunami of killers that had descended on the Indian jungles. Killers like Fife-Cookson were many and they, as also even expert hunters like Sanderson, Forsyth and Shakespear, left many wounded tigers. Simultaneously, the number of man-eaters was rising. The humdrum officials justified the killing of tigers on that ground too. The problem of man-eaters became acute in the Himalayas in the early years of the twentieth century. The location which was so well supplied with all kinds of animals that tigers did not need to bother human beings and where human beings had left the tiger alone forever was the location where man-eaters increased so much that it became a matter of law and governance. The government invited the hunters and offered rewards for killing the man-eaters, but the situation seemed out of control. Works Cited Burton, R. G. 1928. Sport and Wild Life in the Deccan. London: Seeley, Service & Co. Limited. Fife-Cookson, J. C. 1887. Tiger-Shooting in the Doon and Ulwar with Life in India. London: Chapman and Hall Ltd. Forsyth, James Captain. 1889. The Highlands of Central India. Notes on Their Forests and Wild Tribes, Natural History, And Sports. New Edition With Maps and Illustrations. London: Chapman and Hall Ltd.

112  The Tiger Obsession Mackay, R. D. 1967. Have You Shot An Indian Tiger? New Delhi, Lakshmi Book Store. Sanderson, G. P. (1878) 1907. Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India. Their Haunts and habits From Personal Observation; With An Account of the Mode Of Capturing And Taming Elephants. Sixth Edition with Illustrations Reproduced From The Original Drawings. Edinburgh: John Grant. Shakespear, Henry Major. 1862. The Wild Sports of India: With Detailed Instructions for the Sportsman; To which Are Added Remarks on Breeding and Rearing of Horses And the Formation of Light Irregular Cavalry. Second Edition, Much Enlarged. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

5 The Tiger Grips the Narrator Jim Corbett’s Many Books

The person whose works we will discuss in this chapter was a hunter as well as the first Britisher in India to voice criticism of the tiger hunting practices and initiate the idea of conservation. The popularity of his writing is hardly comparable to those of other writers discussed in previous chapters. His books were a phenomenal success in India, Britain and the United States and were translated into 27 languages – accounting for their popularity outside the English language zones. While this popularity might have waned in other countries, it continues to remain alive in India and that in itself is a statement. His popularity is not frozen in time and colonial history. This person was Edward James Corbett, famous as Jim Corbett – the name he used as an author. Corbett shot man-eaters in the Himalayas from 1907 but created so much knowledge about and compassion for them that his writing became the basis of the tiger conservation movement in India. We have seen what tiger hunting had been, what had been done to the tigers by British men for at least two centuries in India and what it had led to. That account needs to be remembered to be able to understand Jim Corbett’s difference from those who came before him. In 1907, the Commissioner of Nainital in the Kumaon Himalayas contacted Jim Corbett and asked him to do something about a man-eater that had gained the name Champawat man-eater, referring to the place where the tiger was active. Between 1907 and 1938, Jim Corbett killed three man-eater tigers and five man-eater tigresses; two of these tigresses had subadult children who had been turned man-eater by the mothers and were therefore also killed: one female subadult and two male subadult tigers. He also killed two man-eater leopards. This number is far lower than what any ordinary official often shot. So, what made Jim Corbett so famous and local people so indebted to him? Why is it important to include his narratives in this book? Jim Corbett’s writings are important not only for what they tell us about him but also for the way they reflect on all the writers discussed until now. We shall see in the following how Jim Corbett went about shooting tigers.

DOI: 10.4324/9781032700489-6

114  The Tiger Grips the Narrator Tiger – The Gentleman “The Author’s Note” in his first book Man Eaters of Kumaon (1944) is a document that needs to be cited almost in full. Every sentence of it shows the writer’s awareness of the issues connected with tigers in India: British hunts, public ignorance, linguistic misinformation and the Indian populace and their beliefs. In the center of these, he places the tiger – as a living creature in all its animality. He places the tiger in the discourse not as an enemy to be conquered, but as a being with all rights to existence on this planet. Corbett opens his note thus: “As many of the stories in this book are about maneating tigers, it is perhaps desirable to explain, why these animals develop man-eating tendencies” (Corbett, 2023, x).1 The author does not intend to shock or thrill the reader with the man-eating tiger, but believes that before you read the stories in which man-eaters are killed you must understand them. His first explanation is that a tiger turns man-eater “under stress of circumstances beyond its control” and is “compelled …. to a diet alien to it” (Ibid, x). These circumstances are in “nine cases out of ten” wounds, and one out of ten is old age. Wounds, Corbett says, are sustained when tigers are fired at, but not killed, they sustain deadly injuries making them disabled. In rare circumstances, injuries are sustained in their own natural course of life. The wounds change a tiger because to hunt its prey it “depends for the success of its attack on its speed, and, to a lesser extent on the condition of its teeth and claws” (Ibid, x). Corbett invites readers to imagine how a tiger runs to overpower other swift and powerful creatures, and unlike humans, does not shoot other animals by guns. He needs his body in an able condition to be able to survive; unable to do so he turns to man-eating, which too does not happen as per a carefully calculated plan. “The change-over from animal to human flesh is, I believe, in most cases accidental” (Ibid, x). He then narrates of the tigress of Muktesar, who was young and in an encounter with a porcupine had lost an eye and had quills embedded in her body, making movement very difficult. A woman while cutting grass just chanced upon her, almost came too close to her, and probably in self-defense, the tigress knocked her down, but did not eat her. The tigress was feeling vulnerable and again a chance encounter with a man made her attack and this time her claws bared the man’s back, leading to a flow of blood that she must have tasted accidentally and realized that this flesh could be food too. “Thereafter she became an established man-eater and had killed twenty-four people before she was finally accounted for” (Ibid, xi). Corbett provides a finer distinction: a tiger or tigress with cubs may kill if disturbed by a human, “but these tigers cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be called man-eaters, though they are often so called” (Ibid, xi). He realizes that he is correcting an important mistake which has many more tigers branded as man-eaters than is the actual case. In the absence of a standard way of branding the animal, he provides his own standard “Personally, I would give a tiger the benefit of the doubt once, and once again” (Ibid, xi).

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  115 Even that would not be enough for him, he would also do a postmortem of the human victim to ascertain whether he/she was killed by a tiger or a leopard or by hyenas or wolves. In fact, no carnivore may be responsible for a death, and yet it might be simply understood as such (Ibid, xi–xii). Corbett then clears many popular notions about tigers that are wrong – one, that they love the salt in the human blood; and two, that cubs of man-eaters will automatically become man-eaters. He also clarifies the difference between tigers and leopards. Tiger, he says, loses fear of man after turning into a man-eater and attacks during the day when human beings are active and outdoors; leopards do not lose that fear and attack at night or even enter homes and kill. Both animals are powerful enough to carry their prey over long distances. He narrates how epidemics in human society lead to leopards turning man-eaters – when people are dying faster than they can be cremated, which requires a huge effort in the mountainous terrain, the dead may be simply thrown in the ravines. Hungry leopards might thus get used to human flesh. The two man-eater leopards he killed had turned such after two epidemics. Corbett picks up cudgels with the misinformation campaign against tigers. He cites popular British expressions like “as cruel as a tiger” and “as bloodthirsty as a tiger” and says that whoever first coined these terms “showed a lamentable ignorance of the animal he defamed” and popularized a “wrong opinion of the tigers” (Ibid, xiii). To dismantle this notion, Corbett writes a beautiful piece about his boyhood, when he had acquired a rifle of which one barrel was broken. He writes When I see the expression “as cruel as a tiger” or “as bloodthirsty as tiger” in print, I think of a small boy with an old muzzle-loading gun, the right barrel of which was split (…) and the stocks and barrels were kept from falling apart by lashings of brass wire – wandering through the jungles of terai and bhabar in the days when there were ten tigers to each one that now survives; sleeping anywhere he happened to be when the night came on, with a small fire to give him warmth and company, wakened at intervals by the calling of the tigers, sometimes in the distance, at other times near at hand; throwing another stick in the fire, turning over and continuing his uninterrupted sleep without one thought of unease; knowing from his own short experience and from what others, who like himself had spent their days in the jungle, had told him, that a tiger, unless molested, would do him no harm; or during daylight avoiding any tiger that he saw, and when that was not possible, standing perfectly still until it had passed and gone, before continuing on his way. And I think of him [the boy, himself] on one occasion stalking half-a-dozen jungle fowl that were feeding in the open, and on creeping up to a plum bush and standing up to peer over, the bush heaving and a tiger walking out on the far side and, on clearing the bush, turning round and looking at the boy with an expression on its face which said as clearly as any words, ‘Hello kid, what the hell

116  The Tiger Grips the Narrator are you doing here?’ and, receiving no answer, turning round and walking away very slowly without once looking back. And then again I think of tens of thousands of men, women and children who, while working in the forests or cutting grass or collecting dry sticks, pass day after day close to where the tigers lying up and who, when they return safely to their homes, do not even know that they have been under the observation of this so-called “cruel” and “blood-thirsty” animal. (Ibid, xiii–xiv) Read the citation above once again to see the difference between Corbett and all other writers. Here is a man of Irish descent who was born in India, in a family of 15 children and humble means, lived close to the locals of the foothills of the Kumaon Himalayas and grew up along with them and their worldview. His biological ethnicity was nourished by the geography of the Himalayas and nurtured by the worldview of the hill people. This man’s feel for the multispecies world of the Indian forests and nearby villages distinguishes him and his writing from the others who had learned to hunt in Britain, had lusted after the possibility of “game” in India, were puffed up having shot animals indiscriminately in India and were writing to show their pride and “inspire” others in England to prepare for the exciting life of a killer in India. The difference has nothing to do with the times they lived in, because all writers chosen here were alive in Corbett’s life span, although a bit older than him. Corbett does not use the word “native” nor does he use the word “British” or “Englishman” but it is absolutely clear who he is talking of: those leaving wounded tigers and spreading misinformation are not those who collect firewood in the forests and believe that tigers will not harm them unless they harm them. The reality was that because of the former (the ignorant hunters and liars), the latter (forest dwellers) were so threatened by the man-eaters that the grown-up small boy – Jim Corbett – had to pick up his gun and shoot the man-eaters. Even as a hunter, however, we will see how many worlds set him apart from other writers. “Half a century has rolled by since the day the tiger walked out of the plum bush” writes he, when he picks up the pen to write about the maneaters he went after. For 32 years in that half century, he went, intermittently, hunting man-eaters and saw the plight of the human victims which “would have caused a stone to weep”. Yet, says he I have not seen a case where a tiger has been deliberately cruel or where it has been bloodthirsty to the extent that it has killed, without provocation, more than it has needed to satisfy its hunger or the hunger of its cubs. (Ibid, xiv) What then is the role of tigers in their natural habitat? “A tiger’s function in the scheme of things is to maintain balance in nature” (Ibid, xiv). Corbett

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  117 says of the hunters “Sportsmen are admittedly conservative” and stick to their opinions (Ibid, xv). He knew they would not agree with him, but still believed that they would agree that a tiger is a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage and that when he is exterminated – as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies to his support – India will be the poorer by having lost the finest of her fauna. (Ibid, xv) Corbett was perhaps being polite but knew that British hunters will not see the point. Shakespears and Sandersons clearly stated that a tiger is neither as brave nor as intelligent as he is thought to be. Indeed, the battle for the protection of tigers was more difficult than hunting man-eaters and it was 21 years after India’s independence, in 1971, that the tiger gained legal protection. Until then, the British men and Indian princes kept on the rampage. The Hunter and The Man-eater As stated earlier, the local government had offered cash rewards to hunters for shooting man-eaters. When the commissioner of Nainital visited Jim Corbett and asked for help, he agreed to go to Champawat immediately, but placed two conditions “(…) one, that the Government rewards be cancelled, and the other, that the other shikaris and regulars from Almora be withdrawn”. He had an “aversion to being classed as a reward hunter” (Ibid, 2). His conditions were met with and within a week he was ready to depart with six men to carry his camp kit. They walked for two days and arrived in the village of Pali on the third day, where a woman had been killed five days ago. People were terrified as the tiger was in the vicinity and had been heard calling on the road. Jim Corbett was told that he perambulates along the road at night. As it was a full moon night Corbett decided to stay out and wait for the tiger to appear. He spent a cold night outside, but nothing happened. The next day he convinced the people to come with him and show him the place where the woman had been taken. In this case, some women had gone to cut leaves of oak trees for the cattle. One of them completed her job and was climbing down the tree “when the tiger, who had approached unseen, stood up on his hind legs and caught her foot” (Ibid, 4). Her companions saw everything from above and willingly narrated it all to Corbett. He then followed the drag marks and blood marks to determine what the tiger did next and to understand where he might be. After the attack, the women had ran back to the village and narrated everything to the villagers. Many men then went to rescue the woman, or at least, get her remains for a proper cremation. Tiger was still there in the bushes and when he growled, everyone ran back. They tried three times, but the same thing happened. They had been unable to retrieve anything. Corbett’s narrative is not only about himself but

118  The Tiger Grips the Narrator also about the hill people and their experiences of the tigers. In the case of another victim of the Champawat tiger, two sisters were working on their field, when one of them was carried away by the tiger. The other sister followed, “brandishing her sickle and screaming at the tiger to let her sister go and take her instead. This incredible act of heroism was witnessed by the people in the main village” (Ibid, 10). After 100 yards, the tiger put her prey down and turned to the pursuing sister, who then ran back to the village, was incoherent when she arrived and henceforth could not speak anymore. Corbett visits the silent woman and tries to talk to her, (to) tell her that I had come to try and shoot the tiger that had killed her sister, she put her hands together and stooping down, touched my feet, making me feel a wretched impostor. (…) the chance of my accomplishing my object was about as good as finding a needle in two haystacks. Corbett actually killed the tiger some weeks later at some distance away from the village, and while returning alone from there, he stopped to tell the dumb woman, who suddenly regained her voice on hearing the news. Before that he works with the villagers as he trusts their knowledge of the forest and then goes looking for the tigress alone. The interaction is warm and so specific that it sounds believable. (…) this was the first man-eater that had ever been known in Kumaon, and yet something would have to be done. So for the next three days I wandered through the jungles from sunrise to sunset, visiting all the places for miles round where the villagers told me there was a chance of seeing the tigress. (Ibid, 11) His research convinces him that the tigress has moved to another location and he changes his location accordingly. One day he receives the news of a kill right after it has happened and is able to follow the tiger’s tracks. He goes alone but is soon followed by a man armed with a rifle who had been sent by the village headman – the Tahsildar. He finds the leg of the victim with still warm blood trickling and realizes that the tigress is nearby. On instinct, he points his rifle up the hill and sees that the man-eater was about to jump on him from the top, but stopped as he raised his rifle (Ibid, 18). Finding his companion scared and nervous, he asks him to sit on a rock and wait for him. After four hours of search, he decides to return before it gets dark and picks up the companion on his way back. Since that day (…) I have made it a hard and fast rule to go alone when hunting man-eaters, for if one’s companion is unarmed, it is difficult to protect him, and if he is armed, it is even more difficult to protect oneself. (Ibid, 20)

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  119 Finally, another day, he manages to fire two shots at the tigress, but only wounded her and “sat with rifle to shoulder wondering what it would be best for me to do when she charged, because the rifle was empty and I had no more cartridges” (Ibid, 23). He had brought only three cartridges as he tells us. In the folklore of the region, however, Corbett used to carry only one bullet saying that this way both the tiger and he have one shot at each other. Although Corbett never says so, but is close to it. Like with every other tigers, he checks the dead tigress and tells the reason for her turning man-eater I found that the upper and lower canine teeth on the right side of her mouth were broken (…). This permanent injury to her teeth – the result of a gun-shot wound, had prevented her from killing her natural prey, and had been the cause of her becoming a man-eater. (Ibid, 25–26) Some months later, in a state ceremony, the Tahsildar and the nervous man who had followed him were rewarded with a gun and a hunting knife, respectively, for the help they had given Corbett. Their little secrets were obviously safe with Corbett. After all, it was their spirit that counted for Corbett who had obviously recommended them for the awards (Ibid, 29). At an earlier point in the story, he says I would like to interrupt my tale here for a few minutes to refute a rumour current throughout the hills that on this, and several subsequent occasions, I assumed the dress of a hill woman and, going into the jungle attracted the man-eaters to myself and killed them with either a sickle or an axe. All I have ever done (…) borrow a sari and with it draped around me cut grass, or, climbed into trees and cut leaves, and in no case has the ruse proved successful; though on two occasions – to my knowledge – the man-eaters have stalked the tree I was on, taking cover, on one occasion behind a rock and on the other behind a fallen tree, and giving me no opportunity of shooting them. (Ibid, 11) Apart from Corbett’s sense of humor, the “rumour” also reflects how he was already becoming part of the life of the hill people and how close he had come to them. To narrate that he killed the tiger with a sickle or an axe, everyday work tools of the people, was to really make him one of them. He borrowed a sari in real, they completed the costume with a sickle in the story and made him one of their own, because gun is what differentiated the white man from the locals. Even about Corbett’s use of guns, there were stories that are alive in the twenty-first century: that Corbett carried only one bullet, giving himself and the man-eater an equal chance to kill the other. From Corbett’s account too it is evident that he carried two bullets and a third for the emergency. There were no assistants to carry guns and rifles, to load them and to hand them over to him at the time of shooting. It was one man, one dog, one

120  The Tiger Grips the Narrator rifle and a couple of bullets that finally went to the hunt. There were no “superstitious and unwilling natives either”. In Corbett’s language, they were “our people in the hills who know every foot of the jungle”, or “our people in the hills are predominantly Hindus and believe (…)”. There were with him two to four “companions who helped carry the camp-kit, that is, tent, bed, cooking equipment and ration”; together, they walked or hiked to the remote Himalayan villages and when Corbett went meeting the villagers, researching the tiger’s tracks and hunting the companions waited at the camp and gave him a hot cup of tea when he returned. Unlike other hunters in this book whose luxuries were carried on elephants, Corbett had organized the bare minimum necessities for himself and his team, but the villagers brought the best of their local produce and placed it at his camp out of love and gratitude. Corbett not only went into the villages but also into homes, treated those injured by the tigers with whatever disinfectant he had and at one time tore up his shirt to tie on a woman’s wounds. At times when people escaped from the tiger’s attack with injuries, they died of infected wounds. Corbett wrote to the administration to provide disinfectants to all the villages, and kept track that it was done. He was there not only as a hunter but also as a human being who listened, learned, thanked and helped when he could. For example, coming upon a poor family who had lost to the tiger their only cow whose milk provided nourishment and some little income to them, he bought them a new cow along with relieving them of the tiger. The tiger himself was not treated like an enemy. Before shooting, he tried to ascertain in every possible manner that it was the man-eater he was going after. Yet, mistakes were made when other tigers or young-adult cubs were shot and he records his mistake and regret. After shooting each man-eater, he performs a postmortem to determine the cause of that tiger having turned man-eater and we see tigers in unbelievably painful conditions. The point is not lost on the readers that the man-eaters were not performing an act of revenge on the human species, but just trying to survive by killing the animal easiest to kill – the human being. All other animals – the deer, for example, had too much speed and strength to be caught by a wounded and disabled tiger. The cause for the sad condition of the tiger was, in almost all the cases, human hunters, mainly British. While Corbett killed man-eaters, his postmortem created sympathy for them and initiated the idea of conservation and protection of tigers. He managed to share with the international community the local knowledge that a healthy and normal tiger is not a threat to human beings. Tiger, Corbett and Himalayas Jim Corbett’s narrative of hunting man-eater tigers is a multidimensional narrative of a multispecies world with a polyphony of ideas. He is the hunter and he is the narrator, but not only of his own contribution in the hunting and not only of his own narrative. Everybody in the story,

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  121 including the tiger, plays an important role, even the supernatural forces. Although the story of each man-eater narrated by Jim Corbett is unique in itself, one story stands out for our present consideration of the role of supernaturalism in the lives of the people of the Himalayas as well as of Jim Corbett. This story is called Temple Tiger (Corbett, 2023, 243-277) and the events happened in a place called Dabidhura, now spelled as Devidhura. He had gone there to shoot a man-eater leopard. On reaching there, he learned that a man sleeping in the open front yard of the temple had woken up at night as his leg was being pulled by a leopard, but he managed to throw a stick from the fire burning nearby at the leopard and raised alarm which brought other people out and the leopard ran away. While Corbett waited to hear more about the movement of the leopard, he heard about a socalled “temple tiger” that visited the temple often, harmed no one and the priest told Corbett that no one can kill him. The same day as Corbett’s arrival the tiger killed a cow which he had never done before. The next day he killed another, giving Corbett the reason to try to shoot him. On the first occasion when Corbett waited on a tree for the expected arrival of the tiger at his first kill, everything happened as planned, but his brand-new rifle did not go off. On the second occasion, just when the tiger was eating his second kill and Corbett could have shot him, a huge bear appeared and did the most unusual thing – challenged the tiger and they had a massive fight after which the tiger went away and the bear tried to attack Corbett and was shot down. On the third occasion and at his third kill, the tiger just did not behave as expected and gave Corbett no chance to kill him. He came back to the same kill and Corbett shot at him, but right at the same moment his companion pulled his arm to show him bears coming from the other side; the bullet was released but hit a stone and the tiger went away. On the fourth occasion, Corbett sat on a tree overlooking the tiger’s fifth kill, to which he came and ate it while looking straight at Corbett in the tree, giving him no chance to raise his rifle. When Corbett did get a chance to raise his rifle the tiger sensed it and retreated into the bushes, and moments later appeared right under Corbett, “Purring with pleasure the tiger once and again clawed the tree with vigour, while I sat on my branch and rocked with silent laughter” (Corbett, 261/877 Ibid, 276). Corbett says he realized for the first time that tigers too have a sense of humor. The words of the priest that no one can kill this tiger rang in his ears, and though admittedly, not given to superstition, he left the tiger alone. It is rather curious that although Jim Corbett does not admit to believing in the supernatural beliefs of the people, yet narrates several such incidents where his rationality took a beating. He remembers another instance of trying to shoot a tiger in a forest that had a very sacred jungle shrine known as Baram ka Than. Baram is a jungle God who protects human beings and does not permit shooting of any animal in the area he watches over. The forest (…) is well stocked with

122  The Tiger Grips the Narrator game (…). Yet, in a lifetime’s acquaintance with that forest, I do not know of a single instance of an animal having been shot in the vicinity of the shrine. (Ibid, 294) Once, when he himself decided to shoot a tiger that was killing cattle in the villages nearby, he was careful to select a spot a mile from the Baram’s shrine. He waited behind a bush, the tiger appeared on the track as expected and started walking toward Corbett, who needed the distance to lessen between them before shooting. When the tiger was at about a hundred yards, there was some rustling of the trees and Corbett saw a young tree beginning to tilt, then rest on another and then both started to tilt toward the ground, taking yet another small tree with them. At the first sound of the tree he [the tiger] had come to a halt and when the trees crashed to the ground he turned and without showing any sign of alarm, walked back in the direction he had come from. What made the occurrence I had witnessed so unusual was that the trees were young and vigorous; that no rain had fallen recently to loosen their roots; that not a breath of air was stirring in the forest; and finally, that the trees had fallen across the track leading to the shrine when the tiger had only another seventy yards to cover to give me the shot I was waiting for. (Ibid, 295) He did not get that shot nor could give an explanation or reason for it. If he really did not believe in what people believed, then why did he select a spot further away from the shrine and why did he remember the incident to narrate it in the middle of the story of the man-eater of Muktesar who he shot. His relationship to local folk belief in the supernatural seems ambiguous. To understand Corbett, it is important to take two of his autobiographical works that differ from the narratives of the man-eaters in that they are about his regular life and contexts. One of these two books is Jungle Lore, first published in 1953, and the other one is My India (1952). The Jungle Lore is important to understand how Corbett became the kind of hunter that he was and My India is a record of his life among the Indian people, reflective of his relationships and attitudes. The essence of Jungle Lore is a multispecies world in which human beings have a certain place, but they do not occupy all the space. Even Jim Corbett’s ethnicity cannot be identified in singular – he is biologically a white man, a Britisher, more specifically, of mixed Irish-Manx descent; sociologically, he is a white man born in that very region where he grows up – the foothills of the Himalayas – in a family of very humble means. His parents were second generation domiciled Irish in India, and he and his siblings the third generation. Both his mother and father had been married earlier. His grandparents on the father’s side, in their youth, were committed to the Church in Ireland:

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  123 he (the grandfather) was a monk and she (the grandmother) was a novice in a convent. They eloped to get married and he applied for recruitment in the army to go to India. They landed in India in February 1815. Jim Corbett’s mother also came from an Irish family that arrived in India in 1794 from Dublin. During the revolt of 1857, Jim’s father was a private soldier in the army in Dehradun, a widower with three children. His mother was married, had three children and her husband was fighting the native rebels, while she escaped from Agra Fort where mutineers had imprisoned some British families. Her husband died in Etawah fighting the rebels, and her brother was publicly hung by the rebels in Delhi. Jim’s parents Christopher William Corbett and Mary Jane Doyle met in Dehradun. When they married, each brought three children into the marriage. Christopher William did not wish to continue in the army and secured a post in the Post Office. In 1862, he was transferred to Naini Tal as the Postmaster of the post office there. Thus, they came to live in the region of Kumaon, in the hill station of Naini Tal which had only been discovered by the British in 1841 and was until then a holy lake and pilgrim spot of incredible beauty, known to the locals. In the 1860s, the British town was burgeoning and the Corbett couple made it their home that lasted until 1947. “They had neither the necessity nor the desire to return ‘Home’. (…) In all but blood, they were Indians – the new Indians, the white Indians” (Booth, 1986, 25). They had been there for some generations and had no need to go back and forth from India to England as did the high and mighty of the British people in India, the Kiplings, for example. James Edward Corbett, born in 1875, grew up a white boy in the close proximity, if not equality, of other British families in the region and in closer proximity of the Indians, particularly in the house that the family had on a large piece of land in the village of Kaladhungi, some 30 miles from the famous hill station of Nainital. In the summer, the entire British bureaucracy moved from the hot plains to the cool climes of Nainital; in the winter, they returned and certain institutions and officials that belonged to the region moved to the foothills where it was not as cold as in Nainital. Thus developed the town of Haldwani and other smaller towns in the foothills. The Corbett family had a house in Nainital and a considerable amount of land in Kaladhungi. Later, Jim Corbett bought a village close to Kaldhungi. The village had been abandoned and Jim Corbett invited tenants and designed agriculture, traditional and new, to reestablish the village, like a model village. He named it Chhoti Haldwani. Thus, he developed a village that technically belonged to the Corbett family and fostered close relations between them and the villagers. There was no boundary separating the village from the dense jungles and within minutes one could walk out of the house and land into the jungle. The jungle was the source of various things – from firewood to cattle fodder and meat of birds and mammals for human beings. The village was also a source of various things for the denizens of the jungle: agricultural crops for the birds, antelopes and boars, cattle and human beings for the predators like tigers and leopards. The jungle abounded in all of them and more: elephants, jackals,

124  The Tiger Grips the Narrator hyenas, bears, butterflies, snakes, scorpions, etc. The two spaces – the village and the jungle – lived in a constant live-wire connection with each other. While they supplied several things to each other, they were also threatened by each other. The human beings from the predators as well as the crop raiders, and the jungle denizens by each other and by the human beings. In this scheme of things, tigers were the only ones not scared of anyone in the jungle or the village and were not very interested in the village or the human beings – the crops meant nothing to him and the cattle were only of occasional interest. On the other hand, almost everybody in the jungle was scared of the tiger: most mammals for their own life and birds, monkeys and squirrels for the life of others. Human beings had to remain out of the tiger’s way and were scared, but did not have to fear too much as the tiger was not interested in them. In effect, the tigers were above everyone else in this combined world of the jungle and the village. For centuries, humans had largely accepted this equation, avoided direct conflict, suffered occasional losses and defended themselves and their cattle by doing what only humans do – built houses for themselves and the cattle to lock themselves in during the night. For the last one century or so, the situation had changed. The foreigners ruling the land were not like them, they were very scared of the tiger and neither knew nor wanted to learn the ways of coexistence. They shot and killed. Like the man who did not accept the python as the king of all, they challenged the natural equation and with the might of their guns had overpowered the mighty tiger – not in the tiger’s personality, but in his numbers. In Kaladhungi then, there were locals – the hill people, predominantly Hindus divided in castes, the Corbett family and a couple of other British families. The local people were aware of the British people as there were many of them in Nainital and, of course, they knew that the British people were the rulers. The people living near forests that Sanderson hunted in and those living in Corbett’s village were thousands of kilometers apart from each other, and at best, only vaguely aware of each other as their lives were mainly limited to their region. On the other hand, Sanderson and Corbett would have been aware of not only the two regions, but also of the big wide world and their position as British in it. At a macro level they could be clubbed together, but at the micro level, however, the reality was more nuanced. Corbett grew up in the company of the local villagers, became aware of the jungle right from the beginning and learned some things from his elder brothers and many things from other villagers. Over and above these human beings, the jungle and its denizens taught him a lot more. Corbett was not a highly educated man and barely had school education. All his learning was about the jungle of the Himalayas and the people who lived in the jungle and villages. In this corner of British India, says Jim Corbett “I opened my credit account – with my small savings – with the bank of Nature during that period and the Jungle Lore I absorbed during the interlude, and later, has been a never-ending source of pleasure to me” (Corbett, 2008, 31),2 says Jim

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  125 Corbett, his “small savings” being the knowledge he had already imbibed at the age of eight. By this time, his brothers had taught him to hold a gun. Boy Jim goes around with his brother’s dog to kill pheasants and peafowls on a regular basis for the family “larder”, but is not always successful. It is by roaming around in the forest that he “absorbs” knowledge. I have used the word ‘absorbed’, in preference to ‘learnt’, for jungle lore is not a science that can be learnt from textbooks; it can, however, be absorbed, a little at a time, and the absorption process can go on indefinitely, for the book of nature has no beginning, as it has no end. Open the book where you will, and at any period of your life, and if you have the desire to acquire knowledge you will find it of intense interest, and no matter how long or how intently you study the pages your interest will not flag, for in nature there is no finality. (Ibid, 31–32) To elaborate on the process of absorption of jungle knowledge, he gives a beautiful description of a tree in different seasons with different species of birds inhabiting it at different times and their different roles in nature/scheme of things. He describes how tracks in the jungle tell a story as one sees marks of a snake that went from right to left and was certainly poisonous and the next day a snake that went from left to right was not poisonous. The layers of knowledge will be added each day, and the capacity of absorption depends not on any fixed standard but on what you accumulate (32). To explain, he narrates two incidents: one a walk through a jungle in all its spring beauty with a companion, who when asked whether he enjoyed the walk, said “No. The road was very rough”. The second incident is aboard a ship when he hears another British man say “Oh, I know all about tigers. I spent a fortnight with a Forest Officer in the Central Provinces last year” (Ibid, 33). After narrating the two incidents, Corbett makes his point more clearly as to how and why one may or may not absorb any understanding of the jungle in spite of being there: (…) if you are not interested you will see nothing but the road you walk on, and if you have no desire to acquire knowledge and assume you can learn in a fortnight what cannot be learnt in a lifetime, you will remain ignorant to the end. (Ibid, 33) These two incidents work like metaphors in the rest of his book and appear again and again to distinguish different kinds of people claiming knowledge of the forest. It is noteworthy that both incidents involve British men. There is no similar incident involving any local person that he mentions, and Corbett’s writing is full of anecdotes. In the same connection, it is also noteworthy that he calls his knowledge “lore”. Apart from observation, his

126  The Tiger Grips the Narrator learning came from local knowledge or lore as it would be called. Coded in beliefs, stories, proverbs and practices of the local people was the knowledge of the jungle and its denizens that Corbett also imbibed, not by going to the people or employing them for services as trackers or coolies, but by living next to them, by growing up playing with local children, by roaming around with them every day and by participating in activities. This is simply a matter of fact that Jim Corbett’s life started and evolved with the people of the hills. He neither chose it nor did he distance himself and look down upon the people. His stance is not because he was a better person, but because his unconscious self was made in that very context. His conscious self was aware of himself as a white man, but he did not see himself as a “foreigner”. Different but not strange – that is the position from which he speaks. The opening page of My India opens with a disclaimer, that if the reader is looking for a history of India or the British Raj or the partition of India, then nothing of such subjects will be found in this book “For though I have spent a lifetime in the country, I lived too near the seat of events, and was too intimately associated with the actors, to get the perspective needed for the impartial recording of these matters” (Corbett, 1968, unnumbered page).3 His relationship with the animals of the Himalayan forests evolved bit by bit. As a boy of eight, he roamed the jungles with his brother’s dog Magog. While they roam to shoot a few birds, they have chance encounters with dangerous animals. One day, the dog lands too close to a sleeping tiger who chases the dog. The dog and Jim, who had a gun, ran for their life. The tiger could have easily caught any one of them, but after a bit of chase he simply stopped and stretched himself. They had ran only to realize that the tiger just shooed them away and Jim feels the tiger laughing “a tiger’s laugh, at the sight of a big dog and a small boy running for what they thought was dear life” (Corbett, 2008, 25–26). Another day, in trying to stalk a wild cock silently, he takes off his shoes and socks and steps barefoot on a python and jumps “A few days previously I had run as no boy had ever run, and now I jumped as no boy had ever jumped” (Ibid, 27). As the python hisses after him, he fires a shot while running and never knew whether it reached the python. On yet another day, Jim and the dog Magog were out on a hill road, they heard men on a higher road laughing and talking. Jim knew they were milkmen coming down after selling milk in Nainital. Suddenly they were shouting together – they had seen a leopard on their road, which Jim could not know at the moment. The shouting of the men made the leopard leap and he landed a little above Jim and the dog. The three of them now look at each other and ascertain by body language that they are no threat to each other and then the leopard goes his way (Ibid, 28–29). What Jim remembers from this moment is the leopard’s beauty and grace. Jungle Lore is full of such anecdotes, all of which show the process of absorption of knowledge and his ability to become a narrator of this jungle’s lore. Getting to know the animals in the manner he does reveals their natural

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  127 life, their place in nature, their abilities, their powers, their grace and the real threat they pose to human beings. To know that a tiger does not necessarily attack the moment he sees a human being and that human beings have ways to communicate that they mean no harm speaks of coexistence. Incidentally, running away from the tiger was not that signal that saved human beings, but standing still gave the signal that they did not mean to harm the tiger. Animals become “people” that have the powers to kill humans, but the use of those powers is not automatic. Jim Corbett also learns how communication happens across species. When a tiger is on the move, every being in the jungle gets alert and calls to warn its own kind, but is understood by others, who in turn give their own call. Jim Corbett could follow a tiger’s movements without seeing the animal. This became crucial in his hunting of man-eaters all alone. More than that, his growing up in Nainital and Kaladhungi also defined him as a narrator. Corbett’s books continue to remain bestsellers and the undeniable reason for that is his art of narration. As he narrates in English, it seems it does not contain the local lore that he imbibed, but the defining characteristic of his art of storytelling is rooted in Indian storytelling. That is what makes him see animals, particularly tiger, not only as people but also each as an individual unique in himself or herself. His portrayals of man-eaters are not of ferocious animals, but of brave and courageous beings – one has a sense of humor, the other is brave in the face of audacity, yet another is surviving courageously with a wounded body, while another, responds by stalking Corbett. This portraiture comes from the way people living close to the forest talked about the animals: they knew whether the tiger in their vicinity was aloof, not interested in their cattle or not. Not each animal was like the other of its species. There is contact and there is confrontation involved in a life close to each other, but also recognition of each other. The people in Corbett’s village depended on him to relieve them of a boar that insisted on destroying their crop or a leopard or a tiger that repeatedly stole cattle from their yard. Corbett’s stories of the man-eaters are about this regular way of life having been thrown off balance by tigers turning man-eaters. Until this transformation, contact and confrontation are in a natural balance, where both sides lose life on occasion, but normalcy is maintained. Tigers did not turn man-eaters “naturally”, but due to unnatural causes, mainly the process of hunting them by Britishers. Corbett started his first book with a detailed explanation of this, as we have noted above. Jim Corbett’s book My India is in one way, not connected to the subject of this research. Of the 12 chapters of his book, 11 are portraits of Indian individuals. There are men, women and kids he knew in his village as well as during the 20 years of employment as a railway supervisor at Mokameh ghat in Bihar. However, in another way, this book is relevant too as it reveals Corbett as a man.

128  The Tiger Grips the Narrator In my India, the India I know, there are four hundred million people, ninety percent of whom are simple, honest, brave, hard-working souls (…) It is of these people, who are admittedly poor, and who are often described as ‘India’s starving millions’, among whom I have lived and whom I love, that I shall endeavour to tell in the pages of this book, which I humbly dedicate to my friends, the poor of India. (Ibid, Dedication, unnumbered page) In our discussion, we will take up only the stories of people who belonged to Kaladhungi. The location of other stories – Mokameh ghat, where Corbett worked was a kaleidoscope of India but is beyond the scope of this work. In the Introduction to the book, Corbet “shows” the reader the region of Nainital – its physical and spiritual geography. From the highest peak near Nainital – the Cheena peak, he “shows” the region in words, and finally the group of villages called Kaladhungi, and “our” particular village called “Choti Haldwani” (Ibid, 3–6). The second chapter of this book is the story of a man called Kunwar Singh, who was a poacher and had assisted Corbett’s elder brother. With Kunwar Singh, Jim also learns a lot about the jungle and together they go through many events. The high point of this story is when Jim Corbett is working in Mokameh and receives a telegram saying Kunwar Singh is seriously ill. He comes right away, but it takes a week to reach. Kunwar Singh had turned an opium addict some years ago and was currently declared to be dying. When Corbett reached, he found him placed on the floor with a crowd of people performing rituals and women wailing. Corbett looked at the scene and then quietly took hold of the cow and moved it out and then all other people. He then lifted the man onto the bed, asked his son to get hot milk and tended to him. The man lived for four more years. The story of Mothi is a story representative of so many people of the region and is told with love, compassion and closeness. The kind of details Jim Corbett knows and narrates are not possible to have known without very close contact with the family. It is a relationship of many generations with human beings, their fields and their animals. At the close of this story, he says During the war years Maggie [Jim’s sister] spent the winter alone in our cottage at Kaladhungi, without transport, and fourteen miles from the nearest settlement. Her safety gave me no anxiety, for I knew she was safe among my friends, the poor of India. (Ibid, 55) The chapter The Law of the Jungle is about a couple who were married as children and Jim Corbett knew them since before that. As they grew up and actually lived together, they did many odd jobs and worked extremely hard to be able to survive. In the course of time, they came back to Kaladhungi and worked nearby as laborers. They had two children who were broadly looked after by an old woman during the day when the couple went away to

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  129 work. One day, on their return in the evening, they did not find their children. Nobody had seen them since the afternoon. The two ran helter-skelter from the fair being held nearby to the police in the town of Haldwani several miles away. Some 72 hours went by and then, both exhausted and devastated were in their house when a big group of people came toward their house and they saw they were carrying their equally exhausted, but alive children. What happened was that a herdsman saw them lying/sleeping in each other’s arms in a ditch in the jungle. This jungle had tigers, leopards, boars, pythons and many other dangerous animals. And yet the children, who had just lost their way while playing and were unable to return, had survived without a scratch. They would have died of cold and hunger, had the herdsman not found them. Jim Corbett says “(…) it would be unreasonable to assume that none of the animals or birds saw, heard or smelt the children” (Ibid, 76). Then he narrates having seen a tigress stalking a month-old human child, but when she actually came to him, he spread his arms to touch her. “For the duration of a few heart beats the month-old kid and the Queen of the Forest stood nose to nose, and then the Queen turned and walked off in the direction from which she had come” (Ibid, 76). The magic, the wonderment, the challenge to human rationality and the unexplainable-yet-real sentience of nonhuman animals is what Jim Corbett is narrating. The most important, however, is the conclusion, he draws from it: When Hitler’s war was nearing its end, in one week I read extracts from the speeches of three of the greatest men in the British Empire, condemning war atrocities and accusing the enemy of attempting to introduce the ‘law of the jungle’ into the dealings of warring man and man. Had the Creator made the same law for man as He made for the jungle folk, there would be no wars. (Ibid, 77) Jim Corbett’s immersion in the jungles of the Himalayas and its world of nonhuman and human animals is so intense that for him there is nothing better than this world. The next chapter called The Brothers is a story of two brothers who came across a tiger in the jungle. One of them managed to run, but the other was pinned down on the ground by the tiger. The brother who had escaped came back and pulled his brother from under the tiger. The brother’s stomach was opened up and together they decided to push everything back in, tie it up with a cloth and try to reach some help. They arrived at Corbett’s cottage, who was not at home. His sister used to provide all kinds of medical help to people, but this was beyond her means. She sent them to the doctor a few miles away. Corbett went there the next day and found that a young doctor with hardly any equipment had stitched up the man. Corbett saw to it that they were allowed to stay there although there was no real hospital to house patients. Moreover, he listened to their account and went back to the forest

130  The Tiger Grips the Narrator to investigate what happened and how come the tiger let the brother pull the victim from under himself. On reaching there and reading the signs, he ascertained that the tiger had just killed a stag and taken him in the bushes when the brothers disturbed him and it was to protect his kill that he attacked one of them. He then understood that because the tiger had no intention to kill the man, but was interested in returning to his kill, that he let the victim be pulled away. Nonetheless, Corbett says, he had never witnessed a bigger act of bravery and heroism than what one brother did for the other – right from pulling him from under the tiger to carrying him miles away for treatment. The brother survived, although it took him years to heal and he visited Corbett years later to thank him and to say that he was almost back to being normal. Corbett tried to have the brother’s bravery rewarded by the government but was not successful. The next chapter Sultana: India’s Robin Hood is the story of a dacoit. Corbett tells us that he does not know enough to comment on the Government’s policy of declaring certain tribes as criminal tribes, but then goes on to say that Sultana was made a dacoit by this very policy. His tribe had been imprisoned in a fort and he had escaped from there with some followers and committed dacoity. His acts became a problem for the state and a special police force was instituted to catch him. The officer in charge took Corbett along on two raids, none of which were successful. In one of them, Corbett was asked to shoot at a dacoit to kill him, but he refused. Finally, the police teams caught the man and he was executed. This story is cited here to note Corbett’s analysis of it – he clearly says what judgment he would have passed, were he to be the judge of Sultana: I could have wished that justice had not demanded that Sultana be exhibited in manacles and leg-irons, and exposed to ridicule from those who trembled at the mere mention of his name when he was at liberty. I could also have wished that he had been given a more lenient sentence, for no other reason than that he had been branded a criminal at birth, and had not had a fair chance; that when power was in his hands he had not oppressed the poor. (Ibid, 131) What more could a British man say about the British justice system in India and its injustice? Jungle Lore and My India explain why Jim Corbett carried out the mission of exterminating the man-eaters from the Himalayas in the manner he did and why he could simultaneously initiate the idea of tiger conservation. The phase of hunting man-eaters was a part of his life, not the life itself. His relationship with the tiger was a very long one and it did not only involve hunting the tiger but also involved a deep appreciation and respect for the tiger, an understanding of why the tiger was the king of the jungle and what

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  131 the tiger was as any other living being. Jim Corbet portrays the tiger not as a ferocious animal, but as a sentient being with emotions as strong as his physical strength, with actions as varied as his hunts and with beauty as extreme as his fearlessness. For Jim Corbett, other animals too are equally sentient, beautiful and important in the scheme of this. It is almost as if the entire jungle is a sentient space. The difference between the jungle and human society is not of sentience, the boundaries are not of a hierarchical nature and the human being is not the best being of all. Jim Corbett’s writing is imbued with the same quality as the folk narrative in general, and with the belief system of the Indian folk narrative in particular. The story of each man-eater is narrated separately with its specifics – not only of the hunt but of the man-eater. Each tiger is a unique “person” and each narrative of a successful hunt is still a tragic story of that “person’s” death. This awareness that a tiger needing to become a man-eater is a tragedy for the tiger itself is what raises Jim Corbett’s narrative to another level. By showing the vulnerability of the mighty tiger, Corbett became the historian of the Indian tiger. Jim Corbett – An Indian? What makes Jim Corbett important as a subject of study is his complex frame of mind which he conveys almost unself-consciously. While other writers are colonizers in a colony, he is a product of the colonial society. The two binaries of colonialism as a system created one singular entity – the colonial society. In this society, two (or more) cultures and two (or more) worldviews confront and contact each other. Postcolonial theory is characterized by its sensitivity to the creation of new identities, but it has highlighted the complexity of the society, culture and personality of the erstwhile colonized. A character like Jim Corbett does not fit into the scheme of postcolonial theory, because he is not Indian. And yet, it is not possible to understand Jim Corbett without seeing him as a product of the colonial society. His knowledge of the jungle and of the (Indian) people is not only first-hand but part of his becoming himself. His location – the Terai of the Himalayas – and none other caused him to become what he was. His ethnicity kept him accessible to Britishers, but he did not live his day-to-day life with them. He lived in British India, but in a corner where he was amid rural and poor hill people. He neither lived with elite Englishmen nor with the upper-class rich Indians. His relationship with forests was as organic as that of Indians around him. He also had something, which none of the other writers had – love for India and the people he knew. This is what distinguishes him, and above this is only one more factor – that the people of the hills loved him back to the extent that he became part of their folklore. “Carpet Sahib” is how he is remembered to date by people who do not read and make his books best sellers. For a folklorist, this is the ultimate proof of someone having meant a lot to the people and their lives. It is either extremely good or extremely bad people

132  The Tiger Grips the Narrator that are remembered in folklore; the regulars do not matter. The village he established on the land he bought with the money he earned by working for 20 years in Mokameh ghat was some 89 acres in the group of villages called Kaladhungi. He gave it the name Choti Haldwani and settled some 15 to 20 families there. When he decided to leave India in 1947, he gave the land and the village to those families. However, they would not hear of taking what was his. So, he willed it to them, left Kaladhungi without telling them for they would have tried to hold him back and kept paying the land tax until he was alive in Kenya. He never went back to Britain. The Jungle Lore and My India were written in Kenya and nostalgia is certainly an ingredient in their making, but love always transforms into nostalgia when it cannot be lived. It is also worth asking, why is there not a single negative comment that he makes about any Indian? Why does he not tell us that Indians leave their domestic animals to die when they are old? All questions cannot be answered, but they make us aware of the unexplainable. However, one question still needs to be answered: does Corbett’s personality and work atone for everyone else’s brutality, joy in killing and wiping out the denizens of India’s forests? No, it does not and cannot. He knew it too and that is why he issued this public appeal “A country’s fauna is a sacred trust, and I appeal to you not to betray your trust” (Corbett, 1936; Booth, 1986, 260). The adoration of the people for Corbett was probably not only because of what he did but also because of the way he was “different” from other British officers. What further differentiates him is his acceptance of local cultural codes and acceptance that at times superstitious beliefs challenge rational explanation. He had the humility to say, after a very long period of chasing, and finally killing, the dreaded Rudraprayag leopard that he, the leopard, had committed no crime in the laws of nature, but only in the laws of humans. Corbett, like the Indians, did not doubt the sentience of tigers and other animals and that is why he could word an appeal in this fashion. The use of the word “sacred” reveals Corbett’s deep connection with the people he called “my friends, the poor of India” (Corbett, (1952). 1968, Dedication) and speaks volumes for Corbett’s Indian identity. The adoration of the Indian people was for Corbett’s individual person and it did not extend to the British in general. Corbett seems to have been aware of the people’s feelings toward the British establishment, and that is why he decided to leave his beloved Nainital and Chhoti Haldwani in 1947 so as not to be unfortunately trapped in that atmosphere of anti-British sentiment. The account of his and his sister’s life in Kenya speaks of lifelong nostalgia for India and the inability to build another home in their advanced years. He was also not forgotten in India and his fame spread far beyond the Himalayas. Corbett’s appeal was actually honored for the first time by independent India when she decided to put the forest that Corbett grew up in at the center of the tiger conservation program and call it the Jim Corbett National Park and Tiger Reserve.

The Tiger Grips the Narrator  133 Notes 1 The citations here are from the 1959 edition of Man Eaters of Kumaon. 2 For citations here: OUP 1990 Reprint edition of Jim Corbett’s Jungle Lore. 3 For citations here: Fourth Impression 1968 of Jim Corbett’s My India.

Works Cited Booth, Martin. 1986. Carpet Sahib. A Life of Jim Corbett. New Del. Oxford University Press. Corbett, Jim. 1936. Indian Wild Life, vol. I, no. 2. Corbett, Jim. (1952). 1968. My India. 4th Edition. Madras: Oxford University Press. Corbett, Jim. 2008. Jungle Lore. 12th Edition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Corbett, Jim. 2023. Jim Corbett Omnibus. Man Eaters of Kumaon (1944). The Temple Tiger and More Man Eaters of Kumaon (1954). The Man- Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag (1948). Bhubaneshwar: B K Classics.

6 The Narrative Warfare

The colonial destruction of wildlife and forests is a subject that has received attention of several scholars. In the previous chapters, we have seen through a close textual analysis that the writings of the British on Indian wildlife constitute a set of narratives that cannot be clubbed under one category. They reflect diverse narrative styles and diverse perceptions of the s­ ubject – Indian wildlife. We have also seen that these narratives stand in relation, and often in opposition, to the narrative world of the Indian populace. The question is – where does this close textual analysis of five British authors who wrote on the wildlife of India take us? In order to answer this question, these texts need to be placed in a larger historical context. Facts and Figures Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha put the matter in historical perspective when they said the British as proponents of Shikar on a large scale, had very little interest in wildlife conservation. The consequences of record-breaking shikar sprees and habitat destruction were apparent by the time India gained independence. The tiger population estimated at 40000 at the turn of the century [ca 1900] had slumped to 3000. The cheetah was extinct in 1952. Other large animals, such as the rhino and the elephant, had disappeared from areas in which they were formerly quite numerous, while the Asiatic lion survived only in the Gir forest. (Gadgil and Guha, 2022, 205) Peter Jackson, who was the then correspondent for Reuters and stationed in Delhi recalls The [1969] IUCN [International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources] General Assembly was dominated by the decline of India’s tigers. Hunting in India was legal, and international trophy hunters were joining Indians in taking their toll. In 1970, DOI: 10.4324/9781032700489-7

The Narrative Warfare  135 Parliament was told that 480 tigers had been shot in the previous 4 years. Between 1965 and 1969 a total of 698 tanned and dressed tiger and leopard skins, and 18,179 kg of non-dressed skins, had been exported, mainly to the USA and Europe (a Press Trust of India, New Delhi, report dated 26 February 1970). Given an average skin weight of 5 kg, the non-dressed skins alone could have accounted for the death of 3,635 tigers and leopards. (…) The General Assembly called for a world-wide moratorium on tiger hunting. Tigers in other countries were already on the list of endangered tiger subspecies, and now the Bengal tiger Panthera t. tigris was added to the Red Data Book. (Tilson and Nyphus, 2010, 3) Henceforth, things started moving in a different direction. In 1971, the Wildlife Protection Act was promulgated by the Indian parliament and all forms of hunting were outlawed. “In 1972 The Indian Government conducted their first ever census operation on the tiger. Nearly 5000 men were involved in the operation and deep shock was expressed when the census estimated the population at only 1827 tigers” (Thapar, 1986, 15). The awareness about the sad state of India’s wildlife led to critical intellectual research on the causes of it. Several wild animals of India had reached the brink of extinction toward the end of the nineteenth century and were still pushed further until the middle of the twentieth century. Many studies, particularly since the 1990s, have analyzed the archival and other sources to bring forth the impact of colonialism on the environment, ecology and wildlife. The focus of most of the studies has been forests and forest policy under the colonial rule, as that of the widely influential work The Fissured Land by Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha, first published in 1992. The studies that have focused on animals are more about the British and the way colonial policies took away the rights of Indian people. What the studies have focused on are the ways the British created, sustained, executed and enjoyed an internationally witnessed massacre of Indian wildlife. In the following, we take note of the results of the research on one animal, namely the tiger. Scholars have shown how this destruction was part of the systematic colonial exploitation (Rangarajan, 1999, 2005). They have shown how it was deeply rooted in notions of masculinity to go out and hunt wild animals. “In broad terms, the history of hunting in India in the nineteenth century is a tale of wanton masculine violence and imperial bombast” (Crane and Fletcher, 2014, 373). Scholars have even tried to compute the incomputable and come up with astounding figures of the numbers of animals killed: 80,000 tigers, 150,000 leopards and 200,000 wolves were killed for sport between 1875 and 1924 (Rangarajan, 1999, 24–26) (Om Prakash, 2006–2007, 699). This means, in a smaller time frame that the rate of killing was 1600 tigers a year and almost 5 tigers a day. And this is just an estimate for 50 years – 1875– 1924. The plunder and massacre that the forests and wildlife of the Indian subcontinent experienced continue to be underestimated. The case of the

136  The Narrative Warfare tiger shows this “wanton violence” at its optimum. A closer look at the extent of violence emerges from the records of colonial hunters. The obsession with the tiger was so big that individual shooters kept and publicized their own records. Already in 1833, Captain A. Mundy wrote in his book Journal of the Tour of India (…) in a space of about two hours, and within sight of the camp, we found and slew three tigers, a piece of good fortune rarely to be met with in these modern times, when the spread of cultivation and zeal of the English sportsman have almost exterminated the breed of these animals. (Thapar, 1986, 12) And yet later in the Victorian era, more personal accounts are known: George Yule “(…) stopped counting after his tally had reached 400 tiger”; Gordon Cumming shot 73, William Rice 158, Colonel Nightingale 300, Montague Gerard 227, General Wardrop shot seven adult tigers in seven days (Thapar, 1986, 13). In the early twentieth century, the idea of conservation had already gained ground in England, and in India, Jim Corbett articulated the need for tiger conservation. Yet, as late as the third decade of the twentieth century, the situation on the ground had not changed. “In 1938/39 season, Lord Linlithgow, former Viceroy of India, shot 120 tigers in ten weeks in Chitawan valley of Nepal” (Ibid, 14). Scholars have also ascertained the role of the Indian kings in hunting as in helping the British to hunt and in hunting themselves. At one level, a tradition of shikar existed among the Indian royalty, and at another level, their closeness and dependence on the British rulers for the maintenance of their legitimacy made them support the colonizers and participate actively in the decimation of wildlife. “In the 1938/39 season, the Maharaja of Udaipur shot at least 1000 tigers, the Maharajkumar of Vijayanagaram over 325, the Maharaja of Surguja around 1,100, the Maharaja of Rewa 500, the Maharaja of Gauripur 500, and so on” (Thapar, 1986, 14). They continued to hunt after the British left in 1947. “The move to independence gave a fresh lease of life to Indian hunters, who now went after the tiger with a vengeance. (…) The tiger population declined rapidly” (Ibid, 14). From 40,000 at the turn of century to 4000 in the 1950s. At the same time, at the international level, “The price of skins soared” (Ibid, 15). The role of Indian princes is doubly deplorable as they were supposed to be protectors of the country and its resources. Of course, they had already abdicated that responsibility a long time ago, yet they could have used their position to save the wildlife. This possibility was utilized only in one case – that of the Nawab of Junagarh who saved the Indian lion from extinction and today, it is only in the forests of his erstwhile kingdom Junagarh that lions survive in the Gir forest. Historians have also researched the hunting practices of the common populace in pre-British India. Rashkow (2015) has written on the Gond

The Narrative Warfare  137 tribals in Central India who were also expert hunters. Vijaya Ramdas Mandala shows the traditions and practices of hunting among marginalized communities before the colonizers made hunting their preserve. According to her, hunting among the natives was mainly practiced by lowcaste people and tribal communities as subsistence-level hunting for the self and village consumers, also of low caste or tribal (Mandala, 2015, 13). Upper castes at best bought some birds for entertainment and recreation. Neel Amin (2020) makes a point about Banjaras as shikaris, particularly of wild boars, whose services were also used by farmers when troubled by the animals destroying their fields. The advent of British hunters disturbed these practices and converted the native shikaris into hunting assistants. All the studies on the hunting practices of the common Indians show that it was limited to certain groups, generally lower castes and tribes, was practiced for subsistence and neither as sport nor for pleasure and sale of hunted animals was limited to the village level. In brief, the scale of hunting was limited, and accordingly its impact on the existence of various species of animals. Although records of tiger shooting seem to be more available than those for other animals, the destruction was not limited to this animal alone. The British hunting in India had gone on for at least two centuries. Henry Shakespear, James Forsyth and George Sanderson discussed in previous chapters were also contributors to the overall destruction of wildlife. Their writings refer to other well-known publications of their time. All of them write about hunting several animals. The thumb rule, as reflected in their autobiographical accounts, was to hunt every animal in the vicinity. Although each hunter developed their favorite target, hunting the tiger was common to all of them.

Tigers of the Narratives Tiger is native to the Indian subcontinent and has a long history of representation in religions and cultures. The narrative traditions of Panćatantra and Jataka have also been the vehicle for the communication of these ideas. Tiger’s status in the Indian culture is comparable only to the elephant and both have symbolized spiritual, religious and political power at different times. Both animals have the status of sacred animals in Hinduism and Buddhism. They have been feared and revered by the populace. Hunting elephants was never a sport, although elephants were captured for religious purposes and labor. Tigers were not hunted by ordinary people but by kings and nobility. Even this form of hunting, the royal shikar, was not at a scale so as to threaten the existence of the tiger. Tiger was the staple of folk narratives. Indian people’s relationship with the tigers was not only of fear. “At no time were tigers the most lethal animal for Indians – snakes caused far more deaths” (Sramek, 2006, 668).

138  The Narrative Warfare Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book is one of the most renowned books across the world and has been since it was first published in 1894. In 1895, The Second Jungle Book, a sequel to the first one, was published. This success was located in the context of the success of the kind of books we have discussed in the previous chapters. There were indeed many more publications about the forests and wildlife of India. The point is that there was already an awareness and an interest among the reading public in England concerning the jungles and wild animals of India. Rudyard Kipling’s fictional work was not only about the Indian jungles, animals and peoples but it also incorporated several Indian stories and the art of storytelling – and that is what distinguished it from all other writers. As a story, it made the wilderness more relatable, as well as consumable. However, Rudyard Kipling’s representation of the tiger as in the figure of Shere Khan stands in sharp contrast to the Indian narrative tradition. In The Jungle Book, the tiger Shere Khan is portrayed rather unsympathetically. “In The Jungle Book no other animal is treated with such unbridled contempt by Kipling as the tiger Shere Khan”, and dies “a dog’s death” (Crane and Fletcher, 2014, 59). Why? The answer may be embedded in the relationship between the Indian tiger and the British men. Right from the beginning, the tiger was the most attractive animal owing to its natural powers, but also because of its symbolic value. “Both the East India Company and the British Raj encouraged destruction of tigers and other predators by offering financial rewards to hunters” (Sramek, 2006, 668). This became heightened when Tipu Sultan, the king who challenged the British militarily and became a major threat, had tiger as his symbol. Above all, he possessed the prototype of a mechanical tiger killing a white man which was found by the British when they plundered his palace after his death. This curious piece of a mechanical “artefact” is in the Victoria and Albert Museum today. Tipu was a stubborn foe. His name meant tiger and he is reputed to have said that it was better to live two days as tiger rather than two hundred years as a sheep. His hatred for the British was intense for he saw the end of his own dominance. (…). Tipu was obsessed by the tiger. His guns had tiger on them, his mortars were in the form of crouching tigers, his infantry wore stripes, his most famous artefact was a tiger killing an Englishman. Tipu’s bed chamber was guarded by four tigers (…). Finally, and above all he sat on a tiger throne. (Divyabhanusinh, 2005, 130) Victory over Tipu Sultan was a turning point for the British and for their relationship with the tiger. Thereafter, the tiger itself was the foe that had to be subjugated. Hunting the tiger was no more sport, but symbolic of the subjugation of India, particularly after the rebellion of 1857.

The Narrative Warfare  139 Animals in Colonial Trap By the nineteenth century, it was “tradition” that every other British officer went on tiger hunts and wounded and killed tigers. This killing was not one to one, but hundreds of men and animals were involved in snaring the tiger to a point where the British man sitting on a tree could just fire the shot. Even so, there were umpteen situations where the tiger escaped, most often wounded by the amateur shot. Vijaya Ramadas Mandala argues that the reason for killing tigers was not just sport, but that the tiger stood in colonialism’s ruthless expansion into the forest. “In nineteenth century India, tigers threatened the colonial construction of dams, reservoirs, engineering, and the railways, and (…) the colonial government had arranged hunters to kill the tigers in the vicinity” (Mandala, 2015, 94). Many scholars have discussed British hunts and policies, but few have written how people responded to these. Ezra Rashkow has written about the local resistance to British hunting. There were large numbers of cases where the local people or villagers intervened and tried to stop the hunting of various animals and birds. When a certain species of crocodiles (ghariyal) found in the river Ganges were about to be shot while sunning themselves on the bank, washermen washing clothes nearby chased the ghariyals into the water. When hunters tried to shoot peacocks, villagers did everything from pleading to attacking the hunters in order to save the peacocks (Rashkow, 2015, 272). Rashkow, basing his research on newspaper reports as well as archival documents, says “clashes between sportsmen and villagers were an increasingly frequent occurrence across the length and breadth of rural pre-independence India” (Rashkow, 2015, 273). Along with religious environmentalism, scholars have also identified “ecological nationalism” as a cause for people’s resistance. John Lockwood Kipling’s writing discussed earlier listed such resistance already in the late nineteenth century. A short detour here is noteworthy: a comparison of the image of the tiger with that of the lion. The shikar literature hardly mentions lion shooting because by the second half of the nineteenth century, “the animal had all but gone from India by then” (Divyabhanusinh, 2005, 123). Lions were almost completely eliminated by the early nineteenth century and those that survived were due to the effort of the local ruler of Junagarh. Yet, British demands to shoot lions continued well into the twentieth century. “The preferred object of shikar was the male lion. Its mane and larger size made it a good trophy either mounted whole or partly, or as a rug on the floor” (Divyabhanusinh, 2005, 121). When British Viceroys and Governors of Bombay went to shoot in the Gir in the Junagadh state, “resources of the state were mobilized to the maximum extent possible” (Ibid, 121). For months before the event lions were fed baits of buffalo calves so that they got used to coming for them. Such lions were then available for the dignitaries to shoot and get themselves photographed standing in front of the dead lion (Ibid, 121). Divyabhanusinh writes in his book The Story of Asia’s Lions that traditionally lion had been

140  The Narrative Warfare the symbol of state and power in India (Ibid, 133). This can be corroborated by the fact that in Panćatantra too, it is the lion that is seen as the “king” of the forest, not the tiger: The King of Beasts, full of energy, dwells in the woods, solitary without emblems of royalty; unlearned, untrained in polity, his superior strength gives him sovereignty; he rules, crowned simply by the words O King! Hail! O King! (A wise jackal’s description of the lion. Panćatantra.pdf 71/532) In British India, this status shifted and the tiger became the symbol of India. The lion was the symbol of British imperialism. Crane and Fletcher have gathered the visual records depicting the British lion overpowering the tiger to communicate Britain’s power over India. In reality, India had both lions and tigers and there had not been any conflict between the two, because the habitat of both is very different. The lions were restricted to certain regions, while tigers were found almost all over outside the regions of the lion. Therefore, both had also been seen as the most powerful animals in the forests, depending on which forest was the subject of discussion. The ascendance of the tiger as the symbol of India was finally complete in the twentieth century The year 1935 saw the founding of the Reserve Bank of India at Bombay. The authorities were in quest of a symbol and they looked to earlier examples (…). (…) the lion appeared to be too closely connected with British imperialism, and a decision was taken to replace the lion by the tiger for it was regarded the more characteristic of India. (Divyabhanusinh, 2005, 132–133) In addition to this fact, there may have been another reason, as evidenced in the chapter on Jim Corbett, that by 1935 the destruction of Indian tiger by the British was already a matter of public knowledge, and criticism of the colonial government in the matter had increased. Choosing the tiger as the symbol of an important institutions like the Reserve Bank of India might have been a form of guilt-ridden damage control, an effort to change the narrative. History Writing and Folk Narrative In the decade of the 1990s particularly, the environmental history of colonial India gained visibility through the works of historians, yet the concern

The Narrative Warfare  141 remained mainly with the state policies, practices and their impact on the people and their rights on forests. Gadgil and Guha’s pioneering work (2022) on the ecological history of India discussed precolonial and colonial forestry without the mention of the diverse and rich wildlife in those forests. Wild animals remained mainly numbers – how many were hunted in what forms of hunting? The nonhuman dwellers of the forests were not at the center of history writing. Talking about this subject at a larger scale, David Gary Shaw says Since its distant beginnings, thinking about history has never been about animals. It couldn’t have been. It is a problem we can only even grasp now. History has been about things we understand as having affected our choices and destiny or about human achievement, what we did and suffered. (Shaw, 2013, 1) In the Introduction, we discussed how modern European philosophy created the divide between humans and animals, characterizing the latter as not sentient. In a parallel track, modern history writing too has kept its focus on humans and studied them across time and space. It is well known that this movement in time and space has never been without animals. They have been there as food, as clothes, as wealth, as transportation, as labor force, as companions and in many other roles. It has also been recorded and referred to, and yet the animals have not been treated as live subjects of history, primarily because they were not considered sentient. The postcolonial theory too has been more concerned with human-centric history and culture. More recently, however, new trends are emerging as we have seen in Centring Animals in Latin American History (2013). In the same year, Shaw talks of contemporary trends in history writing … we are increasingly aware of theories that stress, not methodological or nominalistic individualism, but interdependence, interactivity, and system. Many such theories also deny the existence of definite boundaries between one animal, one thing, and another (…). Although scholars have been including animals as objects in history in some respects for a very long time, we are now discussing the revolutionary question: to what extent are animals historical actors? (….) Arguably, possessing agency brings to the fore the very purpose and point of history. For some, to deny agency seems almost to deny historical significance. Indeed, one reason for expanding history’s subjects to include the whole of human society was to demonstrate that agency could exist even where political power was small. Where there was a mind, there was an actor. (…) To some extent, agency and its acting self is a shibboleth of historical significance: if you can’t perform it, you can’t matter. (Shaw, 2013, 7–8)

142  The Narrative Warfare Nonhuman animals have been at the center of folk narratives, but folklore in general has also not been considered a source of historical information. The poetic and fictional nature of folklore makes it a difficult and doubtable resource for understanding history. Indeed, folklore cannot be treated the same way as archival documents or even what modern literary sources are for understanding history. Yet, its role in reflecting and formulating social discourse and cultural perceptions of the humans regarding the nonhuman animals is well evidenced. The portrayals of nonhuman animals appear fantastic and therefore, unconnected to reality. The problem of fantasy versus reality or fantastic versus realism in poetic construction was addressed by Lutz Röhrich in 1956. Röhrich saw fantasy as emerging from reality and proposed methods of interpretation that would unravel that connection. With reference to the central role of nonhuman animals in folklore, he said that its fantastic nature emerges from the fact that nonhuman animals were extremely important to the preindustrial societies (Naithani, 2014, 51–53). Life was unimaginable without the use of animals, and so were the poetic constructions. Human beings have made sense of the natural world through poetic construction. Wild is ours – narratively. A disconnect between folklore and modern history writing makes folklore redundant as a source of history and makes history deficient in understanding the role of nonhuman animals in the history of human beings. The Three Ps The close textual analysis undertaken in this book adds to the existing knowledge on the subject in many ways. Its chief concerns are the writers, their subject of writing – the wild nonhuman animals – and their texts. First, it explores the mindset of the British writers and as such makes them subjects that are conscious of their acts. Analyzed in this manner, we see their individual differences that interact with the “colonial context” in different ways. This makes the writers not stereotypical representatives of colonizers but highlights how, as writers, they see themselves and the reality of India surrounding them. Second, it reframes the subject of colonial treatment of wildlife in the colonies to focus on the nonhuman animals as sentient beings. In this reframing, it causes an axis jump in vision, that is, views the subject from an exact opposite angle – that of the nonhuman animals. Seen from this angle, new insights are gained. When all the texts discussed are seen together, their narrative structures reflect their relationship with storytelling. One of the key elements here is memory as none of the texts could have been written right after the events took place; all writers wrote from memory of what they experienced, observed or did. As such, the writers are consciously constructing and presenting an image of themselves and the subject of their writing. Seen together, the texts present the evidence of the massacre of Indian wildlife at the hands of British colonizers in their own words. The texts show that the true explanation of their acts does not lie in today’s concepts of masculinity

The Narrative Warfare  143 and the like. They are surely emphasizing their male identity, but the reasons for the acts they commit are based on their aspiration for pleasure, profit and propaganda. These three Ps, pleasure, profit and propaganda, encapsulate why they did what they did: they experienced a sense of pleasure in killing animals. They profited from it materially which they do not talk about, and they profited from it “immaterially” when they were seen as dependable brave men who could go out in the colony and kill. They wrote these accounts because they were interested in their own propaganda along the paradigms that were valued in their society. This close textual analysis also shows that the widespread act of hunting was based on the philosophical perception of the relationship between humans and nonhuman animals, between culture and nature. The British writers were carriers of the belief that Descartes and modern Europe lived on – that animals are not sentient, that one can do whatever one wants to do with them, that nature is for the humans to exploit and control and that man is the owner of this planet. Their philosophical worldview came in conflict with other philosophical worldviews that did not see nonhuman animals and nature in the same way. These “other philosophical worldviews” were those of their colonized subjects and were declared to be stupid, superstitious and irrational. Two of the five writers that we have discussed show a different attitude toward Indian perceptions of nonhumans and of nature: John Lockwood Kipling is able to identify it, understand it and see it in existence and yet compels himself to believe and strives to convince the readers that this view is dead and gone and the spread of the British worldview is a good thing for the Indian human and nonhuman animals. Jim Corbett grew up close to that “other” worldview and imbibed it completely. Yet, his biological identity as a Britisher also defined his relationship with nature and wildlife. He did hunt just for the pleasure of it and helped others to do the same. The engagement with the man-eaters finally changed his mind and he gave up shooting altogether and advocated the conservation of tiger. Fourth, the five authors discussed in this book present a range of British attitudes toward Indian wildlife: from the violent and cruel hunters to observers and lovers of Indian wildlife. This range dispels a generalization of the British writers on Indian wildlife, which lets them appear as individuals who made choices. It is a lazy argument to say that hunting was part of the life of nineteenth century British men in a way that they were not aware of the cruelty connected with their practices. These accounts written in their own words show that those who hunted voraciously could have made a different choice and that there were moments in their hunting careers when they could see the suffering they were causing. These two factors together show that those who decimated India’s wildlife were not “normal” people in their lifetime – they were cruel. Fifth, this close textual analysis also shows that all writers were aware of the environmental and ecological issues. There is no excuse that the ideas of environmental destruction and wildlife decimation were not known in their times. They were well known and critiques of the hunting activities in the colonies were in the British public

144  The Narrative Warfare domain. Apart from one of them – Jim Corbett – others did not care, that certain nonhuman animals had reached the point of extinction and might become extinct very soon. They were all aware of it and even knew about the disruption of the food chain and its possible consequences for the ecological balance in the wild. British Narratives and Theriocide The features of colonial British writing on Indian wildlife that emerge through the close textual analysis change the definition of the overall British decimation of India’s wildlife. These aspects allow us to define this decimation as a cold-blooded act of crime. Pierce Beirne (2014) has introduced the term “Theriocide” to define the killing of animals at a large scale and as equivalent to genocide. According to Beirne Like the killing of one human by another, theriocide may be socially acceptable or unacceptable, legal or illegal. It may be intentional or unintentional and may involve active maltreatment or passive neglect. Theriocide may occur one-on-one, in small groups or in large-scale social institutions. The numerous and sometimes intersecting sites of theriocide include intensive rearing regimes; hunting and fishing; trafficking; vivisection; militarism; pollution; and human-induced climate change. If the killing of animals is as harmful to them as genocide is to humans, then the proper naming of such deaths offers a remedy, however small, to the extensive privileging of human lives over those of other animals. (Beirne, 2014, 55) Another term, more popular, is “poaching”, which means “illegal killing of animals”. What the British hunters term “hunting” could be seen as poaching at individual levels and theriocide at an overall level, considering that what they were doing did not have the sanction of the Indian society. Other crimes connected to the issue, trafficking, for example, were also part of their activities. While poaching and trafficking are already considered crimes today, the accusation of murder depends on whether animals have been identified as “persons”. Once again, in Indian perception, all the animals, particularly the so-called big game, were not only persons but also “sacred” persons. That is why, in the case of free animals who lived closer to the human habitat, people protested, intervened and stopped the British from killing them. In such cases, the cultural code had to be accepted by the colonizers. By implication then, the killing of tigers and elephants was also murder that could not be prevented by the people as these animals lived and were killed in deep forests. The saving of some is also evidence of the fact that the British knew that they did not have the social sanction to treat the wild animals as “sport”. Therefore, the so-called “hunting” should be redefined.

The Narrative Warfare  145 British massacre of Indian wildlife was neither an instinctive nor a cultural matter. It was consciously cruel and criminal. These were crimes against nonhuman persons and deserve to be identified as such. Like other cold-blooded crimes, these too had a design and several consequences for those connected to the victims. The Cambridge dictionary defines cold-blooded murder as killing “in a way that seems especially cruel because it seems to show no emotion” (2023). The colonial hunters created a narrative whose effectiveness was destructive, and this was very successful as it managed to impress and lure many others into it. What they ripped apart was the warp and weft of the human–animal relationship. This warp and weft had been woven over millennia, was intangible, communicated and carried on through stories, maintained by rituals and beliefs and sustained by the tolerance and humility of the humans. The colonial hunters looked for any hole or weak part of this warp and weft and used it to force their entry. A socially marginalized group, some antisocial elements, poor villagers and others were used to track, attack and support in the capture and murder of animals they had themselves never harmed. This is not to say that the animals had not been hunted before the British and that there were not already people with the required knowledge for it but to say that that those people and their knowledge were manipulated to new purposes. The biggest supporters of the British hunters were the greedy-for-power petty Indian princes who made friends with the British against their own people, including the wild animals. In an ethical sense, they were worse than the British, because it was their duty to protect their jungles. The biggest difference before and after the arrival of the British was the scale of hunting, both in terms of numbers and the variety of animals killed. The second difference was the fact that humans all over the world have drawn resources from their habitat for building their society. They also evolve ways of sustaining their habitat, for example, taboos and stories, are often ways of tampering with the lust of humans. British hunters had no care for this habitat, no need to control themselves and no cultural narratives around the animals they were hunting. For them, it was, literally, game. What they ripped apart was not fabric, in spite of the analogy. It was the life and bodies of living beings. What the hunters unleashed was pure sufferance for thousands, perhaps millions of beings. Shakespear caused a multispecies fight when trying to kill a panther, the kind of which was certainly not normal and perhaps never before seen by the jungle: a panther, after being wounded with a gunshot, had to fight several armed humans, elephants, dogs and horses and kill an unarmed and uninvolved man just on survival instinct. That he did escape after being chased through an entire day speaks volumes about his bravery and ability. All the birds and other nonhuman animals who would have witnessed this fight must have seen his heroism. Forsyth shot the bees that had already fought and killed an English man, although before that they seem to have lived peacefully with humans who did steal their honey at times and they had to fight for it. Forsyth, however,

146  The Narrative Warfare dropped their entire honey-filled combs and them at night in the river with a gunshot. Crocodiles in the vicinity lost their life just because Forsyth could not appreciate their beauty, to say nothing of his ignorance regarding the role of crocodiles in the river ecology. The two does witnessing the murder of their mate at Forsyth’s hands lived to tell the tale. Sanderson’s killing of the elephant mother while protecting her albino kid is a heart-wrenching scene that he also chose to write and publish, knowing that he will be seen as brave by his countrymen. The other elephants who witnessed it would not have forgotten it either. In northeast India, where he led the hunting operation for one season, and caught elephants by the day, his tent and camp were often visited by elephants at night: I got up to look out, when I saw the gray form of an elephant of large size, but with poor tusks, standing silently in the foggy moonlight, not more than thirty yards distance. He looked like a spectre, waiving its ghostly arms, as he pointed his trunk in the direction of the tame elephants and the tents by turns. (…) During the whole of the time we were out we were constantly visited by these roaming tuskers. (Sanderson, 1907, 153–154) Another night an elephant came right to his tent but went away when he lit the lantern. Next night I was again awakened by an elephant – perhaps the same one – close at hand. I shouted at it as I lay in bed, but instead of making off I heard it step forward and seize my small bathing tent, which was twenty yards from mine, and a tearing and flapping sound followed as the brute tore it up. (Sanderson, 1907, 161) Intriguingly, the elephants did not seem to wake up the porters and other workers in his large group, sleeping a little away from his tent. Kipling wrote his animal ethnography as he was sensitized to the way Indians treat nonhuman animals and said not a word about all the killing going on around him by his countrymen. Kipling’s depiction of Hinduism and Hindus as a homogenous religion and group is deeply flawed. Contemporary historian Vinay Lal says There is but no question that Hinduism is the most apposite religion just as is the Indic world more broadly for the internet age. (…) Hinduism can match the internet’s playfulness: its proverbial ‘330 million’ gods and goddesses as a resounding testimony to the intrinsically polycentric, polyphonic, and polyvocal nature of the faith. (Lal, 2023, 539)

The Narrative Warfare  147 Although, highly generalized, Kipling’s depiction carries some key elements of Indian ecological thinking and its effect on social structures. Corbett is the first writer who actively tries to make the readers fall in love with the forests and their nonhuman dwellers, even with the man-eaters he undertook to shoot. He was also the first to accuse the British hunters of creating the man-eater tigers and prove it by the postmortem of maneaters he shot. Had he written in a more straightforward manner, the crimes of the British hunters would have been reported earlier. He did not really need to do it because it was already well known to the British in India as well as the Indian population. Yet, he is the evidence that the British hunters and others could have made different choices, could have related with Indian fauna at a more humane level and could have spent their lives without committing crimes. In the tragic story of colonial crimes against India’s wild fauna, Jim Corbett arrived too late and, in spite of his efforts, the hunting sprees went on. Folk Narrative and Anthropomorphism The axis jump in perception caused by this close textual analysis of a selected few British colonial writings also brings home another dimension that defines the way humans deal with nonhuman animals. This “dealing” may or may not be a relationship, depending on an intangible factor – the worldview that colors the vision of humans. This close textual analysis enables the realization that the decimation of Indian wild fauna was not caused simply because masculine characters who possessed guns – it was caused by a worldview in which the human was to possess, control and kill nonhuman animals and attempt to reorder the laws of nature. Guns and masculinity were tools to establish that worldview and to displace other worldviews. The boundary between animals and humans is certainly culturally, narratively and philosophically nuanced. Citing Mahesh Rangarajan, Shaw says Mahesh Rangarajan makes clear that this distinction is quite foreign to South Asian history, so if historians aren’t prepared to criticize the elision of animal and nature, human and culture, they might well be reinscribing it as well as exporting it to quite different contexts. (Shaw, 2013, 6) That is yet another side of globally influenced perspectives – perspectives rooted in colonialism continue to spread through newer channels. The Indian philosophical perceptions of humans and nonhumans were expressed in stories. The Panćatantra and the Jataka have been mentioned in this work, but they are themselves part of much larger and diverse narratives present on the Indian subcontinent. The equivalents of such poetic-philosophical dimensions were not a feature of the British society.

148  The Narrative Warfare In India, poets and storytellers have always sung and narrated the stories of animals. Talking of ancient evidence of such poetry, Meera Oomen says the best snapshots of everyday engagements with elephants and other wildlife emerge from the unlikely source, bardic poetry exemplified in the Sangam literary tradition of the Early Historical period (300 BCE to 300CE). Within these romantic anthologies (…) luxuriant forests and waterfalls formed the backdrop for the secret meeting of the lovers (…) routinely coopted frolicking elephant families into its imagery. (…) In this vein Māmoolanār compares a white tusked male elephant to a ‘brave man who embraces his wife’ and a cow elephant looking for its lost calf to ‘women who search for their children in panic and confusion, placing their hands on their heads!’ (Oomen, 2019, 274) This is rooted in a worldview where animals deserve equality because they too have feelings; in other words, they are seen as sentient. Meera Oomen summarizes “allusions to sentience and empathy abound, showing that the equation of human and animal experiences is not just a modern phenomenon, but one that was actively pursued by the Sangam poets two millennia ago” (Ibid). She expands the description to show that the portrayal of elephants was not limited to beautiful, benign beings, but encompassed other aspects of the human–elephant relationship – fear of elephants while going through the woods and conflict while protecting the crops (Oomen, 2019, 274–275). The demonstration of “hostility” toward the elephants coexists with their representation as “sentient” beings. The poets gave animals names and characteristics which made them memorable. They made them divine, superhero, supernatural, powerful, compassionate and malignant. And thus, animals too have had a presence in the human mind. Narrative makes humans too more than what they are in everyday reality, for example, the heroes, and we find that acceptable and reflective of human abilities. The same is done to animals – the poetic representations are akin to reality, or a certain perception of reality, but are also more than reality. Realism may reflect reality more accurately, but the fantastic nature of the folk narrative impacts reality. The stronger the grip of the narrative, the more its impact on reality. Belief narratives often exhibit that kind of grip. People remained under the grip of narratives when they believed in the power of animals, ritualized their acknowledgment of the role of animals in their lives and even let their real practices be governed by those beliefs. In modern times, folk poets’ techniques got defined by terms from other fields of study: for example, “‘Personification’ is the literary term that crosses the line for rhetorical effect, ‘anthropomorphism’ its social-science cousin, and they both mark the great divide between people and animal” (Shaw, 2013, 3). By using the term “personification” for the portrayal of animals as persons in folklore,

The Narrative Warfare  149 literature made it look like caricature; social science by defining the animals in folklore as “anthropomorphic”, that is like human beings, reduced their truth value. In the following chapter, we discuss these terms with reference to the current debates. Folklore’s portrayals were based not on a divide between humans and nonhumans, but on the commonality of life and similarity of sentience. “Similarity is seductive, potentially leading to error. It can cause us to neglect, and perhaps not even to see, the amazing diversity and otherness of animal life. It can also lead us to suspend critical faculties, ascribing sentience to animals when the evidence does not support it”, says Martha Nussbaum (2022, 14) in a manner that seems dismissive of similarity, but she goes on to specify the importance of “similarity”. (…) a sense of a common fate in this world, linking us with animals in a family relationship, is amply justified and epistemically valuable. If we combine the sense of similarity with wonder, which motivates curiosity and alerts us to difference and surprising otherness, we are less likely to be misled. (Ibid) Folklore, including “western” folklore, emerged from the observation of other living beings, their experiences and the expression of their feelings. As an epistemic method, it evidently “combine[s] the sense of similarity with wonder and alerts us to difference and surprising otherness”. In such observation, the love of a nonhuman mother for her offspring was not hierarchically placed lower than the love of a human mother for her child. Thus, the poet could weep for a doe whose lamb was taken away for sacrifice or talk of the feelings of hurt and insult experienced by a tiger or the laughable acts of a jackal. These portrayals did not proceed from the modern and rational conviction that human beings are at the apex of a pyramid of life on Earth and all others are below them – in intelligence, ability and certainly, in sentience. These portrayals were also matched by a kind of economic activity and trade practices that made demands on forests and animals at a much smaller scale. The colonial system changed that altogether. Writing about the elephants in Kerala, Meera Oomen recounts the increase in the demand for ivory after the king of Travancore was made to gift his ivory throne to Queen Victoria, who then displayed it publicly, leading to the increase in demand. Simultaneously, imperial shipbuilding required a huge increase in timber from the same forests where elephants lived, leading to the destruction of forests. The two went hand in hand as more elephants were caught and more trees were felled (Oomen, 2019, 275–282). The effort to not simply exterminate elephants was due to their importance as a labor force. The knowledgeable Sanderson maintained complete silence on these counts.

150  The Narrative Warfare In cultural anthropology, the impact of the human–animal studies can be seen in the rising numbers of scholarly works exploring the relationship from varied perspectives and challenging the notion that anthropology is the study of man alone. In his study of epidemics and narratives surrounding them, Charles Briggs has shown “how humans, viruses, and other nonhumans get entangled. One retains anthropocentric explanations of intimacy/violence relations by projecting epidemic origins onto relations between humans, including projected cultural and culinary proclivities” (Briggs, forthcoming). Radhika Govindrajan’s Animal Intimacies (2018) is directly relevant to our study. Govindrajan has conducted her field research in the region where Jim Corbett tracked man-eaters and documented the contemporary relationships of people with cows, goats, pigs, monkeys, bears, tigers and dogs. Sensitively written and narrated, Radhika Govindrajan brings alive the multispecies world of the Indian householder. It has traces of Kipling’s portrayals as well as of Jim Corbett’s: how people in the hills live with their domestic and wild animals. These traces become even more important when we consider that Radhika Govindarajan delves deeper into those relationships and finds them strong after more than a century of other writers. She sees the exact same ritual being performed (Govindrajan, 2018, 71) that Jim Corbett had interrupted to save his friend Kunwar Singh (Corbett, 1968, 17–28). People continue to be tolerant of monkeys (Govindrajan, 2018, 94). They are saddened when their dogs are taken away by leopards but also realize that this is how leopards’ and dogs’ lives are connected. Dogs never die of old age as they are easiest to catch when old, and leopards survive by eating them (Ibid, 175). Coexistence requires acceptance of the laws of nature. At the core of these “intimate” relationships are the beliefs of the people, beliefs that are based on stories, as are also tinted with contemporary politics. In their overall contours, however, the determining factor is the grip of narratives, of folk narratives. Briggs expresses it succinctly when he says narratives are not only representations – whether judged to be scientific, truthful, or conspiratorial – of these [human – non-human] connections but fundamental forces for bringing them into being and providing precarious tactics for navigating real and potential forms of liveliness and death. (Briggs, forthcoming) Govindrajan connects her observation with contemporary social and political issues but her study gives the impression that the narratives of the colonizers did not grip the minds of the rural folk in the Himalayas. If this be correct, it speaks volumes for the grip of Indian folk narratives, but it is undeniable that the ecological contexts of these “intimacies” is hugely different from that of precolonial India. Even in this changed, rather devastated

The Narrative Warfare  151 ecological context, Govindrajan does not experience and tell the readers that domestic animals are abandoned to die alone. Colonialism and Wild Nonhuman Animals Colonialism has been widely discussed for the economic, political and cultural subjugation and exploitation of a country by another. What has not been adequately discussed is how it transformed the lives of nonhuman animals of the colonized country. The significance of this subject spreads beyond South Asia and the impact of colonization on wild life may have been even more severe in some other locations. Writing on the subject with reference to Africa Jeff Schauer says the end of the nineteenth century saw control over wildlife pass to British imperial officials, and become dominated by a wildlife preservation lobby in London that advanced dramatic claims about the status of wildlife (…) management of which should be subject to universal rules across the Empire, with little regard for the African subjects drawn violently into Britain’s imperial orbit. Figures like Selous were central to this rapid transformation, as were British elites, including reformminded liberals. (Schauer, 2019, 18) This figure – Selous – participated in the slaughter of African elephants, but was also (…) selling specimens to British museums, which in turn invited an imperial public to imagine the riches of the empire, real and potential. (…). Although many of Selous’ specimens were shot by African employees or acquired through trade with African hunters, those facilitators did not control the tales that Selous and other hunters spun for receptive ­audiences – officials and publics – in London. (Schauer, 2019, 19) Selous and others like him gained reputation as “natural historians”, says Schauer, and later they led pioneer missions for their country. This nexus between individual hunters, the British state and the public in Britain, as we have also seen in the case of India, lays the responsibility for the destruction of in the colonies nonhuman animals not just on British individuals in the colonies, but on the nation they represented. The critical importance of this subject lies in the fact that the consequences of colonial treatment of wildlife across the world are still with us, and in certain cases, the nonhuman animals whose lives were transformed

152  The Narrative Warfare by colonialism are still fighting a battle for survival, in spite of political independence of erstwhile colonized countries. The most important lesson from the colonial experience is that the relationship between human and nonhuman animals is subject to the worldview held by humans. Referring to the change in the ways Indians and British viewed the forests, Gadgil and Guha say At the time the Europeans came to India (…) they were experiencing at home a far-reaching revolution in patterns of natural resource use. (…) With manufacture and commerce the dominant activities, markets became the focal point of organizing access to resources. The new belief-system that developed therefore transferred to the institution of the market the veneration reserved for spirits resident in trees (…). (Gadgil and Guha, 2022, 101) Forests were the habitat of the wild nonhuman animals and therefore what happened to forests is deeply connected to what happened to the wildlife. The modernist rationalist paradigm initiated by Descartes in the western world has obviously been disadvantageous to nonhuman animals. By the middle of the twentieth century, global lists of endangered animals started appearing and it became clear that more animals have gone extinct in the past three centuries than ever before in history. It is a curious fact that all official lists of the endangered species of wild and free nonhuman animals in India compare the present state with that of 1947 and tell how much of her wildlife has independent India lost. Two of the most common reasons identified are poaching by Indians and corruption by state officials in spite of an excellent Wildlife Protection Act promulgated in 1972. While the temporal comparison does show extreme reduction in numbers, it also gives an impression that the state of the wildlife in 1947 was fine, that is, when India gained independence from centuries of British colonial rule. There is no mention anywhere that the 1947 situation was itself precarious, and in some cases, worse than it is now. This is not to say that poaching and corruption are not major threats to Indian wildlife today but to show this destruction from a historical perspective. The threatening decline of the Indian wildlife started under the British rule as a result of hunting by British officials for their personal reasons and for those of the government. The situation in which the wildlife of the subcontinent was left in 1947 was already threatening for the survival of all the species that are on the list of endangered species today. Independent India can be held responsible for not having arrested that decline, at least not sufficiently, but the question is: should Britain be allowed to abdicate its responsibility simply because such lists have been globally compiled only since the late twentieth century and records are created on the “national” basis?

The Narrative Warfare  153 Yet another century later, global perceptions on this issue are changing and we will see in the next and final chapter how contemporary thinking reflects on the colonial legacy. Works Cited Beirne, Piers. 2014. Theriocide. Naming Animal Killing. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. www.crimejusticejournal.com IJCJ&SD 2014 Vol 3 No 2: 49–66. Booth, Martin. 1986. Carpet Sahib. A Life of Jim Corbett. New Del. Oxford University Press. Briggs, Charles. Forthcoming. When Violence Moves Across Species Cambridge Dictionary. 2023. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ in-cold-blood Corbett, Jim. (1952). 1968. My India. 4th Edition. Madras: Oxford University Press. Crane, Ralph and Fletcher, Lisa. 2014. Picturing the Indian Tiger: Imperial Iconography in the Nineteenth Century. Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 369–386. Divyabhanusinh. 2005. The Story of Asia’s Lions. Mumbai: Marg Publications. Gadgil, M. and Guha, R. 2022. This Fissured Land. An Ecological History of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Govindrajan, Radhika. 2018. Animal Intimacies. Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Le Guin, Ursula K. 2012. The Unreal and the Real. New Yok: Saga Press. Mandala, Vijaya Ramdas. 2015. Lost Worlds: Natural world and Indigenous hunting practices in colonial India (circa 1770s to 1860s). NMML Occasional Paper. Perspectives in Indian Development. New Series 60. New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Naithani, Sadhana. 2014. Folklore Theory in Postwar Germany. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi Neel Amin. 2020. Hunting for Meaning: British Hunters, Banjara Hunters, and Overcoming Threats to Colonial Order in Nineteenth-Century India. Environmental History. 25, 515–535. Oomen, Meera Anna. 2019. The Elephant in the Room: Histories of Place, Memory and Conflict with Wildlife Along a Southern Indian Forest Fringe. Environment and History. 25, 269–300. https://doi.org/10.3197/096734018X15217309861559 Peter, Jackson. 2010. Fifty Years in the Tiger World: An Introduction. In: Tilson, Ronald and Nyphus, Philip J. (Ed.) Tigers of the World. The Science, Politics and Conservation of Panthera tigris. pp. 1–15. Amsterdam: Academic Press Elsevier Inc. Prakash, Om. 2006–2007. Wildlife Destruction: A legacy of the Colonial State in India. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress Vol. 67, pp. 692–702. Rangarajan, Mahesh. 1999. Oxford Anthology of Indian Wildlife. Vol. 2. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Rashkow, Ezra. 2015. Resistance to Hunting in Pre-independence India: Religious Environmentalism, Ecological Nationalism or Cultural Conservation. Modern Asian Studies Vol. 3.

154  The Narrative Warfare Sanderson, G. P. (1878). 1907. Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India. Their Haunts and habits From Personal Observation; With An Account of the Mode Of Capturing And Taming Elephants. Sixth Edition With Illustrations Reproduced From The Original Drawings. Edinburgh: John Grant Schauer, Jeff. 2019. Wildlife Between Empire and Nation in Twentieth-Century Africa. Nevada: Palgrave Macmillan Shaw, David Gary. 2013. A Way With Animals. History and Theory Vol. 52, No. 54, (December 2013), pp. 1–12. Sramek, Joseph. 2006. “Face Him Like A Briton”: Tiger Hunting, Imperialism and British Masculinity in Colonial India, 1800–1875. Victorian Studies Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 659–680. Thapar, Valmik. 1986. Tiger. Portrait of a Predator. Photographs by Günter Ziesler and Fateh Singh Rathore. Foreword by Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India. New York, Oxford; Facts on File Publications.

7 To New Narratives

How does the realization that at the core of the colonial decimation of Indian wildlife are not guns and masculinity, but a whole worldview, impact the larger discussion on the relationship of culture and nature, recognition of animal sentience and acceptance of the importance of all forms of life? The answer to this question relates to today’s situation across the world when wild nonhuman animals face extreme threats to their survival. “Because the reach of human cruelty has expanded, so too has the involvement of virtually all people in it” says American philosopher Martha Nussbaum in her influential work Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility (Nussbaum, 2022, xii). The main aim of this book is to see how life of wild nonhuman animals was impacted during the British colonial rule of the Indian subcontinent. We have seen that the nonhuman animals went through extreme suffering in the process of British colonization of India. By any standard of comparison, this was way more than the suffering they would have experienced in earlier times. It is also apparent that this suffering was caused not only by the capability of humans to use newer weapons like guns but also by philosophical perceptions. The wild animals were caught between different perceptions held by the human animals. The arrival of the British in their habitat meant the arrival of a new force – the kind they had not experienced before. This force was not part of the laws of nature whereby all beings are food for someone else and can therefore be eaten by another. This force did not recognize the laws of nature, was predicated upon proving itself to be above nature and was oriented toward capture and possession of all that came in its view. This human-animal was equally interested in tearing down their habitat. In the way, it destroyed their dwelling place – the forest – many fellow beings lost lives without even being fired at. This force did not play a game with them in which they were less powerful; this force considered them the game. They saw this force tear open the jungles, the bellies of their fellow beings, break asunder the herds, trap the loners and blow up the harmless. The force of this human-animal was unprecedented in their habitat; they knew the human that lived all around their forests and within it, DOI: 10.4324/9781032700489-8

156  To New Narratives who they were neither very interested in nor afraid of. The humans were actually slightly scared of them and largely avoided them. Both sides played a game of steering clear of each other while using the forest even though they could attack and kill each other, which sometimes they did. The new force, the new human-animals, worked against those laws, thereby making the survival of the nonhuman animals difficult. Even if they had escaped the gun, there wasn’t enough forest to live unseen in, enough food to find and enough water to drink. The danger of the killer human-being lurked everywhere at all times. The danger, hunger and thirst pushed the nonhuman animals in directions they had not gone – toward the human habitat. They went in anger and in search of food; they took the risk of meeting with more guns, and they did meet them with fatal consequences for themselves, generally. Life and death changed forever. This is something we as human beings are capable of estimating and understanding. In this changed situation of the nonhuman animals, for it can hardly be called habitat, some lost the struggle for survival and others have survived somehow. Even when the presence of the hunters reduced, neither the forests nor the humans living around and in the forest returned to the earlier state. In this new equation, minor conflicts are part of everyday life and major conflicts happen frequently. This is, however, another story. The ray of hope is that maybe humans will realize the folly of their ways and change their perception of nonhuman animals, for nothing less will ever change the life of the nonhuman animals for the better. The human animal is a slave of its own mind; therefore, a change of that mind alone can change the situation for all. In the beginning of this book, we had cited the agreement of the scientific community on something that the folk narrative across the world assumed – that animals are sentient beings. The “modern” European view managed to impose itself along with other impositions executed by weapons, politics and economics. More recently, in the late twentieth century, the modernist paradigm’s binary of culture and nature as two distinct and different spheres has been critically denied most effectively by contemporary anthropologist-­ philosopher Philippe Descola. Referring to the change in perceptions in the modern time, he says “Gentle Mother Nature was forgotten, and Nature the cruel stepmother had disappeared; all that remained was a ventriloquist’s dummy, of which man could make himself, as it were, the lord and master” (Descola, 2013, 61). A “Translator’s note” explains that Descola’s statement is to be understood with reference to Descartes, “thereby make ourselves, as it were, the lord and masters of nature” (Ibid, 61). Descola locates the nature–culture dualism in anthropology in the definition of culture formulated by E. B. Taylor: It’s [culture’s] canonic formulation by Edward B. Taylor in 1871, is traditionally regarded as, so to speak, the birth certificate of the field of modern anthropology: “culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief,

To New Narratives  157 art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. (Descola, 2013, 72) This singularity in the conception of culture was certainly not unchallenged within Europe. Descola refers to Germany’s response to Enlightenment as seen in the works of J. W. Herder and Alexander von Humboldt. Herder’s concept of Volksgeist and Humboldt’s Nationalcharakter acknowledged that the concept of culture existed in plural and was defined and differentiated by its location in different human communities (Ibid, 74). These pluralities, however, did not diminish the dualism of nature and culture; whatever be the difference between cultures, yet each culture emerged in its distance from nature. Thus, cultural differences could be accepted, but the difference between culture and nature was further stratified: “it was Heinrich Rickert, particularly in his Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft (1899; English translation 1962), who produced the most complete classification of the sciences, the one that distinguished between their respective methods and objects with the greatest logical rigor” (Descola, 2013, 76). Anthropology as a western science is therefore not only conscious of the dualism of natureculture, but also sees all other cultures with the same prism. Nature is universal and different cultures are only different ways of dealing with the dualism: “this ethnocentrism is very difficult to eradicate. (…) amalgamating them [other cultures/nonmoderns] into the categories to which we belong is also the surest way of wiping out their distinctive contribution to the intelligibility of the human condition” (Ibid, 81). Philippe Descola (2013) challenged the modernist divide between culture and nature and compared the four ontologies – animism, totemism, analogism and naturalism – to show how the relationship between nature and culture had been differently conceived by different cultures and how the dualism of nature and culture is not a universal paradigm. This difference implies different epistemologies leading to different results visible in (non-European) social and cultural practices. Contemporary perspectives on nonhuman animals proceed by challenging the binary of humans and animals. Critical human–animal studies have sought to analyze the basis and history of the binary as also to change. British philosopher of Indian origin Richard Sorabji’s seminal work Animal Mind and Human Morals. The Origin of the Western Debate (1995) is an extensive analysis of the question of humans and animals in the western philosophy since antiquity. Referring to Aristotle’s denial of “reason” to animals, Sorabji shows that this view was also contested and “voices were raised on the other side, to say that animals do have reason, especially among some of Aristotle’s immediate successors” (Sorabji, 1995, 2). Yet, the denial of reason to animals continued as a major idea: (…) we, too, have lived through a period when endless ingenuity was spent on maintaining the behaviourist view that all animal behaviour can be accounted for in terms of stimulus and response. Now, at last, an

158  To New Narratives open-minded effort is being made to discover what cognitive state we should, and what we shouldn’t, ascribe to various species of animals. (Ibid) This change in perception to be effective requires consequent changes in other areas of human society. American philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s influential work Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility (2022) attempts to do just that in the field of law. She opens her first chapter with “Animals suffer injustice at our hands. The project of this book is to make good on that statement and to recommend a powerful theoretical strategy to diagnose injustice and suggest appropriate remedies (…)” (Nussbaum, 2022, 1). Building her argument, she quashes all models of perception that place humans on top of all other animals “Animal abilities are remarkable and complex, and on many parameters many animals do better than humans. In the end, the whole idea of a single ranking of life is of little use” (13). At the core of the problems is human’s sense of entitlement to this planet, and denial of the same to animals. “Typically, no argument is offered for that denial. I believe that any reason supporting our own claim to use the planet to survive and flourish is a reason for animals to have the same right” (Ibid, 2). The acceptance of the equal claim of animals by humans has become urgent as increasing numbers of species face extinction due to human activity. Here comes the question of the species and each member of that species. Differentiating between the two in the context of extinction, Nussbaum says Species as such do not suffer loss. However, extinction never takes place without massive suffering of individual creatures: the hunger of a polar bear starving on an ice floe (…) the sadness of an elephant, deprived of care and community (…). (13) Without human cognizance of this suffering, a change in perception and practices is not achievable. One of the concerns of the textual analysis in The Inhuman Empire is to see individual suffering and not just the loss of animals in terms of numbers in colonial contexts. One of the ways to intervene in the situation is by law as Nussbaum proposes (Nussbaum, 2022, xvi). Until now, no law accords the status of “being” to animals, but efforts to change that are well underway. Steven Wise’s book Rattling the Cage (2000) is an account of his fight as a lawyer to get the status of persons for Chimpanzees and is one of the examples of efforts to bring change through changing the laws. A comprehensive discussion of contemporary critical attitudes toward nature–culture dualism is beyond the scope of this work; therefore, the remarks will be limited to poststructuralist and contemporary scholarship that sees the problem in the dualism of nature and culture as of recent western/European origin. Seen from a postcolonial perspective, it enables us to place the destruction of wildlife and forests in the European colonies in a theoretical-historical perspective. In the process of colonization, “other ways

To New Narratives  159 of knowing” were discredited at many levels. With reference to narrative and poetic expressions, the division (written) literature and (oral) folklore created a comparable divide wherein literacy and orality constituted hierarchical spheres, in which orality was placed lower. Colonized worlds were also oral cultures wherein narrative and poetic expressions were seen as storehouses of wisdom. Thus, the role of animals in stories could determine their status in reality/culture, as we have seen in earlier chapters. The knowledge about animals derived from empirical observation and often narratively communicated was termed “anthropomorphism” which is then “grounds for dismissal as far as serious knowledge is concerned” (Park, 2013, 4). Berkeley philosopher Donald Davidson challenged the understanding of epistemology as based on “first person knowledge” and says “the acquisition of knowledge is not based on a progression from the subjective to the objective; it emerges holistically, and is interpersonal from the start” (Davidson, 1991, 191–202). In other words, we acquire knowledge of ourselves, of others and the world we share in a holistic and interpersonal manner and not in stages. Proceeding from this position, we can say that we share this world not only with other humans but also other nonhuman animals and acquire knowledge not only through a shared language but also through many other forms of communication. Intelligence in humans is judged by the sense they are able to make of other people’s feelings. Sowon Park cites a study by Chris and Uta Frith of autistic children who are “unable to attribute mental states or feelings to other people and therefore cannot predict the behavior of others” (Park, 2013, 8). The process of functioning is intimately connected with the ability to understand others and then predict how they are going to behave toward self. This ability to estimate and predict the mind and feelings of others in normal human beings is enhanced or reduced based on their prior experience and knowledge of other beings, be they human or nonhuman. Unpredictability is possible and errors in prediction are possible, but that does not rule out predictability. Therefore, we can “understand” nonhuman animals even without a shared language. The interdisciplinary approaches based on science, anthropology and philosophy are further changing the ways we make sense of the world and of other beings: “now-a-days intense philosophical reflection is being devoted to animal cognition, the ethical treatment of animals, and the fact that humans too are animals” (Adamson, 2018, 3). The current orientation is also toward understanding how modern philosophical perceptions have impacted the world. French philosopher Baptiste Morizote calls himself a “field-philosopher” (Morizote, statement made during a talk he delivered at UC Berkeley on March 3, 2023) as he spends time with nonhuman animals to develop his philosophical theories. Referring to the modernist paradigm with its emphasis on the superiority of the human being and the inability to know other beings, he speaks of the nineteenth century “metaphysics of production” wherein the Europeans saw the humans as the producers of their own sustenance – of food. This was completely false, as the food is produced by nature. That the farmer works in the field does not mean that

160  To New Narratives the farmer produces the grain – that can be done only by nature and nature can do it even without the human’s help. They also saw themselves as the producer of meat by killing other animals, when it cannot actually produce those bodies. Through the metaphysics of production, humans made themselves the owners of everyone else on this Earth and thought they could control the laws of nature. This project destroyed ecologies and environments. Morizote raises the question “who makes this world habitable?” and shows how the Earth was made habitable by many other beings in the process of evolution. The humans just came and made it “comfortable” for themselves. Along with many other scholars, Morizote is thinking of reversing this process and propagates a “metaphysics of alliance” with other dwellers of this Earth (Ibid). In other words, proposes co-existence based on alliance with nonhuman animals in building better ecologies. An example of such alliance: Joe Wheaton studies riverscapes and advocates “Low-tech process-based restoration of riverscapes”. He has shown how with the reintroduction of beavers in their former habitats close to a river, the entire riverscape changes with their activity for the benefit of other fauna, as well as flora and the humans, the details of which are on his website (Wheaton, 2023; www.joewheaton.org). What is often not mentioned in this discourse is that the “west” or Europe imposed its modernist paradigms on all other ontologies through colonialism. Non-western cultures were forced, violently, to give up their perceptions and were convinced through the powers of ‘scientific education’ to believe in the western ontology. This process has created not only the destruction of environments but also of ecologies and produced philosophical confusion so mind boggling that the bearers of other ontologies belong neither to their own nor to the western paradigm. So, while the west, in a linear progression, might suggest “new” processes of change and succeed in convincing their population to accept it, the rest of the world will be expected to follow suit. It would hardly be visible that some of these “new” ideas used to be the “traditional” ways of life for several people. The story of the wild nonhuman animals of India, for example, is caught in this modernist European perception forcing itself upon the “Indian” perception, destroying much and then leaving the people confused with the dualism of modernity and tradition to deal with the destruction and arrest it. The spree of tiger hunt right after the independence of India is symptomatic of that confused, even insane, state of mind. Tiger hunt was so deeply associated with power, prestige and control that Britons held over India for centuries, that freedom from their rule created the mad rush to acquire all that. A shift in the western modernist paradigm regarding the ability of human animals to understand nonhuman animals and openness to contemporary developments in neurosciences, philosophy and cultural anthropology lets us connect with the folk narrative at a new plane. It is then also possible to narrate how life changed for the wild nonhuman animals of the Indian forests

To New Narratives  161 during the British colonial intervention, as did Sadhana Naithani in her novella Elephantine (2016) by narrating the fictional story of a female elephant based on documented facts. While “anthropomorphism” may be dominated by poetic imagination, its contribution in creating empathetic knowledge about nonhuman animals based on empirical observation cannot be discounted. This knowledge also comes from a time before the distance and alienation between humans and nonhumans was created by modernity and humans lived in closer proximity to nonhuman beings. Yet the idea that animals are not moral agents is one of the last redoubts of nongradualism. Even a fervent proponent of animals’ cognitive sophistication and moral worth may hesitate to claim that animals can themselves be morally responsible for what they do. (Adamson, 2018, 8) (Also see: Robert Garner: Contemporary Debates in Animal Ethics. 2018) In September 2021, in an article titled Brutes. Mediations on the myth of the voiceless published in the Orion magazine, novelist Amitav Ghosh has reflected on the way knowledge about nature and nonhuman beings has been created over time. While discussing anthropomorphism, he says Eileen Crist has so persuasively shown in her book Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind, to rigorously avoid anthropomorphism is only to risk falling into the related fallacy of mechanomorphism—the assumption that animals are machinelike creatures that cannot, in principle, be endowed with minds or interpretive faculties. (Ghosh, 2021) “To rigorously avoid anthropomorphism” is an important expression here: one may accept the limitations of anthropomorphism, but the complete denial of it being a source of knowledge has caused humans to destroy other forms of life with the belief that they have the right to do so. The same argument extends to the way knowledge held by non-white and non-European people has been treated during and after colonial history. Referring to what is now accepted, that defining the colonized people as “brutes” was wrong on the part of colonizers, Ghosh asks What, then, if they [colonizers] were wrong also about the inertness and brute materiality of what they called “Nature”? What if it was the people who were regarded by elite Westerners as brutes and savages – the people who could see signs of vitality, life and meaning in beings of many other kinds – who were right all along? What if the idea that Earth teems with other beings who act, communicate, tell stories, and make meaning is taken seriously?

162  To New Narratives He goes on to tell that today scientists are in agreement that trees communicate with each other, but The Indian scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose demonstrated long ago that plants can feel pain and fear, and even make audible responses to certain kinds of stimuli. His work was hugely celebrated for a while, but then the agents of official modernity struck back and silenced him as a “charlatan”. Ghosh is referring to the power structures of knowledge created in the process of modernity and colonialism: modernity versus primitivism; science versus tradition and even European versus non-European scientists. The perceived superiority of European knowledge was globally imposed through colonialism. The continued imposition of these paradigms, called coloniality, is a reality that is often not taken cognizance of. An essential part of this coloniality is the way the relationship between human and nonhuman animals is constructed. Ghosh asks insightfully “Could it not be said of humans too that the presence of certain other species, in specific moments of encounter, has enabled Homo sapiens to transcend their limitations?” Here, Ghosh is asking a rhetorical question, but its answer can also be seen in the work that Joe Wheaton has done and the “metaphysics of alliance” Mortinez is proposing for a more harmonious and sustainable ecology of the future. Can the folk narrative be situated in the contemporary debates, and if it can be, then where? Folk narrative has suffered the most virulent attack of modernity in being displaced as a source of knowledge. Folk narrative is where all the criticism of “anthropomorphism” has been most demonstrative. That the hero of the folk narrative was always helped by members of many other species of animals and plants in the attainment of his/her quest; that the helpless human figures were rescued and liberated by nonhuman animals; that human figures gained knowledge to secret sources of water and wealth from nonhuman animals - these characteristic features of folk narrative were seen by modernity as just cute and laughable fantasies. Postmodern epistemologies are questioning the judgment of modernity and seeking to reconnect with nonhuman beings and nature in ways that could “repair” the damaged planet. The impact of the folk narrative on the human mind, however, has not been calculated by any scientific theory or technology, yet that impact is visible in all societies and in varied contexts. Jack Zipes (2006) considers the ideas of folk narrative to be memes, in the sense that Richard Dawkins (1976) coined the term, that continue to reproduce, renew and regenerate themselves. The resistance that the might of the British colonizers encountered in their decimation of the wildlife in India came from people who believed in their narratives, and in certain cases, the might of the gunpowder

To New Narratives  163 had to give into the power of the narratives. People’s belief in narratives did not lose to guns but to the might of another narrative: that science knows better because it can prove what it knows. Folk narrative’s evidence, if at all there was any, was located so far back in time, that it could not be instantly accessed. Was there a time when all beings on Earth could speak with each other? When exactly was it? Is the memory of that time coded in narratives? Folk narrative could not answer these questions. It could also not say why it believed that the true heroes are those in whom nonhuman animals also believe, but today science is answering some of those questions by proving the unique place and function of all beings on Earth, by proving that trees communicate with each other and by proving that nonhuman animals are sentient. On the other hand, it is now acceptable that we make sense of our world narratively. Who knows whether a mutually understandable “language” of communication between humans and other species might be decoded? The current ideational movement in cultural anthropology is in a direction that is critical of the modernist paradigms. There is hope for humans to change their thoughts and create a better world, but the tragedy of modernity with reference to the suffering and decimation of several nonhuman beings is not erasable by mere enthusiastic response to this shift of paradigm. Some of the nonhuman animals are still fighting to survive and arresting the process of their extinction requires immediate action. Hunting continues to be legal in many countries. Poaching and trade in animal parts abound. Simultaneously, rivers, trees and animals are also getting legal status and rights. It is time to make a declaration that man is not the king of the world and continue telling new narratives based on scientific knowledge about the wonders of life on Earth. Works Cited Adamson, Peter. 2018. Introduction. Adamson, Peter and G. Fay Edwards (ed) Animals: A History. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1093/ oso/9780199375967.003.0001 Davidson, Donald. 1991. Epistemology Externalized. Dialectica Vol. 45, No. 2/3, pp. 101–202. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42970627 Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press. Derrida, Jacquez. The animal that therefore I am. New York: Fordham University Press. Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press. Garner, Robert. 2018. Contemporary Debates in Animal Ethics. Adamson, Peter and G. Fay Edwards (ed) Animals: A History. Oxford University Press. pp. 319–344. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199375967.003.0001 Ghosh, Amitav. 2021. Brutes. Mediations on the myth of the voiceless. Orion Magazine September 2021. (https://orionmagazine.org/article/brutes).

164  To New Narratives Morizote, Baptiste. 2023. “Who makes the Earth Habitable? From a Metaphysics of Production to metaphysics of Alliance”. Talk delivered at Centre of Excellence in French and Francophone Studies. University of California, Berkeley. March 3, 2023. Park, Sowon S. 2013. “Who are these people?”: Anthropomorphism, Dehumanization and the Question of the Other. Arcadia 48(1): 1–14. https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/2zc805t4 Zipes, Jack. 2006. Why Fairy Tales Stick? The evolution and relevance of a genre. New York: Routledge.

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Primary Literature Corbett, Jim. 2023. Jim Corbett Omnibus. Man Eaters of Kumaon. The Temple Tigers and More Man Eaters of Kumaon. The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag Bhubaneshwar: B K Classics. Corbett, Jim. Indian Wild Life, vol. I, no. 2:1936. Corbett, Jim. 2008. Jungle Lore. 12th Edition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Corbett, Jim. (1952). 1968. My India. 4th Edition. Madras: Oxford University Press. Dutt, Romesh. 1901. Indian Famines. Their Causes and Prevention. London: P.S. King & Son. Fife-Cookson, J. C. Lt.-Colonel. 1887. Tiger-Shooting in the Doon and Ulwar with Life in India. London: Chapman and Hall Ltd. Forsyth, James Captain. 1889. The Highlands of Central India. Notes on Their Forests And Wild Tribes, Natural History, And Sports. New Edition With Maps and Illustrations. London: Chapman and Hall Ltd. Jeffrey, Craig 2017. Modern India. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kipling, John Lockwood. 1907. Beast and Man in India. A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals In Their Relation With The People. With Illustrations. London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd. Sanderson, G. P. (1878) 1907. Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India. Their Haunts and habits From Personal Observation; With An Account of the Mode Of Capturing And Taming Elephants. Sixth Edition With Illustrations Reproduced From The Original Drawings. Edinburgh: John Grant. Shakespear, Henry Major. 1862. The Wild Sports of India: With Detailed Instructions for the Sportsman; To which Are Added Remarks on Breeding and Rearing of Horses And the Formation of Light Irregular Cavalry. Second Edition, Much Enlarged. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

Secondary Literature Adamson, Peter and G. Fay Edwards (ed) Animals: A History. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199375967.003.0001 Booth, Martin. 1986. Carpet Sahib. A Life of Jim Corbett. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

166 Bibliography Broom, Donald M. (2016) Considering animals’ feelings: Précis of Sentience and animal welfare (Broom 2014). Animal Sentience. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling 5(1), pp. 1–11. https://doi.org/10.51291/2377-7478.1015 Broom, Donald M. 2020. Brain Complexity, Sentience and Welfare. Animal Sentience. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling 29(27), pp. 1–4. https://doi. org/10.51291/2377-7478.1613 Burton, R. G. Brigadier General. 1928. Sport and Wild Life in the Deccan. London: Seeley, Service & Co. Limited. Capra, Fritjof. 1975. The Tao of Physics. Boulder: Shambhala Publications. Crane, Ralph and Fletcher, Lisa. 2014. Picturing the Indian Tiger: Imperial Iconography in the Nineteenth Century. Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 369–386 Davidson, Donald. 1991. Epistemology Externalized. Dialectica. Vol. 45, No. 2/3, pp. 101–202. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42970627 Dawkins, Richard. 1976. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press. Derrida, Jacquez. The animal that therefore I am. New York: Fordham University Press. Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press. Divyabhanusinh. 2005. The Story of Asia’s Lions. Mumbai: Marg Publications Gadgil, M & Guha, R. 1999. This Fissured Land. An Ecological History of India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Govindrajan, Radhika. 2018. Animal Intimacies. Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harnad, Stevan. 2016. Animal Sentience: The other minds problem. Animal Sentience. An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling. Vol. 1(1), pp. 1–10. https://doi. org/10.51291/2377-7478.1065 Higgins, Jackie. 2022: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of our Human Senses. NY, London: Atria Books. Jackson, Peter. 2010. Fifty Years in the Tiger World: An Introduction. In: Tilson, Ronald and Nyphus, Philip J. (Ed.) Tigers of the World. The Science, Politics and Conservation of Panthera tigris. pp. 1–15. Amsterdam: Academic Press Elsevier Inc. Lefkowitz, Jeremy B. 2018. Reflection: Listening to Aesop’s Animals. Adamson, Peter and Edwards, G. Fay (Ed.) Animals: A History. Oxford University Press. pp. 59– 62. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199375967.003.0001 Mackay, R. D. 1967. Have You Shot An Indian Tiger? New Delhi, Lakshmi Book Store. No date, but Foreword is signed in Nov. 1967 Mandala, Vijaya Ramdas. 2015. Lost Worlds: Natural world and Indigenous hunting practices in colonial India (circa 1770s to 1860s). NMML Occasional Paper. Perspectives in Indian Development. New Series 60. New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. Mishra, Saurabh, Beasts, Murrains, and the British Raj: Reassessing colonial medicine in India from the veterinary perspective, 1860-1900. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85: 587–619. Naithani, Sadhana. 2006. In Quest of Indian Folktales. Pandit Ram Gharib Chaube and William Crooke. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Naithani, Sadhana. 2016. Elephantine. A Novella. Postbox. Imprint of Red Squirrel Press. Nussbaum, Martha 2022. Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility. New York: Simon and Shuster.

Bibliography  167 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 2004. Forsyth, James (1838-1871) by G. B. Smith, revised by Elizabeth Baigent. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/9928 Oomen, Meera Anna. 2019. The Elephant in the Room: Histories of Place, Memory and Conflict with Wildlife Along a Southern Indian Forest Fringe. Environment and History 25 (2019): 269–300. https://doi.org/10.3197/096734018X15217309861559 Park, Sowon S. 2013. “Who are these people?”: Anthropomorphism, Dehumanization and the Question of the Other. Arcadia 48(1): 1–14. https://escholarship.org/uc/ item/2zc805t4 Powell, E. B. 1895: Jataka. (This is a six volume text of the Pali stories of the Buddha’s former births. It was originally issued in print by Cambridge University Press and by Luzac and Co. between 1895 and 1907. You can find various print editions online, but the text itself in now in the public domain). Prakash, Om. 2006–2007. Wildlife Destruction: A legacy of the Colonial State in India. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress. Vol. 67, pp. 692–702. Prinsep, Valentine Cameron. n.d. https://www.rct.uk/collection/407181/the-imperialassemblage-held-at-delhi-1-january-1877 Propp, Vladimir. 1984. Theory and History of Folklore. Translated by Ariadna Y. Martin and Richard P. Martin. Edited, with an Introduction by Anatoly Liberman. Manchester University Press. Rangarajan, Mahesh. 1996. Fencing the Forest. Conservation and Ecological Changes in India’s Central Provinces. 1860-1914. New Delhi: OUP Rangarajan, Mahesh. 1999. Oxford Anthology of Indian Wildlife. Vol. 2. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Om Prakash. 2006-2007. Wildlife Destruction: A legacy of the Colonial State in India. Proceedings of the India History Congress, 20062007, Vol. 67 (2006-2007). Published by Indian History Congress. pp. 692–702. Rangarajan, Mahesh. 2005. India’s Wildlife History. An Introduction. New Delhi: Permanent Black Rashkow, Ezra. 2015. Resistance to Hunting in Pre-independence India: Religious Environmentalism, Ecological Nationalism or Cultural Conservation. Modern Asian Studies. Vol. 3. Röhrich, Lutz. 1991. Folktales and Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press Rowan, Andrew, Joyce D’Silva, Ian J. Duncan, Nicholas Palmer. 2021. Animal Sentence: history, science and politics. Animal Sentience: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling Vol. 31(1). https://doi.org/10.51291/2377-7478.1697 Sanderson, Daniel. 1863. Katha Sangraha or Canarese Selections. Prose. Printed at the Wesleyan Mission Press, Bangalore. Schauer, Jeff. 2019. Wildlife Between Empire and Nation in Twentieth-Century Africa. Nevada: Palgrave Macmillan. Sharma, Vishnu. 1995. The Panćatantra. Translated by Chandra Rajan. Penguin Classics. Shaw, David Gary. 2013. A Way With Animals. History and Theory. Vol. 52, No. 54, pp. 1–12. Theme Issue: Does History Need Animals? (December 2013). Simard, Suzanne. 2021. Finding the Mother Tree. Discovering the wisdom of the forest. New York: Kopf. Sorabji, Richard 1995. Animal Minds and Human Morals. The Origins of the Western Debate. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Sramek, Joseph. 2006. “Face Him Like A Briton”: Tiger Hunting, Imperialism and British Masculinity in Colonial India, 1800-1875. Victorian Studies. Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 659–680.

168 Bibliography Thapar, Valmik. 1986. Tiger. Portrait of a Predator. Photographs by Günter Ziesler and Fateh Singh Rathore. Foreword by Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India. New York, Oxford: Facts on File Publications. Tilson, Ronald and Nyphus, Philip J. 2010. Tigers of the World, The Science, Politics and Conservation of Panthera tigris. 2nd Edition. Elsevier Inc. https://doi. org/10.1016/C2009-0-19006-2 Tortorici, Zeb and Martha Few. 2013. Centering Animals in Latin American History: Writing Animals into Latin American History. 1st ed. Duke University Press. Wheaton, Joe. 2023. http://www.joewheaton.org/ Wise, Steven 2000. Rocking the Cage: Towards legal Rights for Animals. Boston: Da Capo Press. Wolhlleben, Peter. 2016. The Hidden Life of Trees. What they feel, how the communicate. Discoveries from a secret world. Canada: Greystone Books. Zipes, Jack. 2006. Why Fairy Tales Stick? The evolution and relevance of a genre. New York: Routledge.

Internet Resources Obituaries for G. P. Sanderson “Death of the Elephant King”. Aberdeen Journal 18 June 1892. p. 7. Retrieved 1 October, 2014 – via British Newspaper Archive. “The Elephant hunter and the prince”. The Middleton Albion - Saturday, June 25, 1892 Imperial Assemblage in Delhi n.d. https://www.rct.uk/collection/407181/the-imperialassemblage-held-at-delhi-1-january-1877 (https://www.peta.org/issues/wildlife/wildlife-factsheets/sport-hunting-cruelunnecessary/) https://vinaylal.wordpress.com/tag/global-hindu-electronic-network/

Index

Amin, Neel 137 animal calls, ethnographic writing on 90 animal cruelty, defining 25–27 animal ethnography see Beast and Man in India (Kipling), ethnographic writing of Animal Intimacies (Govindrajan) 150 Animal Mind and Human Morals (Sorabji) 157–158 Anthropocene 3 anthropology 28, 73, 150, 157, 159, 161, 163 anthropomorphism 147–151 Aristotle 158 artistic abstraction, beings in 92–96; Indian art 92–94; supernaturalism 94–96 Ascione, Frank 25 bandar (free monkey) 77 Baram ka Than 121–122 bats, ethnographic writing on 76 baya, ethnographic writing on 75 bears: creating orphans 68–69; hunting 43–44 Beast and Man in India (Kipling), ethnographic writing of 73–74; animal training 90; beings and beliefs 74–92; beings in artistic abstraction 92–96; on birds 74–92; buffalos and pigs 82; camels 88; cows and oxen 80–82; dogs 89–90; on donkeys 79–80; elephants 82–88; horses 82; on monkeys 77–79; narrative of Indian life 96–98; reading text 100–101; reality and ethnography 96–102; snakes 90–92; theme of cruelty 98–100 beaters 104; see also tigers

bees, abundance 44–46 beings and beliefs, Kipling: animal training 90; brids 74–77; buffalos and pigs 82; camels 88; cows and oxen 80–82; dogs 89–90; donkeys 79–80; elephants 82–88; horses 82; monkey 77–79; snakes 90–92 Beirne, Pierce 144 big game 144 bird crumbs, ethnographic writing 76 birds: behavior of 7; ethnographic writing on 74–77 black antelope, attack on 47–48 boars, hunting 37–39 Brahmins, caste 52 Briggs, Charles 150 British Empire 19, 58, 61, 89, 97, 129 British India 16, 32, 83, 124, 131, 136, 140 British writings, Indian fauna 27–28 Broom, Donald 9 Brutes. Mediations on the myth of the voiceless 161 buffalos, ethnographic writing on 82 Burton, R. G. 24 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness 6–8 camels, ethnographic writing on 88 cats, ethnographic writing on 90 centering, animals 15–16 Centering Animals in Latin American History (Shaw) 15, 141–142 Champawat man-­eater see tigers chukors, ethnographic writing on 76 cobra see snakes, ethnographic writing on cold-­blooded murder, term 145 colonialism 16–17, 151–153

170 Index colonized, term 5 colonizers, term 5 consciousness: locating 4–5; research on 6–7 Corbett, Jim 103, 113, 140, 150; creating appreciation for nonhumans 147; depicting tiger as gentleman 114–117; depicting tiger as man-­eater 117–120; ethnicity of 122–123; Himalayas and 120–131; living in jungle 123–126; as product of colonial society 131–133; relationship with animals 126–127 coughing 110–112 cows and oxen, ethnographic writing on 80–82 Crane, Ralph 140 crocodiles, presence of 46–47 cross-­referencing 110–112 crow, ethnographic writing on 75 cruelty, animals 25–26 cultural anthropology 28, 73, 150, 157, 159, 161, 163 culture, conception of 156–157 Dare, caste 35–37 Davidson, Donald 159 Dawkins, Richard 162 Dehra Doon 108 Descartes, Renè 8–9, 152, 156 Descola, Philippe 156–157 disciplining, elephants 61–65 Divyabhanusinh 139–140 dogs, ethnographic writing on 89–90 donkeys, ethnographic writing on 79–80 drongo, ethnographic writing on 76 East India Company 19, 27 ecological nationalism 139 Edelman, David 8 elephants: becoming knowledgeable about 54–55; behavior of 57–58; breeding in captivity 65–66; creating orphans 68–69; deaths 61; declaring harmlessness 69–70; defining human–animal relationship 56; ethnographic writing on 82–88; methods of capturing 58–60; movement of 56–57; natural death of 67; panther fighting with 41–43; personal account of shooting 66–67; as post of honor 93; prohibiting shooting of 67–68; rocking life of 54–67; runaways 64; Sanderson and

relation to 49–54; training and disciplining 61–65; use in tiger shooting 66 emotions, neural substrates of 7 Enlightenment 157 equality, folk narrative 2–3 ethnography see Beast and Man in India (Kipling), ethnographic writing of Evaluative Review of Theories Related to Animal Cruelty, An (Gullone) 25 falconry, ethnographic writing on 76 Few, Martha 15 Fife-­Cookson, J. C. 108; explaining cough of locals 110–112 fighting birds, ethnographic writing 75 First Annual Francis Crick Memorial Conference 5–8 Fissured Land, The (Gadgil) 135 Fletcher, Lisa 140 folk narrative: anthropomorphism and 147–151; association with orality 17; as category 17; equality 2–3; fate of 18–27; history writing and 140–142; humans in 3–5; impact on human minds 162–163; man as unfair 1–3; nonhuman animal language 1–2; nonhuman animals in 3–5; presence among the common people 17–18; producers of 18; scholarship 4; sentience in 5–18 Forsyth, James 30; theriocide and 145–146; tiger obsession of 106–107 fox, ethnographic writing on 90 Frith, Uta 159 Gadgil, Madhav 134, 141, 152 gentleman, depicting tiger as 114–117 Ghosh, Amitav 161–162 Gond tribals 136–137 goose, ethnographic writing on 75 Gouda, Bommay 57 Govindrajan, Radhika 150 Guha, Ramachandra 134, 141, 152 Gullone, Eleonora 25–26 Haldwani, Chhoti 123 hallucinogens 7 harmlessness, declaration of 69–70 Harnad, Stevan 8–9 Have You Shot An Indian Tiger? (Mackay) 104 Herder, J. W. 157 heron, ethnographic writing on 75

Index  171 Higgins, Jackie 4–5 Highlands of Central India, The (Forsyth) 30; bee abundance 44–46; black antelope 47–48; dealing with crocodiles 46–47; Hindu appreciation 44–45; remembering location with fondness 44–45; shooting as regular activity in 44–45 Hindus 23, 45–46, 52, 70, 74–78, 80–83, 89, 93, 97, 99, 111, 120, 124 history writing, folk narrative and 140–142 hogs, hunting 37–39 horses, ethnographic writing on 82 humans: depicting as unfair 1–3; in folk narrative 3–5 Humboldt, Alexander von 157 hunter-­soldier connection 31–32 hunting 30; average depiction of 107–110; Highlands of Central India, The 44–48; term 144–145; variations of 105–106; Wild Sports of India, The 31–44 Illustrations of Indian Field Sports 19 Indian folk narrative tradition 22–23 India, wildlife in see wildlife, writings on indic, term 11–12 Jackson, Peter 134–135 Jataka stories 11–14, 22–23, 77, 137, 147 Jeejeebhoy Bombay School of Art 73 Journal of the Tour of India (Mundy) 136 Jungle Book, The (Kipling) 74, 138 Jungle Lore (Corbett) 122–127, 130–131 jungle, multispecies world of 122–128 Justice for Animals (Nussbaum) 10 Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility (Nussbaum) 155, 158 Kaladhungi, village 123–124, 127–128, 132 Kant, Immanuel 8 kheddah, elephant capture 58–63 Kipling, John Lockwood 28, 73–74; see also Beast and Man in India; theriocide and 146–147 kite, ethnographic writing 75 Koch, Christof 8 koel, ethnographic writing on 76

Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft (Rickert) 157 Kumaon Himalayas 113, 116 Lahore Museum 73 Lahore Zoo 95 Lal, Vinal 146 lion, comparing tiger with 139–140 Low, Philip 8 Mackay, R. D. 104 maina, ethnographic writing 75 Mandala, Vijaya Ramadas 139 man-­eater, depicting tiger as 117–120; see also tigers Mayo School of Art 73 metaphysics of alliance 160 metaphysics of production 160 monkeys, ethnographic writing on 77–79 Morizote, Baptiste 160 Morlay 53–56, 61 Moti, tiger 95 Mundy, A. 136 My India (Corbett) 122; The Brothers, chapter 129–130; introduction 127–128; Law of the Jungle, chapter 128–129; Mothi, story 128; Sultana: India’s Robin Hood, chapter 130 Mysore 49–55, 60–61, 64, 68–71 narratives, texts treated as 23–27 Nationalcharakter, concept 157 natural historians 151 necessary pain 26 nervousness 110–112 new narratives: challenging binary of humans and animals 157–159; conception of culture 156–157; creating empathetic knowledge 161–163; interdisciplinary approaches to making sense of world 159–160; modernist European perception 160; poststructuralist and contemporary scholarship 159 nonhuman animals: in folk narrative 3–5; sentience and 5–18 nonviolence 13–14 noosing, elephant capture 60 Nussbaum, Martha 10, 149, 155 “Of Birds” (Beast and Man in India) 74–77 Oomen, Meera 148, 149

172 Index

Rangarajan, Mahesh 147 Rashkow, Ezra 77, 136–137, 139 Rattling the Cage (Wise) 158–159 reality, ethnography and 96–102 Reiss, Diana 8 Reserve Bank of India 140 resistance, British hunting 139 rifles 33 Röhrich, Lutz 142 roller, ethnographic writing 75 Rowan, Andrew 8 runaways, elephants 64

Second Jungle Book, The (Kipling) 138 Selous, figure 151 sentience: brain size 9; Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness 5–8; claiming sole propriety over 9–10; depiction in Panćatantra 11, 13–14; in folk narrative scholarshp 4–5; in Indian folk narrative 11–13; narrative concerning history 14–18; violence and 12–14; wonder and 10 Sentience and Animal Welfare (Broom) 9–10 Shakespear, Henry 30; explaining cough of locals 110–112; theriocide and 145; tiger obsessions 103–112 Shaw, David Gary 141–142, 147 She-­Elephant 18–19 shikarees, employing 33–35 shikar literature 139 shikar, tradition 136 similarity, importance of 149 Singh, Kunwar 128 snakes, ethnographic writing on 90–92 soldier-­hunter connection 31–32 song birds, ethnographic writing on 75 Sorabji, Richard 4, 157–158 sparrow, ethnographic writing on 76 speaking, nonhuman beings 1–2 standpoint of observation 15 Story of Asia’s Lions (Divyabhanusinh) 139–140 supernaturalism 94–96 Swinderen, Bruno Van 8

Sanderson, Daniel 49 Sanderson, George Peress 49; explaining cough of locals 110–112; introducing kheddah system 50; listing humans 52; moving to Morlay 52–54; recording nonhuman animals 50–52; theriocide and 146; thinning wildlife 68–72; tiger obsession of 103–112; time in Mysore 49–50 Sanderson, Sarah 49 sandpiper, ethnographic writing on 76 saras crane, ethnographic writing on 75 scholarship, Indian wildlife narratives: animals in colonial trap 139–140; anthropomorphism 147–151; colonialism 151–153; facts and figures 134–137; history writing and folk narrative 140–142; theriocide 144–147; three Ps 142–144; tigers 137–138

Tahsildar 118–119 Taylor, E. B. 157 Temple Tiger (Corbett) 121 theriocide 144–147 thinning, wildlife 68–72 Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India (Sanderson) 49; abandoned villages 54–55; geographic beauty 55; overview of Sanderson life 49–54; rocking life of elephants 54–67; thinning wildlife 68–72 three Ps 142–144 “Tiger Grips the Narrator, The” 103 tigers: average hunter and 107–110; comparison with lion 139–140; creating orphans 68–69; declaring harmlessness 69–70; depiction as gentlemen 114–117; Himalayas and 120–131; local people living with 106–107; man-­eater depiction

Oopligas 53–54, 56–57 orphans, creating 68–69 owl, ethnographic writing on 76 Panćatantra 147 Panksepp, Jaak 8 panthers, hunting 41–43 Park, Sowon 159 parrot, ethnographic writing 74–75 peacock, ethnographic writing on 75–76 personification, term 148–149 PETA 26 pigeon, ethnographic writing on 76 pigs, ethnographic writing on 82 Pitfalls, elephant capture 60 pleasure, three Ps 142–144 poaching, term 144 poultry, ethnographic writing on 75 product, colonial society 131–133 profit, three Ps 142–144 propaganda, three Ps 142–144

Index  173 117–120; military campaign analogy 104–105; narratives of 113–133; obsession with 103–112; representation in narratives 137–138; in Shakespear narrative 39–41; temple tiger 121; as trophies 103–107; using elephants 66; variations of hunting 105–106 Tiger Shooting In The Doon and Ulwar with Life in India (Fife-­Cookson) 107–110 Tipu Sultan 138 Tortorici, Zeb 15 training: elephants 61–65; ethnographic writing on 90 True and Perfect Description of the Strange and Wonderful She-­Elephant, A 18–19 unfairness, depiction of 1–3 Victoria and Albert Museum 73, 138 victory, history of 21–22 Volksgeist, concept 157

Wheaton, Joe 160, 162 Wildlife Protection Act 135, 152 wildlife, writings on: animal ethnography 73–102; elephant catching 49–72; folk narrative 1–29; hunting practices 30–48; narrative warfare 134–154; new narratives 155–164; scope of book 20–27; tiger narratives 113–133; tiger obsession 103–112 wild nonhuman animals 151–153 Wild Sports of India, The (Shakespear) 30; advising potential travelers 33; bear hunting 43–44; exploring dynamics 35–37; hog hunting 37–39; hunter-­soldier connection 31–32; panther hunting 41–43; preface to 31; rifle instruction 33; shikarees 33–35; tiger hunting 39–41 Williamson, Thomas 19–20 Wise, Steven 158–159 Yule, George 136 Zipes, Jack 162