Pub Date : 2018-12-13DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780199489381.003.0004
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
This chapter is concerned with the development of hunting as ‘sport’, whereby colonial hunters from the late nineteenth century began to carefully shape the idiom of the hunt, gradually distancing themselves from indigenous hunting methods. By systematically showcasing their skill and sportsmanship, British hunters portrayed their methods and practices as more sophisticated than the older native traditions. This study also elaborates on how different terrains and environments determined the planning and organization of hunts by the British hunters across the presidencies. Rank, authority, and privilege not only operated between the colonizers and colonized, but also within the world of British hunting communities. In contrast to the Company period, hunting became a microcosm of imperial society in late nineteenth-century India, and different sorts of hunts and clubs were open to people of various ranks. In addition, the making of hunting into a ‘sport’ was heavily linked to a discourse of class and race, drawing upon ideas of chivalry and with only the most acceptable hunting practices encoded into sportsmanship. The development of a class-based regime of hunting is evident in the way pig-sticking came to be regarded as the most superior kind of hunt, because it required great skill in horse-riding and horsemanship, presented added danger and utilized the spear rather than the gun. The chapter also explains how technological change in firearms took place and the way in which such changes were related to the transformation of hunting mores in nineteenth-century India.
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Pub Date : 2018-12-13DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780199489381.003.0003
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
Drawing on rich archival material, sportsmen’s memoirs and colonial documents, this chapter develops the argument that hill-sport was another important feature of British social and cultural life in colonial India. Hill-sport played a significant role in shaping and transforming their cultural identity from the beginning of the nineteenth century. While scholarship to date has not touched upon this subject, chapter two traces the historical antecedents of the British military conquest, which led to exploration and the discovery of new geographies, that is, mountain and hill terrains in the north and south of India. It is possible to argue that the Nilgiris and the Doon Valley had the advantage of favourable climatic conditions and better hunting grounds, and therefore plentiful opportunities for hill-sport, which in turn provided the healthier lifestyle to the Britons living on the hill stations. In such mountain peripheries, there emerged aesthetic preferences among the colonial sporting fraternity, which were born out of their hunting experiences in the cultural geography of the Himalayas and the Nilgiris. Furthermore, this chapter also suggests that the British hunters in colonial India also created a dichotomy of difference in terms of the ecology and wild fauna of the mountains, which also influenced their development of different genres of hill-sport. In addition, this chapter offers a fresh perspective on the notions of masculinity and virile energy enshrined in the big-game hunting tradition in relation to mountain geographies in colonial India.
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Pub Date : 2018-12-13DOI: 10.1093/OSO/9780199489381.003.0002
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
This chapter offers a brief account of the institution of the hunt, or shikar, and its significance as an allegory of rule in pre-colonial and colonial India, by illustrating the transition of hunting from the Mughals to the East Indian Company period. Further, this study moves away from the purely recreational focus on hunting, and places it within the world of everyday colonial administration and rule. It firmly establishes the link between shikar and governance, particularly how the British positioned and employed big-game hunting and conservation at various levels, and in different situations, aimed at the establishment and stabilization of colonial rule, and in ordering and redrawing Indian marginal territories. Another key aspect is how shikar served as an essential platform, where power and rule operated in a recreational situation. Here, the chapter illustrates the way the hunting field aided and enabled the British to formulate their political and imperial agendas in an expedient way. The sporting lives of the Company administrators like John Malcolm and James Outram are studied in detail to demonstrate the nature of high imperial decades and British military credence in the Indian hunting field.
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Pub Date : 2018-12-13DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199489381.003.0007
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
The final chapter locates the careers of two prominent hunters-turned-conservationists—Jim Corbett and Richard Burton—within the essential paradox of hunting and conservation in colonial India. In the case of both, as this chapter demonstrates, any simple binary of the colonizer–colonized model is inadequate to explain their prolific hunting in the first half of their lives as well as their passionate commitment to the cause of conservation in the second half. The chapter examines how, in their dual roles as hunter and conservationist, killer and protector, ruler and saviour, both men encompassed the quintessential split image of the British Raj. Particularly in their role as slayers of man-eating predators, Corbett and Burton offer an extremely nuanced and complex image that revises any straightforward impression of colonial hunters in India dominating their natural environment in imitation of the imperial domination of India’s politics. Despite such caveats, this chapter argues that Corbett and Burton remained staunch loyalists to the British Raj, and cautions that the wider history of conservation thinking should pay due attention to the critical and historical analysis of individuals like Corbett and Burton, whose individual approaches to conservation issues were drawn from lived experience, just as much as from broader colonial attitudes.
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Pub Date : 2018-12-13DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199489381.003.0006
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
Chapter 5 examines the environmental and wildlife conservation issues with reference to hunting in colonial India. Addressing the issues of forestry, environment, and empire in relation to Indian wildlife, it is possible to evaluate the ways in which the British contested, constructed, and tailored wildlife conservation attitudes to meet the needs of smooth governance, while maintaining the imperial sport of hunting. Against this backdrop, the chapter explains how the issue of conservation remained in tension with imperial hunting and exploitation in colonial India. While explaining these intricacies, this study suggests that the British ruled tigers, elephants, and the native people through their inconsistencies rather than from a unified Orientalist ideology. In this, the reader would learn how the British attitudes and the policies implemented were situational and pragmatic. More importantly, it points to a story that signifies the ability of the powerful to change attitudes and shift behaviours according to the circumstances. Thus in colonial India, tigers were seen as the symbolic enemies of civilization, noxious creatures that were in the way of economic development and tragic symbols of a decimated nature, all at the same time, whereas elephants were left alone because of their usefulness. Extermination and preservation of species thus went hand-in-hand so that colonial interests rather than animal welfare could be promoted.
{"title":"The Raj and the Paradoxes of Wildlife Conservation","authors":"Vijaya Ramadas Mandala","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199489381.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199489381.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 5 examines the environmental and wildlife conservation issues with reference to hunting in colonial India. Addressing the issues of forestry, environment, and empire in relation to Indian wildlife, it is possible to evaluate the ways in which the British contested, constructed, and tailored wildlife conservation attitudes to meet the needs of smooth governance, while maintaining the imperial sport of hunting. Against this backdrop, the chapter explains how the issue of conservation remained in tension with imperial hunting and exploitation in colonial India. While explaining these intricacies, this study suggests that the British ruled tigers, elephants, and the native people through their inconsistencies rather than from a unified Orientalist ideology. In this, the reader would learn how the British attitudes and the policies implemented were situational and pragmatic. More importantly, it points to a story that signifies the ability of the powerful to change attitudes and shift behaviours according to the circumstances. Thus in colonial India, tigers were seen as the symbolic enemies of civilization, noxious creatures that were in the way of economic development and tragic symbols of a decimated nature, all at the same time, whereas elephants were left alone because of their usefulness. Extermination and preservation of species thus went hand-in-hand so that colonial interests rather than animal welfare could be promoted.","PeriodicalId":329424,"journal":{"name":"Shooting a Tiger","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129050131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2018-12-13DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199489381.003.0005
Vijaya Ramadas Mandala
Chapter 4 examines the complex relations between the British and Indian princes in relation to shikar and the political subtext of power politics at play. The reconstitution of Indian ruling values and identities between the British and Indian princes under the umbrella of big-game hunting is an important arena of colonial fabric. The Britons successfully mobilized these in establishing elitism and hierarchy in the realm of hunting, and enlisting the support of the Indian princes for the continuation of the colonial enterprise. The other important aspect of hunting in India was shikar in the princely reserves, maintained exclusively by Indian rulers for the highest ranks of the colonial elite. Hunting on such occasions was an extravagant affair involving state elephants and other elaborate entourage, in a powerful display of ancient and more recent ruling privileges, and underlining critical political alliances between the princes and the Raj. For the British, the royal shikars lent ritual credence to their political authority in a staged show of solidarity with the traditional rulers of the land. While confirming the solidarity of the ruling classes, the shikar expeditions also tested the strength of bonds between the British and Indian rulers. The colonial government’s endeavour to devise a series of British royal tours in the princely states involving big-game shoots and associated courtly trappings implies a shared aristocratic lineage and desire to promote the idea of Indian empire.
{"title":"Shikar in the Princely Reserves","authors":"Vijaya Ramadas Mandala","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199489381.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199489381.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Chapter 4 examines the complex relations between the British and Indian princes in relation to shikar and the political subtext of power politics at play. The reconstitution of Indian ruling values and identities between the British and Indian princes under the umbrella of big-game hunting is an important arena of colonial fabric. The Britons successfully mobilized these in establishing elitism and hierarchy in the realm of hunting, and enlisting the support of the Indian princes for the continuation of the colonial enterprise. The other important aspect of hunting in India was shikar in the princely reserves, maintained exclusively by Indian rulers for the highest ranks of the colonial elite. Hunting on such occasions was an extravagant affair involving state elephants and other elaborate entourage, in a powerful display of ancient and more recent ruling privileges, and underlining critical political alliances between the princes and the Raj. For the British, the royal shikars lent ritual credence to their political authority in a staged show of solidarity with the traditional rulers of the land. While confirming the solidarity of the ruling classes, the shikar expeditions also tested the strength of bonds between the British and Indian rulers. The colonial government’s endeavour to devise a series of British royal tours in the princely states involving big-game shoots and associated courtly trappings implies a shared aristocratic lineage and desire to promote the idea of Indian empire.","PeriodicalId":329424,"journal":{"name":"Shooting a Tiger","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116233050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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