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THE RAJ AND THE PARADOXES OF WILDLIFE CONSERVATION: BRITISH ATTITUDES AND EXPEDIENCIES*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2015

VIJAYA RAMADAS MANDALA
VIJAYA RAMADAS MANDALA*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
*
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester m13 9pl[email protected]
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Abstract

This article throws light on how the issue of conservation stood in tension with imperial hunting and exploitation in colonial India. The indiscriminate slaughter of wildlife and the declining numbers of game species in nineteenth-century India gave rise to a need for conservation, but with a caveat. Wildlife conservation, consequently, was aimed at the expansion of colonial economy and infrastructural development. Thus, in colonial India, wild predators that posed a threat to such interests were ruthlessly decimated and those animals that were useful for the smooth functioning of the British colonial rule were overlooked. This, in part, was also necessitated by the British seeking to establish their credentials as rulers, which explains the reason the colonial government's conservation programme was fundamentally selective and guided by expediency. The comparative perspective on elephants and tigers elucidates how the former were protected by the law because of the critical role they played in the colonial economy and administration, whilst the latter were ruthlessly exterminated for the threat they posed to the same. This article especially argues that the reasons for conserving elephants and decimating tigers in colonial India were more practical and economic than a mere reflection of cultural sensitivity on the part of the colonizers.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 75 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Dr Anindita Ghosh at the University of Manchester, Dr Andrew Preston, the editor, and four anonymous referees of the Historical Journal for their comments, questions, and suggestions on early versions of this article.

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114 In colonial India, Kheddah was a process of taking wild elephants into captivity. An operation usually organized by people using tamed elephants to drive off wild elephants into Kheddah (elephant enclosure) in order for them to be captured. Such elephants later were tamed, trained, and widely used in hunts, festivals, and forest works, and were given to different branches of colonial government. Also called Kheda, Khedah, or Keddah.

115 See Sivasundaram, ‘Trading knowledge’, pp. 33, 37. As the author puts it, ‘While learning how local peoples used elephants as gifts, Britons also appropriated modes of observing elephants which were indigenous to India.’

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125 See ‘Elephants to be supplied to magistrates, Tipperah, judicial administration of India from commissariat department (1851–1851; 1852–1853)’, IOR/Z/E/4/23/J437, IOR/Z/E/4/22/J532, BL.

126 ‘Elephants supplied for surveys, Kumaon (1854–1855)’, IOR/Z/E/4/25/K266, BL; ‘Application for elephants, surveys, Meerut (1856)’, IOR/Z/E/4/27/M688, BL; ‘Elephants purchased for topographical survey (1856)’, IOR/Z/E/4/27/G30, BL.

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129 Letter from collector of Coimbatore to chief secretary, government of Madras, dated 6 Feb. 1879, NAI.

130 Much before the letter from the collector of Coimbatore, the Madras government led the way in elephant conservation.

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132 Act No. VI of 1879, the Elephant Preservation Act, 1879, NAI.

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135 Govt of India, Home Dept Proceedings, June 1886, ‘Regarding grant of licences for the capture of elephants in the district of Coorg’, NAI.

136 Rice, Mysore: a gazetteer compiled for government, p. 177.

137 See Govt of India, Home Dept Proceedings, June, 1886, NAI. If the licence was per exclusive right to capture elephants in a particular tract of forest during a year, the licensee was asked to deposit Rs. 5,000 in the treasury which was to be adjusted against capture of elephants according to the scale shown below:

0 to 20 elephants Rs. 2,000

21 to 30 elephants Rs. 3,000

31 to 40 elephants Rs. 4,000

41 to 50 or upwards Rs. 5,000.

It is noteworthy how wildlife conservation was moulded to fit an economic motif, in spite of administrative perils. In addition to profiting from these high licence fees, the colonial government's principal policy was to ‘capture’ wild elephants rather than to ‘shoot’ them, thus underlining economic imperatives.

138 See the Elephant Preservation Act, 1879, NAI.

139 Sukumar, Raman, The living elephants: evolutionary ecology, behaviour, and conservation (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar, p. 33. Also see Lorimer, Jamie and Whatmore, Sarah, ‘After the “king of beasts”: Samuel Baker and the embodied historical geographies of elephant hunting in mid-nineteenth-century Ceylon’, Journal of Historical Geography, 35 (2009), pp. 668–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 679.

140 Barclay, Edgar N., Big game shooting records (London, 1932), pp. 18–19Google Scholar. As he bagged elephants both for sport and ivory, one of Bell's heaviest yields of ivory in one day's shooting ‘amounted to 1,643 lbs of soft ivory from 11 head containing 21 tusks, one being a single tusker. The average weight was over 77 lbs and the value £863.’ In one of his best safari hunts Bell sold 14,780 lbs of ivory for 7,300 pound sterling.

141 See Sutherland, James, The adventures of an elephant hunter (London, 1912)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barclay, Big game shooting records, pp. 24–5.

142 See Neumann, Arthur H., Elephant-hunting in east equatorial Africa (London, 1898)Google Scholar; Barclay, Big game shooting records, pp. 27–30.

143 Holder, C. F., The ivory king – a popular history of the elephant and its allies (New York, NY, 1886)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 220.

144 Sanderson, G. P., Thirteen years among the wild beasts of India: their haunts and habits from personal observation; with an account of the modes of capturing and taming elephants (London, 1879), pp. 68–9Google Scholar.

145 Ibid., p. 68.

146 Lyell, Denis D., The African elephant and its hunters (London, 1924)Google Scholar, p. 29.

147 Ibid., pp. 29–30.

148 MacKenzie, John M., The empire of nature: hunting, conservation and British imperialism (Manchester, 1997), pp. 205–83Google Scholar. The governor of German East Africa Hermann von Wissman through colonial correspondence had sent drafted proposals concerning the question of ‘creating areas suitable for reserves and game regulations’ to all British territories and India for comment. Later, Sir Graham Bower, the imperial secretary in Cape Town reacted unfavourably to the idea of creating reserves.

149 See Prendergast and Adams, ‘Colonial wildlife conservation’, p. 252.

150 See ‘Elephant meat for our native troops in Rhodesia’, Illustrated War in News, 25 Oct. 1916, p. 6, quoted in Hediger, Ryan, Animals and war: studies of Europe and North America (Leiden, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 66.

151 ‘Africa: correspondence relating to the preservation of wild animals in Africa’, Great Britain, Colonial Office (London, 1906), p. 41.

152 File No. 11/11/46, Govt of India, Police Dept, NAI; also see Letter No. 24/46, Part 2, G. F. R. dated 18 Apr. 1946, petitioned from Govt of Assam to Govt of India, NAI. This document refers to the damages caused by wild elephants to tea estates, plantations, and various complaints received from the public on elephants’ atrocities.