Cheetah: Did India’s erstwhile nobility cause its wildlife’s downfall? Apply nuance, some say

By one account, in 1947, Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo of the erstwhile Korea princely state (in today’s Chhattisgarh) saw three cheetahs while driving at night. The area is believed to be Ramgarh, in the northern part of Korea.

The three cheetahs were males and were possibly from the same litter. The Maharaja shot all three, who are believed to be the last cheetahs in India. 

Of course, reports continued to come in in the next few years of cheetah sightings: 1952, 1957, 1958, 1960 and 1967. Divyabhanusinh, who is the author of End of a Trail: The Cheetah in India, however thinks that these may have been ‘stragglers’ and the last post had been sounded for the cheetah in India. 

“He is thought to be the person who shot the last cheetah in India. But as far as I know, my uncle and father have always said that they had spotted cheetahs even after that incident,” Ambica Singh Deo, the paternal granddaughter of the Maharaja and a member of the Chhattisgarh Assembly from Baikunthpur, told Down To Earth.

She also said her grandfather had shot only one cheetah, rather than three and that it had to be shot since it had become a maneater. “There is a lot of confusion somewhere and if you want to portray someone in bad light, it is very easy,” Singh Deo stated.

However, there is only one instance of a cheetah attacking a human being in recorded history, according to End of a Trail. Also, there is a photograph by the Bombay Natural History Society showing Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo with the cheetahs he shot.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

DTE asked Singh Deo about whether the erstwhile princes had been unfairly maligned as those who obliterated India’s wildlife.

“It is a matter of perspective. There was a time when plastic was supposed to be a boon. Today, it is supposed to be a curse. Tomorrow, the next few generations are going to curse us for using so much water. The same way, when animals became maneaters in those days, it was the duty of the princes to protect their people. So, what seems to be wrong today, may have been a necessity then,” she said.

Aditya Pratap Deo, who is from the Royal House of Kanker in Chhattisgarh and is related to Maharaja Ramanuj Pratap Singh Deo, offers a nuanced explanation.

“The common perception that the princes along with the British obliterated much of India’s wildlife needs to be qualified,” Aditya, who teaches history at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, told DTE.

He said: “It is true that the colonial period saw a massive increase in hunting by officials and princes with critical changes in the culture and weaponry of hunting, as Mahesh Rangarajan has documented.”

“But the more devastating and sustained assault came from another part of the system that was shaping this culture and creating the weaponry: from the destruction of habitat and ecological rhythms due to the imperatives of the colonial global capitalist agricultural and industrial complex and its expansion, as many, led by Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil, have argued,” Aditya added.

“In fact, sometimes, as has been shown in study of the lions of Gir, specific princely aspirations and strategies could actually have achieved the survival / conservation of wildlife,” Aditya noted.

Divyabhanusinh, himself the scion of the House of Mansa, near modern-day Gandhinagar in Gujarat, added to this.

He said, “Look at the major national parks and sanctuaries of India. Gir was the hunting ground of Junagadh state; Velavadar of Bhavnagar; Mukundara of Kota; Sariska of Alwar; Ranthambore of Jaipur; Keoladeo-Ghana of Bharatpur; Similipal of Mayurbhanj; Ghasidas of Surguja and Korea; Bandipur and Nagarhole of Mysore and Periyar of Travancore.”

Divyabhanusinh noted that a monarchy was about one man who controlled everything. But that man considered animals as his personal property.

“He does not allow anyone else to shoot. You can call him a butcher but he does not allow others to become butchers. In a democracy, everybody can shoot. The worst destruction of wildlife took place between 1950 and 1970, when the fear of the old order was slowly wearing off,” he added.

If the princes were indeed butchers of wildlife, why did the number of tigers decline so drastically by 1972-73 from 1947, he asked.  

Works like that of Alfred Crosby, have shown how ‘ecological imperialism’ began the process of destruction of the ecological balance of the world from the 15th century onward, according to Aditya.

“So princely harm to wildlife must be seen as part of a wider and deeper process in which other less perceptible but more destructive and inexorable factors were at work,” he said.

His view is supported by what Mahesh Rangarajan has written in his book Nature and Nation 2015. He writes that while hunting was a way of life for princes and landed gentry, their reactions to the British programme to ‘wipe out vermin’ (dangerous animals) were diverse.

“Some princes had already initiated or were willing to follow through with a scheme of records for killing vermin. Mysore and Hyderabad were prominent in their extensive system of bounties for wild animals and snakes. Religious beliefs may have been crucial in resisting such measures in Marwar, where the raja refused to help in ‘any organised attempt’ to get rid of venomous reptiles,” Rangarajan writes.

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