The forgotten magic of ‘Sher Darshan’ in Madhya Pradesh

I visited Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve and Satpura Tiger Reserve recently, after a gap of several years. Like everybody else, I was also looking for tigers behind every bush and rock. The tigers of Bandhavgarh did not pay any attention to their former chief warden but those in Satpura welcomed my family very enthusiastically.

We had just finished our lunch after a late arrival at the Churna rest house, when the message came that a tiger family had been located nearby. We dropped everything and hurried to the site. A tigress and her three grown-up cubs were walking leisurely on the road. There was no crowd and only one vehicle was watching them. After giving us a good view of their backs and some frolicking around, the cubs sensed something and rushed into the forest. The mother sat down in the middle of the road apparently unconcerned but occasionally looking up with cocked ears, in the direction her brood had gone. She appeared to be relaxing, but was fully aware of every sound coming from her cubs’ direction. In a few minutes, the cubs flushed out a sambar doe towards their mother. The panicked sambar crossed the road between her and our vehicle, with the cubs in chase. The tigress was up in a flash and ran, like a bullet, towards our vehicle to intercept the doe. But the startled deer was faster than her pursuers and the ambushing mother, and escaped, uttering a loud, “O God!” grunt as she saw the tigress rushing towards her. The disappointed tiger family was back on the road, relaxed as if nothing had happened, perhaps analysing the lessons learnt.

Incidentally, I was seeing a tiger in Satpura tiger reserve after 32 years, and innumerable visits.

The tigress trying to ambush the sambar running from her cubs, the loud grunt of the panicked deer as it crossed the road within a few feet from us, was a sight that my children had never seen before, despite growing up in (well, almost) the best national parks of the country. Although the tigress did not get the sambar but the excitement the scene generated kept our hearts thumping for a long time.

We spent three nights in Bandhavgarh and two in Satpura, going out every morning and evening. But no tigers, except that welcome show. There were dozens of vehicles, more in Bandhavgarh than in Satpura, desperate to have a glimpse of the king. They were zipping around the parks , perhaps covering their assigned routes multiple times. Nobody paid any attention to what else he or she saw. They were just looking for just one animal, the tiger.

‘The Tiger Show’

On seeing the vehicles madly raising dust and noise around the park, hoping to surprise a tiger at some turning, my mind went back to the old days when people used to enjoy the parks more leisurely as they had the assurance that they would, most likely, see a tiger before leaving. If not on the road, then from an elephant’s back.

Back then our mahouts went out, on elephant back, looking for tigers well before the visitors entered the park. They followed the jungle signs like pug marks, alarm calls, kill signs etc. to zero in on any tigers lurking in the area of their search. When they located one, they would watch it until it settled for the day and then sent out a message that visitors could come and take a look. While one or two elephants kept a watch, others would take turns to fetch visitors, four per elephant, for a quick look, generally about ten minutes. If the tiger moved, the watching elephants would signal to others and they would together try to catch up with the tiger. If the tiger gave them the slip, and the day was advancing, they abandoned the search and returned to the camp. If the tiger was on a kill, they would return to the same site next outing, giving many families a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And converting some of them into lifelong tiger lovers. An allied activity called “tiger tracking”, in which the visitors joined the mahouts in their search for the tigers early at dawn, was the ultimate wilderness experience for the lucky few permitted to do so.

Originally called the ‘Tiger Show’, the activity was renamed ‘Sher Darshan’ to give it some respectability in view of the criticism that the term ‘tiger show’ gave the impression of a circus. Although people could also see tigers from elephant back in other parks, such as Corbett and Dudhwa, nowhere was it done so well as in Madhya Pradesh (MP).

Back then, seeing tigers on the roads was not so common as now. Why? Because, we certainly have more tigers in our parks now, and more people are looking for them. Perhaps, the tigers of the past were also more skittish as they were not used to having so many people and vehicles around. And there was no way one vehicle could call others to come to the tiger point. Therefore, the vehicles returned to the waiting point, rather than going round and round, for the news of a tracked tiger. Seeing a tiger from elephant back was the high point of a visit to parks in MP. Even if one had seen a tiger on the road, he would still not miss another peep from elephant back. The best pictures and videos of tigers of those days often came from elephant back. Similarly, a lot of our current knowledge about tiger behaviour and ecology was acquired by watching them from the back of the elephants.

Sher Darshan as a programme started in Kanha in the late 1960s and spread to all other parks of the state over time. All the elephants and mahouts, even directors, were first trained in Kanha and were then sent to other parks.

It all started perhaps when the famous scientist George Schaller was doing research for his famous book The deer and the tiger in Kanha. He used to tie a buffalo calf in the Kanha meadows as a bait to lure tigers and observed their behaviour from a hide or from elephant back. After Schaller left, the same process became a tourism service. A bait continued to be used for attracting tigers until 1982. It was discontinued when Indira Gandhi saw a buffalo being ripped apart, alive, by a pride of Gir lions.

Despite the discontinuation of baiting, tigers continued to be watched from elephant back. Earlier, the tigers came looking for elephants hoping to get a buffalo where the elephants went. Now the mahouts had to go searching for tigers only on the basis of their tracks and signs. Mahouts and elephants became so good in tracing tigers, over time, that there was not much decline in the success rate after baiting was stopped. In fact, the tigers became so comfortable with the elephants, that sometimes people used to ask whether they were drugged.

Tiger Show was stopped under pressure from the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in 2012. Now, the rules allow only half-hour elephant rides in the parks. Most parks do not provide even that service, citing shortage of elephants and their deployment for patrolling and monitoring breeding tigresses. The elephants still track tigers every morning. But tourists are not allowed to watch them.

Apart from satisfying visitors’ desire to watch wild tigers and earning sizable revenue for the parks, Tiger Show also provided nearly impeccable security to the tigers of the area. This is evident from the fact that famous tigers like Munna of Kanha and Charger of Bandhavgarh, who appeared in Sher Darshan regularly, lived much longer than most other tigers. The experience of being with tigers regularly also trained the elephants, mahouts and other staff in monitoring and manipulating tigers when needed. This is the principal reason why MP Forest Department is so good in capturing and translocating tigers. Unlike vehicles, our elephants can reach almost anywhere to immobilise, capture, treat or kill a tiger. With the abandoning of Tiger Show, this critical expertise is likely to be lost over time. We have also lost on the income earned by the tigers and elephants for the parks which was nearly as much as from entry fees in Kanha and Bandhavgarh, somewhere around 2008 or 2009. Above all, the visitors did not have to shatter the peace and serenity of the park in search of their elusive trophy. They waited for news from the Tiger Show at a designated location, after a relaxed drive in the park, rather than polluting the parks with fumes, dust and noise.

Why was it stopped?

Why was such a wonderful practice stopped? The last straw was certainly the NTCA’s 2012-directive, “cordoning, luring or feeding of any wildlife shall be prohibited” for the purpose of tourism. The practice had been stuttering for quite some time even before that due to other reasons. In the 1990s, the Tiger Show was suspended for some time when a prominent conservationist, who had himself become a tiger expert by spending long hours with tigers, wrote to the chief minister that the Tiger Show was “an invasion of the tiger’s privacy”. Then, when the tourism boom started in the parks post 2000, some park managers were unable to cope with the demand due to the shortage of elephants. Long queues of vehicles waiting for their turn to put their passengers on elephants was also not a pretty scene. The managers also started using elephants for routine patrolling while, initially, elephants were deployed for patrolling only in the monsoons when foot patrols became difficult and the elephants were free from tourism duties. With this new responsibility of patrolling, the shortage of elephants became even more acute. When the elephants started breeding, after keeping us under the impression, for many years, that they do not breed in captivity, many females went out of action as the young were considered vulnerable to tiger attacks. Instead of pressing the available elephants into organising the tiger show somehow, which required at least 3-4 elephants, the park managers started allowing short elephant rides to visitors with their limited number of elephants. Over time, this practice has replaced the tiger show completely. Now these half hour elephant rides have become a regular activity in our parks. I remember trying to encourage park directors to continue the Tiger Show but some of them seemed less than enthusiastic. Perhaps they had reasons I did not fully understand.

NTCA had already been sending signals that it wanted to stop Tiger Show, blaming, often unjustifiably, some cases of aberrant tiger behaviour on the tiger show. So, when the above directive came, as a part of the tourism guidelines, issued under pressure from the Supreme Court, it was interpreted as a ban on the Tiger Show, although it did not specifically say so. Thus, the famed Tiger Show or sher darshan of MP died a slow death.

Although several more elephants have been inducted, and born, into the parks in the last two decades, nobody has thought of bringing the Tiger Show back. Even now, the park managers prefer using the elephants for patrolling rather than making them available to visitors. Prima facie, that appears reasonable. But considering that elephants are a lousy patrolling vehicle and that they were primarily brought in for tourism, this attitude does not look all that reasonable. More than the shortage of elephants, it is NTCA’s directive and its past record of discouraging the Tiger Show that deters a revival. The NTCA wanted to stop tiger show perhaps because they thought it was cruel to tigers. Now there is another lobby that says that elephant rides of all kinds are cruel to elephants. Perhaps another contributing factor is that none of the current generation of park directors has seen the days when the tiger show was the sine qua non of MP wildlife. Also, perhaps, some of them still consider wildlife tourism a distraction from core conservation work, forgetting the way they complement each other.

Under all these influences, the practice has almost vanished from our consciousness. Now, neither the park managers nor the visitors ever think of the Tiger Show of yore. Earlier, a park visit in MP was incomplete without seeing a tiger from the elephant back. It is no longer so. Also, back then, the emphasis was on pleasing the visitors as we did not get many. Now, it is about somehow coping with the pressure.

Although seeing a tiger on the road is certainly more exciting than the one presented by the mahouts, nowadays it is rarely so. This is because, the moment a tiger is encountered by one vehicle, the word spreads like wild fire. In no time, the poor tiger is surrounded by dozens of vehicles full of visitors hungry for a glimpse of the prize. Although MPFD now uses a mobile application, named Bagheera, to monitor and penalise such overcrowding, but the effect is still to be analysed.

Reviving ‘Sher Darshan’

These recent visits to Bandhavgarh and Satpura tiger reserves made me think whether it would be good to revive the age-old practice. After weighing all the reasons for and against, I think we must. The most important reason, apart from the ones mentioned before, is that this is a public service which we are duty-bound to provide. If people come to a park to see wild tigers, we must do our reasonable best to ensure that they do. Using elephants for routine patrolling instead of harnessing them for tourism is a waste. The minor inconvenience that it may be for the tigers, as the NTCA’s directive seems to allege, is nothing compared to the benefits it generates for wildlife conservation. The inconvenience, if any, can be further minimised by suitably advising and training the mahouts to avoid “cordoning”. “Sher Darshan” was the USP and identity of Madhya Pradesh wildlife for a long time. We must preserve it. If the NTCA’s directive comes in the way, they should be requested to modify it suitably, although mindsets of our officers also need opening up.

I am also conscious that it cannot be done exactly as it used to be before. The primary reason is that the number of people wanting to see a wild tiger is so huge now that it is virtually impossible to satisfy the demand fully. I remember seeing dozens of vehicles in the Kanha canteen compound waiting for the news from the mahouts 15-20 years ago. Now, there will be even more. What innovations and adaptations need to be done only the current managers would know. I can only say that we can use advance booking, and online payments and refunds, to regulate the number of visitors in accordance with the management capacity. The elephants can follow the tiger, rather than “cordoning” it. The stress on elephants can also be managed by harnessing them only for a limited number of hours. In fact, that has always been done.

There is always a way, if there is a will.

HS Pabla IFS (Retd.) is former Chief Wildlife Warden, Madhya Pradesh

Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth