Hunting as ‘Sport’ in Colonial India

Abstract

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.

Relocated tigers and relocated villagers: Ferality and human–animal entanglement in Indian conservation

“…During the British Raj in India, hunting, forestry, and conservation became important mechanisms through which colonialists not only established control over large areas of land and different groups of people (Rangarajan 1996), but they came to express or symbolize various forms of masculinity, civilization, patronage, benevolence, and gentlemanliness (Schell 2007; Sramek 2006; Thompsell 2015). 1 In particular, some scholars have focused on the role of shikar (hunting) in British and Mughal times in India as a form of benevolent control or ‘predatory care’ (Pandian 2001), a way to build the reputation of colonial officers as skilled hunters and also protectors of local people from both ‘man-eating’ wild animals and ‘cruel’ local rulers (Skaria 1998; Mandala 2018; Pandian 2001). Thus, hunting, forestry, and conservation were about ‘taming and protecting wild India’ both in the sense of a particular understanding of nature and wilderness (cf.…”

“…Through forestry and hunting, colonial officials ‘appropriated the figure of the Oriental despot […], depicting themselves as more caring and responsible sovereigns’ (Pandian 2001, 81). Hunting also became a way of ‘policing and subjugating rebel or troublesome territories’ (Mandala 2018, 11) or forging political alliances with submissive local rulers (Hughes 2013). Sramek (2006) argues that in hunting tigers, the British both sought to emulate other rulers and symbolically stage their defeat.…”

“…These preoccupations with the hunt as a gentleman's and ‘gentleman-making’ sport alongside growing concerns about depleting wildlife, blamed on reckless, uncivilized, and indiscriminate shooting by villagers and local rulers, and fuelled by animal welfare activism back in Britain and in the colonies, led to early conservation efforts. This was mostly in the form of stricter rules on hunting; yet another way to control and limit the sovereignty of local rulers as well as a way to preserve game for colonialists to hunt (Mandala 2018). Thus, discourses that suggested the need for colonial foresters and hunters to tame a noble but lesser animal exemplified in a tiger resonated with the ways that officials spoke about the need to civilize noble but lesser peoples in ‘wild tribes’.…”

Range-wide trends in tiger conservation landscapes, 2001 - 2020

“…The main mechanisms of range loss are direct habitat destruction, including physical conversion and fragmentation of suitable vegetation (Joshi et al, 2016;Poor et al, 2019) and the less visible, but no less deadly, depletion of prey populations (Karanth et al, 2004;Miquelle et al, 2015;Miquelle et al, 1999b;Jornburom et al, 2020. ) Active persecution by humans has also depleted tiger numbers, including poaching for the illegal trade in tiger parts (Linkie et al, 2018;Villalva and Moracho, 2019;Skidmore, 2021); human-wildlife conflict (Lubis et al, 2020;Gulati et al, 2021); and the long-term consequences of once rampant sport hunting (Pikunov, 2014;Mandala, 2018). Unsustainable hunting of all wildlife, for example, with snares, can drive tigers extinct in otherwise high-quality habitat (O'Kelly et al, 2012;Gray et al, 2018;Figel et al, 2021).…”