Making subaltern<i>shikaris</i>: histories of the hunted in colonial central India

Rashkow, Ezra

doi:10.1080/19472498.2014.905324

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…58 In recent years, various commentaries on the limits of a colonial hunter's control over the hunt have pointed out gaps in the imperial discourse of hunting. 59 This reinforces the conclusion that hunting was never a one sided affair, and Indians were active participants in imperial hunts. A discussion on native reactions to colonial hunting is beyond the scope of this essay.…”

Section: Collaboration and Systematizationsupporting

confidence: 64%

To Hunt or Not to Hunt: Tiger Hunting, Conservation and Collaboration in Colonial India

Mitra¹

2019

HCM

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As the Edwardian era came to an end in Britain and its Empire began to decline, the glorious days of tiger hunting in India were being measured against a genuine fear of the total extinction of tigers. This article maps the precarious position of Indian tigers in the hands of hunters against the rising concern over preservation of the species in the first half of the twentieth century. Ranging from the bureaucratic to the overtly sentimental and personal, these attitudes, taken together, reveal a pre-‘Project Tiger’ conservation milieu in colonial India. They help us to judge the cultural status and symbol of the Bengal tiger before it became an iconic species for wildlife conservation in postcolonial India. The various debates and representations of tigers in hunting memoirs often throw light on intricate socio-cultural problems threatening the survival of the cat. In fact, the debates, as much as they spread awareness, ended up strengthening the bureaucratic and sometimes political hold over Indian forests. The article further tracks imperial discourse on the systematization of tiger hunts, which was effectively linked with the preservation of tigers and collaboration with Indians. During the twilight of the British Empire, tiger hunt and tiger conservation would emerge as sites for possible collaboration between Indians and their rulers. As recent efforts at international collaboration to protect tigers have shown, the tiger retains enough sentimental value to secure bureaucratic and political ties between nations.

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Section: Collaboration and Systematizationsupporting

confidence: 64%

To Hunt or Not to Hunt: Tiger Hunting, Conservation and Collaboration in Colonial India

Mitra¹

2019

HCM

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“…Through this hierarchical entanglement, certain species and peoples became subjugated, marginalized, disempowered and endangered. 98 How particular animals were entangled with empires was highly specific. Elephants, as we have seen, were rendered into undead capital.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonizing elephants: animal agency, undead capital and imperial science in British Burma

Saha¹

2017

BJHS Themes

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Abstract. Elephants were vital agents of empire. In British Burma their unique abilities made them essential workers in the colony's booming teak industry. Their labour was integral to the commercial exploitation of the country's vast forests. They helped to fell the trees, transport the logs and load the timber onto ships. As a result of their utility, capturing and caring for them was of utmost importance to timber firms. Elephants became a peculiar form of capital that required particular expertise. To address this need for knowledge, imperial researchers deepened their scientific understanding of the Asian elephant by studying working elephants in Burma's jungle camps and timber yards. The resulting knowledge was contingent upon the conscripted and constrained agency of working elephants, and was conditioned by the asymmetrical power relationships of colonial rule.

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“…Given the well-documented British valorization of hunting, 42 it might appear surprising that the NWP government classified several groups that were associated with hunting as 'criminal tribes'. However, colonial commentators made a sharp distinction between hunting for leisure, which was manly and sporting, and hunting for subsistence, which they blamed for the destruction of game stocks 43 and disparaged as 'dirty' and 'primitive'. 44 British commentators also criticized the dietary habits of subsistence hunting groups as 'unclean' and 'filthy', imbibing upper-caste Hindu attitudes.…”

Section: Criminalized Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender, Family, and the Policing of the ‘Criminal Tribes’ in Nineteenth-Century North India

Hinchy¹

2020

Mod. Asian Stud.

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In the South Asian setting, the fields of gender history and family history are still predominantly concerned with relatively elite social groups. Few studies have examined issues of gender and the family in the history of Dalit, low-caste, and socially marginalized communities, especially those that were labelled ‘criminal tribes’ from the mid-nineteenth century on. This article explores the ways in which gender patterned criminalized communities’ experiences of everyday colonial governance under Part I of the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) in the first two decades that it was enforced in northern India. In this early period, the colonial government did not closely regulate marriage practices, domestic arrangements, or the gendered organization of labour within communities categorized as ‘criminal tribes’. Nevertheless, notions of sexuality and gender underlay colonial knowledge of the ‘criminal tribes’, which emerged in dialogue with middle-class Indian gender and caste politics. Moreover, the family unit was the central target of the CTA surveillance and policing regime, which aimed to produce ‘industrious’ families. Officially endorsed forms of labour had complex implications for criminalized communities in the context of North Indian gender norms and strategies of social mobility. Gender power dynamics also shaped criminalized peoples’ interpersonal, embodied interactions with British and Indian colonial officials on an everyday basis. Meanwhile, different forms of leverage and evasion were open to men and women to cope with their criminalization and so the colonial state was experienced in highly gendered ways.

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Making subalternshikaris: histories of the hunted in colonial central India

Cited by 7 publications

References 22 publications

To Hunt or Not to Hunt: Tiger Hunting, Conservation and Collaboration in Colonial India

To Hunt or Not to Hunt: Tiger Hunting, Conservation and Collaboration in Colonial India

Colonizing elephants: animal agency, undead capital and imperial science in British Burma

Gender, Family, and the Policing of the ‘Criminal Tribes’ in Nineteenth-Century North India

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