The hunter and the hunted

The plaque reads like a Who’s Who of Indian history, starting with Curzon, whoarrived in 1902. The record of the ducks massacred in these royal shoots include those downed by Viceroys Hardinge, Celmsford, Reading, Linlithgow and Archibald Wavell, the Prince of Wales (1921), the Shah of Iran and the kings of Nepal, Afghanistan and Malaya.

If Bharatpur had ducks, neighbouring Alwar had tigers. At Sariska and Jodhpur, the wild boar abounded, while Udaipur boasted of the leopards at Kumbhalgarh, and Bikaner, the Imperial Sandy Grouse at Gajner. Tal Chhapar in Churu district was famous for its cranes.

The techniques to hunt these animals were wide-ranging. Tigers were tempted with baits like heifers (the heifer was selected for the simple reason that no animal other than a tiger would attack it). Leopards were snared with goats. Once the predator feasted on the prey, the hunters concentrated on the closest one. Since the animal would normally retire to the thickest patch of vegetation in the area, several groups of people were deputed to close in on the animal. As the beat of drums rentthe air, files comprising half a dozen people each would then drive the panicky creature in a particular direction. Meanwhile, the privileged hunter, whether he was a prince or honoured guest, perched comfortable atop a platform known as the machan, took careful aim at the poor animal. Some princes even built themselves permanent platforms for this purpose, like the one that still exists near Jaipur’s Ramgarh Lake.

The Jodhpur princes seemed to have a special liking for pig-sticking. Half-a-dozen royal males would mount horses armed with spears and swords and chase a more fleet-footed wild boar, catch up with the animal and then attack it. Once injured, the wild boar would charge at the horse and attempt to gore it with its tusks, while the hunters would take aim with their spears and swords.

Jodhpur had another peculiar method for hunting leopards. The bait would be tied atop a special platform called a dagla. Only a leopard would be able to clamber on to the five-foot-high platform — the hyenas andjackals were thus kept at bay. As the animal attempted to get to the bait, its attackers would follow stealthily. Udaipur’s princes even employed elephants to help facilitate their hunting activities. They took on the tigers and leopards while riding them.

Hunting became an altogether different sport at Gajner in Bikaner. Salim Ali and S. Dilon Ripley describe it thus in their Birds of India and Pakistan: "Bags of Imperial Sandy Grouse in the big shoots often exceeded 2,000 birds per day to a party of 10 or 15 guns, and on one memorable occasion (in 1919 or thereabouts) all previous records were broken by the slaughter of no less than 5,983 birds in the course of two successive mornings. For some days prior to these gargantuan holocausts, all tanks for a mile around were strictly controlled in order to keep the birds off the water and force them to them to concentrate only on the main source. One day before the great shoot even that was denied to them apart along carefully determined strategic lines of theflight to the water.” At Tal Chhapar, Demoiselle Cranes would be attracted through wooden decoys shaped just like them. As they would proceed to join them, the royal attack would follow.

But this, as V.D. Sharma, a former chief wildlife warden of Rajasthan observes, is not the whole story. The princes, according to him, were also great protectors and preservers. Since they monopolised the hunting scene, the ordinary person could not take to it. What’s more, vast areas were set aside for wildlife which allowed animals to grow and thrive in their natural habitat. There were also several rules that were followed scrupulously. A pregnant female or a young one was never hunted down. According to Suraj Jiddi, a convenor of the Nature Club of Rajasthan, each princely state had roughly ten reserves for wildlife, which included large stretches of wetland.As the feudal order gave way to the modern era, the old hunting areas were gradually converted into national parks, sanctuaries and closed areas. In 1955, Sariska(Alwar), Dara (Kota), Kaila Devi (Karauli), Jasamand (Udaipur) and Keoladeo Ghana (Bharatpur) were among the first in the country to be declared as national parks. The Great Indian Bustard was declared Rajasthan’s state bird and the chinkara or gazelle, the state animal. The state today boasts of two national parks (Bharatpur and Ranthambore), 23 sanctuaries and 33 closed areas. The national parks and sanctuaries cover areas of 421 sq km and 8,861 sq km respectively.

Rajasthan’s Chief Wildlife Warden R.G. Soni claims that the state has 66 tigers, 401 leopards and 403 bears and as for the Great Indian Bustard, a rough estimate puts its number at 1,500.

This bird, known locally as godawan, was heading for extinction, as Harsh Vardhan, general secretary of the Rajasthan chapter of the Worldwide Fund for Nature recalls.

The hunting of the bird by Prince Badr of Saudi Arabia in 1980 in Jaisalmer brought its plight into focus. The cancellation of this hunting expedition helped raised national andinternational awareness about the state of the bird. Today, Harsh Vardhan proudly preserves a commemorative stamp issued on the Great Indian Bustard as evidence of that struggle.

In a similar way, the public attention that the hunting expeditions of Salman Khan and Saif Ali Khan received has also helped. The poor Bishnois could have continued to lodge complaints against poaching to the skeletal staff of the state’s Wildlife department and they would have continued to be ignored. Salman Khan’s arrest and the subsequent media excitement over the issue has helped immensely in bringing the focus back to the crucial issue of conservation.