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| March 27, 2000 | ||
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| Grandpa's
Elephant Gun Hunting stories that'll leave today's wildlife buff cold By Kinsuk Mitra THE GREAT INDIAN ELEPHANT
BOOK
The editor has "structured" the book on "the changing perception of the elephant and the sportsman's ways with them". Hunters writing about the hunted is what this book is all about. But the "changing perception" -- or the importance of conservation -- finds scanty recognition. Since the stories are from pre-Independence days -- some two centuries old -- I wonder how different this book would have been had it been put together 50 years ago. The answer is clear and suggests that the editor has not even attempted to put the stories and anecdotes in today's perspective. Unlike a Jim Corbett collection, the reader learns precious little about elephants or the other denizens of Indian forests even after going through 450 pages. The author/hunters repeatedly contradict each other in their commentaries on elephant behaviour, supposedly based on their own experiences, while the editor chooses to remain a mere spectator with no intention of helping the reader. Indeed, just a quarter of these stories, put together with essays from ecological historians to provide necessary insights about colonial elephant-hunting, would have transformed this book into a far more worthwhile exercise. Given the title and size of the book, one would expect to find a complete historical picture of Indian elephants, both in the wild and when tamed. Stories of large herds of elephants kept by the maharajas and how they were decorated and trained for special ceremonies.The role of elephants during wars. The management of "kheddah" operations in which tame elephants teamed up to capture their wild cousins amid much excitement and chaos. The feelings of "natives" about elephants -- how they were revered and protected, and yet disliked when they descended upon croplands at night. Yes, the introduction promises that the "anthology seeks to examine a powerful cultural phenomenon, a way of life, centred around the elephant". But whose culture and whose way of life are we talking about? Fifty some years after the master/hunters left our land, some of us natives still find virtue in our Anglo-centricity while the rest of the world finds much value in our ethnicity. Management of elephant habitats is perhaps the biggest challenge in this field of research today. There could be much to learn from the past and one would have wished this book to contribute towards such learning. But how much of "elephants live for 150 years" and "tuskers and maknas (males without tusks) belong to different species" really serves that purpose? NEW RELEASES Across the Frozen Himalaya Muslim Friends Policing the Police Allah to Zen |
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Going
by the title of the book and the stories it contains one would have to
sadly conclude that the greatness of the Indian elephant lies in the way
it was slaughtered in the 19th century by the British. An appropriate
title for the book could be "What made the Indian elephant
endangered?" Although Samuel Baker explains the difference between
killing and shooting an elephant, while the editor talks of the
"compulsions" which drove the foreign rulers to hunting, this is
one depressing book that will not please today's wildlifers. And for the
general reader, though repetitive claims of bravery would be somewhat
amusing at first, the monotony of the stories will soon take its toll.