The Big game hunting of the British Royals and the Tiger population in the Indian subcontinent

Today, I saw a BBC post in my Facebook page that referred to an article written by Niki Rust on 8^th June 2016 on the increased tiger population of the country.

It stated that for the first time in over 100 years, tiger populations are rising thanks to the indigenous peoples of the country. The latest global census counted 3,890 tigers, compared to just 3,200 tigers in 2010 and more than half of these are in India. It is interesting to note that in 1900, estimates reveal that there were around 100,000 tigers in India alone. I looked up the details country-wise in Wikipedia and noticed that the present tiger population in Nepal was just 198.

The reason I took an interest in the tiger population in Nepal was because I had read that the Terai, a lowland region in southern Nepal lying south of the foothills of the Himalayas, had been home to great biodiversity with large tiger and rhino populations over centuries.

1911 King George V poses with Chandra Shamsher Jung Bahadur Rana, Prime Minister and Maharaja of Nepal next to a huge Bengal tiger he shot

One of the massive and barbaric hunting expeditions of all time happened in this area in 1911. After the Coronation of King George V as the Emperor of India at Delhi on 12th December 1911, he went on a massive hunting expedition in India and Nepal. His party slaughtered a total of 39 tigers, 18 rhinoceroses and 4 bears on that hunt along with other animals, in a ten-day expedition across in Terai region of Nepal. His party rode on elephants and the king reportedly killed four or five tigers a day. Photographs from such brutal pastimes of the royals remain standing testimony to the cruelties done by them and point to the crocodile tears of their descendants of the present times.

The attached photographs speak volumes about the extravaganza, barbarism and the brutality of the big game hunting expeditions of King George V in Terai in 1911.

1911 Hunting party on elephants fording Rapti river

1911 As they advanced on the back of elephants, 'the wounded tiger was presently found and despatched by His Majesty', records say

1911  King George V with the spoils of the shoot

1911 King George V with a Rhino he killed 

1911 The Maharaja spent months preparing for the King's visit, cutting roads for miles through the jungle 

1911 King George V with Chandra Shamsher Jung Bahadur Rana, Prime Minister and Maharaja of Nepal

While Prince Harry is praised for conservation work and Prince William has called for an end to the illegal killing of endangered wildlife their forefathers indeed had a different approach especially in the colonies forcibly occupied by them since the 17th century.

While there is a long tradition of royals across the globe hunting wild animals over centuries, the English royalty seems to have perfected the art of cruelty and destruction on a massive scale in the name of civilization, scriptures and religious sanctions.

Nepalese rulers over years had organised massive hunts to be on the right side of the British diplomacy for their own personal gains. In 1876, Jung Bahadur, the first Rana prime minister of Nepal, who had visited Great Britain and France in 1850 hosted Prince Albert Edward, the heir to the British throne. During the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, Jung Bahadur had personally led Nepali soldiers at Lucknow for relief of the British citizens. He was a great hunter of repute and many stories have reported that he had personally shot and killed over 500 tigers.

Jung Bahadur Rana, the first Rana prime minister of Nepal

1876 Jung Bahadur Rana of Nepal hosting Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) 

The last part of Prince Albert Edward’s India tour of seventeen-week was spent in the Terai where the sport was reportedly excellent and the Prince soon bagged the first of many more tigers, including a tigress pregnant with six cubs (Russell, William Howard, Sir. The Prince of Wales' Tour: A Diary in India). Reportedly, seven hundred elephants were employed in beating the jungle, and the Prince Albert shot no fewer than six tigers in one day.

Following is a quote from The Prince of Wales' Tour: A Diary in India by Sir William Howard Russel that was felt very interesting to me in view of the atrocities committed during the shoot.

“On the eve of the Price’s departure to India, on 10th October 1875, Dean Stanley preached an eloquent sermon in Westminster Abbey (the text taken from was Esther i., viii. 6), in which he expatiated on the journey "of the first Heir to the English Throne who has ever visited those distant regions, which the greatest of his ancestors, Alfred the Great, one thousand years ago, so ardently longed to explore." He concluded with an earnest prayer that the visit might leave behind it, on one side, "the remembrance, if so be, of graceful acts, kind words, English nobleness, Christian principle; and on the other, awaken in all concerned the sense of graver duties, wider sympathies, loftier purposes.”

Some other members of the royal family such as the Duke of Portland in 1884 and Prince Albert Victor, Eldest son of POW in 1889-90, also came to Nepal on hunting expeditions. Lord George Curzon, Viceroy of India had invited himself on a shoot to the Nepali Terai in 1901 and it had many political ramifications in Nepal leading to Chandra Shumsher becoming Prime Minister and Maharajah. Chandra was later made a Knight Grand Commander of the Empire in 1905 and he hosted King George V during his shoot in 1911.

“Hosted as part of the grand coronation celebrations, King George was met with a Nepali royal party that consisted of Chandra, his two sons and ‘His Excellency’s’ followers, who numbered at 12,000, besides 600 elephants with 2,000 attendants’.

In 1938, just before the Second World War, a three-week hunt with Lord Linlithgow, viceroy of India, saw a total of 120 tigers, 27 leopards, 15 bears, and 38 rhinos being slaughtered.”

1890 Prince Albert Victor, elder brother of King George V 

1921 The future King Edward VIII (centre) in Nepal 

“Photographic records of these hunts are perhaps the best evidence that megafauna’ population across the subcontinent was driven to extinction levels because of such massive hunts. But conservation was the last thing on the minds of anyone participating in these hunts. ‘Hunting diplomacy’ lent the Ranas much-needed social capital with the British elite, and an invite from the Ranas of Nepal became a much-coveted affair for the colonists themselves. It would eventually lead to the establishment of various ‘hunting companies’ in Nepal, led by American John Coapman, African big-game hunter Charles Cottar and the Irish hunter Peter Byrne, who received a hunting concession via Prince Basundhara, brother of King Mahendra, after the fall of the Ranas. It was not until 1972 that hunting was outlawed in Nepal except in one reserve in the Himalayas – but the damage to megafauna’ numbers had already been done”. (“Using 'Shikar Diplomacy' in 19th-Century Nepal” by Amish Raj Mulmi)

Even as late as in 1961, during the visit of Queen Elizabeth to India, her consort Prince Philip went ahead with the hunt in Jaipur and killed a tiger along with many other animals despite protests from British and Indian politicians.

1961 Prince Philip and  the Queen felled this majestic tiger   as  guests of the Maharajah of Jaipur

In this context, the article by BBC indeed was like a cool breeze on a hot Indian summer. It is so refreshing and heartening to note that the local rural folks in India, Africa and many other countries are rising to the occasion to the clarion call for saving the environment, the wildlife and thereby the future generations from great calamities.

References:

1)“The wake of the White Tiger” by Diamond Shumsher JB Rana

2)Russell, William Howard, Sir. The Prince of Wales' Tour: A Diary in India; with some account of the visits of His Royal Highness to the courts of Greece, Egypt, Spain, and Portugal.

3)“Using 'Shikar Diplomacy' in 19th-Century Nepal” by Amish Raj Mulmi.

4)Various other internet sources.