Abstract
This article is about the Indian man-eater tiger, through Jim Corbett’s narratives, as an anthropocentric construct of animality in British India at the beginning of the twentieth century. During this transformative phase, the masculine idea of unrestricted sportsmanship against tigers struggles for its validity in the surge of game preservation. The paper argues, forthwith it is the hunting of a man-eater tiger that reinforces the British Crown’s hegemony in the subcontinent by studying Corbett as a sort of metonym for imperial legitimacy that protected Indian populations from predation. The analysis sheds light on the politicisation of an animal’s animality by highlighting a rare view of colonialism when the imperial power targets man–animal conflict via sharpening the biopolitical congeniality between the coloniser (the state) and the colonised human population. The paper advances on how the colonial and post-colonial state power unevenly exert the notion of conservation by infringing a tiger’s identity from biopolitical to necropolitical subject when species (human and animal) share antagonistic spaces.
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Notes
Rani and Kumar’s (2017a) study proposes a mutual inclusive relationship between the prevalent hunting practices and emergence of the man-eaters in Kumaon (pp. 207–210).
Mbembe’s notion of sovereignty develops on Foucault’s critique of traditional mode of sovereignty that is strictly practised in defence of the sovereign subject. Now, a new form of power emerges through “power of regularization” (Foucault 2003, p. 247); it dialectically makes killing necessary. See (Mbembe 2019, p. 66–69).
Foucault calls race a technology. See Mbembe (2019, p. 71).
The first proposal for a sanctuary establishment surfaces in 1916 by the collaborative efforts of E. R. Stevens and E. A. Smythies (though unsuccessful). Later on, Smythies and Corbett put the incessant efforts to set up a wildlife reserve. See Booth (2016, p. 215).
Corbett’s career as a man-eater hunter and a tiger conservationist blossoms together, gaining maturity during 1905–1940.
Corbett details the ‘stress of circumstances’ that includes careless hunting resultant in wound, scarcity of the big cat’s natural prey, and the animal’s old age. See Corbett (2015a, p. vii).
In 1905, Champawat (a tigress) and Panar (a leopard) emerged as the first man-eaters in Kumaon. Both these man-eaters were a great reason to worry for the government because these animals terrorized the locale for more than 4 years. Finally, Corbett was assigned by the government to deal with these man-eaters. See Corbett (2015a, p. 2, 2015b, p. 64).
Sahib is an honourable conferment by an Indian on the British. It also indicates a hierarchy between the colonial master and colonised people.
Corbett’s letter to Hawkins reveals the interests of America, UK, Canada, Australia, and other Western Countries in the poor of India. This letter shows Corbett’s texts are intended to find a strong readership abroad. See Corbett (2012, p. 51).
Mandala also points out hunting literature’s aim at the readership in Britain. See Mandala (2019, p. 166).
Derrida dismisses the concept of nudity in Nature. The associations of good or evil with nudity are purely human constructions, so an animal is far from being naked: “animals would not be in truth, naked.” See Derrida (2008, p. 5).
Sharma highlights the intersectionality of technological and cultural powers at the site of a man-eater by juxtaposing the notions of “criminality and animality.” See Sharma (2016, p. 65).
The sense of retribution is too powerful to ignore. Such intense aggrieved feelings facilitate Corbett’s image of a humane colonial master. He brings the dead carcasses of the man-eaters to the bereaved villages(ers) as an evidence to the end of locals’ woeful era. See Corbett (2015a, 2015b, p. 163).
Derrida critiques the tradition that deprives animals of the right to “respond.” See Derrida (2008, p. 32).
See The wildlife (protection) act, (1972).
See A TRAFFIC network report (1997, p. 1).
Tiger status assessment involves the collaborative efforts of NTCA, State Forest Departments, Wildlife Institute in India, and other wildlife conservation NGOs ensuring the latest use of science and technology to avail an errorfree data on tigers in India.
See WWF India report (2016).
See WWF report (Tx2) (Stolton & Dudley 2017).
Sinha is concerned over the (mis)connotation of the term ‘stray’ implying that tigers do not belong to the human-dominated areas. See Sinha (2018, p. 13).
Animal activist, Jerryl Banait, and Menaka Gandhi, (the then Women and Child Development Union Minister) called the death of Avni a “murder.” See (Kumar and Gettleman 2018, The Economic Times).
See (Rashid 2019, The Hindu).
The wildlife activist Sangeeta Dogra’s PIL in Uttarakhand court seeks clarification for the killing of 200 animals. See Jha (Times of India 2020).
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We are incredibly grateful to the anonymous reviewer for his/her comments and recommendations that have enriched this article. Acknowledgement is equally due to Peter Hajdu, Editor-in-chief, Neohelicon, for providing us the sufficient time for revising this paper. We also thank Prashant Maurya, a fellow researcher, for his insightful suggestions on this paper.
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Rani, P., Kumar, N. Contesting the man-eater animal(ity): changing paradigms of the colonial-colonised relationship. Neohelicon 48, 751–768 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-021-00596-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-021-00596-9