Journalism of Courage
He doesnt entirely dismiss the oft-made comparisons between the animal whose conservation has been his lifelong passion and his own,burly self. But Valmik Thapar believes thats a thing of the past. Now,I look more like a bear, he says with a shrug. Yet,the fires still visible in his eyes nearly four decades after he first took up the cause of the tiger as he talks about the uncertain future of the countrys national animal. Some of this passion has manifested into his new book,Tiger Fire: 500 Years of the Tiger in India (Aleph Book Company; Rs 2,995),which he launched in Mumbai at a recently concluded literary festival.
Although he has nearly a dozen titles as well as documentaries on the Indian tiger behind him,Thapars latest takes readers on a new trail. The author has extensively researched lithographs,artworks and chronicles to trace the history of the animal in India over the last 500 years. Detailed accounts of encounters with the tiger can be found in the Akbarnama and Baburnama as well as other texts and miniature paintings from the Mughal period. But upon close study,one gathers that the description of the wilderness hardly matches that of the dense forests where the tigers live, he says,adding that the Mughal kings wouldnt be too keen on being mosquito or leech-bitten. Instead,Thapar implies that the hunts were perhaps staged in the private grounds of the rulers they stretched to 200-400 square kilometre and were used for their pleasure,leisure and hunting at the edge of the forests where the big cats were thrown in for the purpose of being hunted down.
The text is accompanied by rare,beautiful images that the author has spent years collecting and collating,sometimes travelling to museums in distant countries or seeking out fellow tiger enthusiasts across the world,such as Kim Sullivan. Take for instance,the painting that dates back to 19th century and shows a dead tiger with a dead python wrapped around him an incident where perhaps the two creatures battled ferociously,killing each other off. Or the photograph no more than 40 years old where a tiger stands watching a porcupine from a distance,enamoured.
Thapar believes that among many other evils that India inherited from the British,the British attitude of plundering is one. He points out that the policies to protect wildlife havent evolved since and the East India Company has been replaced by the local mafia,which is now eager to displace the animal for what lies beneath its majestic paws precious iron ore,minerals or just real estate.
Things started to go bad for the tiger in the 80s when poaching became rampant, says the author,who believes that Indira Gandhis passion for wildlife helped places such as the Ranthambore National Park flourish. According to him,the period between the 50s to the 70s proved to be the most fruitful time for conservation as some of the prominent wildlife enthusiasts,such as Fateh Singh Rathore,were in charge of sanctuaries.
Poaching continues to ail the many tiger conservation projects in India,including Project Tiger that Thapar himself was a part of. However,in the authors opinion,bureaucracy is the larger evil. Babus from income-tax departments are transferred to these places as forest officers. They neither share the passion for wildlife nor are they educated to handle it, he says.
The threat of the tigers extinction is real and Thapar doesnt fake optimism on the matter. He says if concrete steps are not taken now,the animal may be gone forever. The only answer to the problem lies in boosting wildlife tourism as well as forming public-private partnerships. If Nandan Nilekani can helm the Adhaar project,why will the government not give a chance to,say,a villager who resides on the outskirts of a forest reserve and knows how to tackle wild animals? he says.
