LIVING HISTORY

There’s a yarn about how cricketer Ranjitsinhji wasn’t allowed to shoot lions in Junagadh

Written as a memoir, M. K. Ranjitsinh’s A Life with Wildlife: From Princely India to the Present is a fascinating account of the history of wildlife conservation in India. As Ranjitsinh points out, India squandered the firm control over hunting and woodcutting enjoyed by the princely states at the time of independence and made wildlife protection a state subject before the emergence of the conservation ethic. Great damage was done before tiger hunting was banned in 1969 and the central Wildlife Protection Act came into force in 1972— when the author worked closely with Indira Gandhi to get

18 states to agree to the comprehensive central act. The government recognised wildlife conservation as a separate area requiring expertise and continuity in postings, and set up a separate cadre in the forest service. At the same time, India launched Project Tiger, which was initially to include one tiger reserve in each state.

The charismatic animal made it easier to win support for bringing under protection as many diverse ecotypes and habitats as possible, and the author increasingly came to see this as his mission and the best hope for saving wildlife in India. As he points out, rehabilitation of grassland, the country’s most productive but most abused terrestrial ecosystem, could be of greater benefit to the tiger than a narrow focus on any single species itself.

Ranjitsinh spent many years both as collector in Mandla ( where Kanha is located) and later as forest secretary for Madhya Pradesh. In the central environment ministry, he worked by stealth to increase the number and area of national parks and sanctuaries in the face of opposition from political bosses. He recounts all this in a very clear and readable style with plenty of entertaining anecdotes going back to the days of the royals. One yarn describes how the Nawab of Junagadh refused to allow Ranjitsinhji, the great cricketer and an inveterate hunter, to shoot his lions. Others recall candid interactions with Mrs Gandhi— who deserves credit for India turning the tide in the 1970s.

The memoir also offers detailed information on the challenges to protecting various threatened species and habitats, the success in rehabilitating crocodiles and the frustrating failure to reintroduce the cheetah from Africa or Iran and relocate some lions from Gir to MP. Though a few maps would have been useful, it’s an invaluable contribution to our knowledge of India’s wildlife heritage.