Is Jim Corbett still relevant todayIJ His stories are not about hunting at all but the memoirs of a man who cared deeply about India’s natural history and the people of rural Kumaon — not only those who were victims of man-eaters but so many others who struggled for survival and fulfillment along the margins of the forest. Stephen Alter pens a tribute on the naturalist’s birth anniversary on July 22
While writing the book, In the Jungles of the Night, a novel about Jim Corbett, a fictionalised account of one of the most celebrated and enigmatic naturalists that India has produced, I kept asking myself: “Is Jim Corbett still relevant todayIJ”. In the final section of the novel, he looks back upon his own experiences and puzzles over the dilemma of being both a hunter and a conservationist — the paradoxical legacy that Corbett left behind when he emigrated from India to Africa in 1947.
Perhaps it is a hunter’s instincts that have brought me here to Kenya, all the way from the foothills of the Himalayas where I was born, to these alien escarpments in Africa where I will probably die. Though I seldom carry a gun any more and buy my guinea fowl and meat from a butcher shop rather than stalking wild game, those primal instincts remain. We hunt in order to perpetuate our species, even as we face the inevitability of extinction. In this process, the truest and most admirable traits we possess are inherited from our animal nature.
It isn’t reason or religion that makes us a successful species, or the literature we read in school, or the patriotic discipline and dedication with which we defend our nation’s interests. Instead it is the primitive impulses we follow, which have been with us from our earliest incarnations.Whatever we may have become, Homo Sapiens were once nothing more than lonely hunters with no sense of right or wrong but only a feeling inside our marrow that somehow we must carry on. In that simple equation lies our sole claim to nobility and virtue. The survival of our species is the only moral choice we face.
Hunting has been banned in India for almost half a century. Today the image of a shikari is anything but noble and under Indian law shooting wildlife is a “non-bailable offence.” Anyone who kills a tiger these days or a black buck or even a pheasant is considered a heartless criminal rather than an intrepid sportsman. Conservation has become an ethical imperative and forestry officials, scientists, animal rights activists and NGOs are struggling to save species that were once targeted as fair game and open to extermination.
All of this is a good thing and, hopefully, tigers and other wild creatures, as well as the habitat they occupy, will remain protected by law and public conscience.
But the question arises in a country like India, where the vast majority of the population was born after hunting became illegal in 1972, is there any relevance to reading stories about tracking down and shooting tigers in a jungleIJ Are we really interested in the exploits of a colonial shikari like Jim Corbett, who made a name for himself by eradicating man-eating tigers and leopards in the 1920s and 30sIJ Though he was born in India, Corbett departed the country in 1947, at the time of independence, and emigrated to Kenya. Should he have any claim on our imagination and do his books carry the kind of messages that resonate todayIJ
Yes. Jim Corbett is still relevant, but not necessarily for the same reasons that made him famous during his lifetime. In 2016, Corbett’s work entered the public domain, 70 years after his death. Oxford University Press no longer holds exclusive rights to his books and a number of Indian publishers have come out with reprints of Man-Eaters of Kumaon and other titles.The fact that Corbett is still considered a bankable author proves that many editors and readers still find his stories compelling.
It must be emphasised that Corbett is still relevant today, not because he was a hunter, but because he was a writer. If he hadn’t published five books, recounting his experiences with wildlife, nobody would remember him today. Though he acquired a certain celebrity status in his time, as a “modern-day dragon slayer,” (which is what his editor, RE Hawkins called him) by now his reputation as a White hunter would be as dusty and moth-eaten as shikar trophies from the British Raj.
Corbett never really set out to be a writer and his first publication was a small collection titled Jungle Stories, which he printed privately in Nainital and distributed among his friends. This slender volume was later revised and expanded into Man-Eaters of Kumaon, which has now sold more than four
Million copies worldwide. R.E. Hawkins deserves credit for having spotted and nurtured a literary talent, transforming Corbett from a campfire raconteur into a bestselling author. Ironically, the original self-published collection contains only one man-eater tale. Corbett’s primary interest as a storyteller was the natural and supernatural lore of the Indian jungles, not the number of animals he shot or how often he looked down the barrel of his rifle at a charging man-eater.Two of his books, Jungle lore and My India, are not about hunting at all but the memoirs of a man who cared deeply about India’s natural history and the people of Rural Kumaon — not only those who were victims of man-eaters but so many others who struggled for survival and fulfillment along the margins of the forest.
More than the weapons he carried, it was his skills of observation that made him a successful hunter. Corbett’s first-hand experiences and understanding of tiger behaviour have helped scientists develop strategies for their protection today. Through exciting narratives of the forest, he also contributed to our image of the tiger as an apex species — a predator that instills fear and awe in human beings but is also vulnerable to our destructive impulses.
Though most of Corbett’s stories focus on hunting, he was a naturalist first and voiced a need for wildlife conservation in India long before it became a popular refrain. In many ways, the pursuit and destruction of man-eaters was a vehicle for a larger more profound message — the appreciation and preservation of India’s natural heritage. Corbett believed that human beings are a part of nature and we must learn the lessons of the jungle, which remain relevant today, in a world where we are often separated from nature. As he writes, “The book of nature has no beginning as it has no end. Open the book where you will, and at any period of your life, and if you have the desire to acquire knowledge, you will find it of intense interest and no matter how long or how intently you study the pages, your interest will not flag for in nature there is no finality.”
Jim Corbett, for better or worse, has been turned into a brand ambassador for eco-tourism in India. The Corbett National Park and Tiger Reserve is one of the best-known wildlife destinations in India. Surrounding the park are dozens of lodges with names like Camp Corbett,Jim’s Jungle lodge,Corbett Hideaway and so on. Statues of Corbett have been erected, all of which show him with a somewhat pained expression as if he disapproves of his own hagiography. His former homes at Kaladunghi and in Nainital have been turned into museums, though they contain few relics or memorabilia. Corbett seems to have held on to very little and donated a rifle and several man-eater trophies to his publishers, who had no idea what to do with them. These days you can even buy Corbett rum, which is bottled at a distillery in the Terai, where the jungles of his youth have been felled and replaced with fields of sugar cane.
By fictionalising Jim Corbett’s story, I hope I have been able to pay homage to his writing and humanity, as well as suggesting something of his legacy that lives on. Today we recognise that human-animal conflict is one of the key challenges of wildlife conservation. Corbett understood this problem as well as anyone and he had enormous empathy for the man-eater’s victims as well as the tigers and leopards that killed them.He recognised that there is no right or wrong in nature but rather a struggle in which, ultimately, we have the upper hand. While the circumstances were considerably different a century ago, many of the lessons from Corbett’s stories will help us preserve the dwindling jungles that remain.