A.J.T. Johnsingh’s “On Jim Corbett’s Trail” & “The Jim Corbett Omnibus”

A.J.T. Johnsingh’s “On Jim Corbett’s Trail” & “The Jim Corbett Omnibus”

By Adil Ahmad on Friday, May 29, 2015 at 7:13pm

READERS CLUB BOOKS’ PRESENTATION 15-5-15
A.J.T. Johnsingh’s “On Jim Corbett’s Trail” and “The JimCorbett Omnibus”

Dr. Asir Jawahar Thomas Johnsingh

(born 14 October 1945) is an Indian vertebrate ecologist from Tamil Nadu. His introduction to Jim Corbett came when he accidentally discovered a Tamil translation of ‘Man-eaters of Kumaon’ on the wrong shelf in a corner of the library in Nanguneri. “As I greedily turned its pages it cast aspell on me that has still not lifted.”

Johnsingh's study of the Dhole (Asiatic wild dog) in Bandipur National Park was ground-breaking in that it was the first study of afree-ranging animal by an Indian scientist. He comes from Nagercoil and is an advisor to the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests.

Considering that he is a naturalist and environmentalist, one expects Johnsingh to be a pacifist. So it came as a surprise to see his strong association with the Indian Air Force, as evident from the dedication of his book to “…. the numerous brave MIG 21 pilots who flew into death, and thousands of security personnel who have sacrificed their lives for the honourof the nation.”

Johnsingh gives motivational speeches and is a wildlife enthusiast. He has authored various environmental books of which ‘On Jim Corbett’s Trail’ is one. Dr. Asir Jawahar Thomas Johnsingh is also the recipient of the Padma Shri Award and has received various other distinguished awards including the $100,000 ABN AMRO Prize.

Johnsingh’s primary focus is on studying the degradation since Jim Corbett's time (1875 - 1955) that has taken place in the flora and fauna of this remarkable forest land. This once magnificent forest is now buckling under the strain and stress of a runaway human population that has encroached upon the tiger’s habitat to devastating effect, resulting in a decimation of the species.

Change for the worse

In his book Johnsingh writes: “Between 1907 and 1938 Jim Corbett shot 8 man-eating tigers and two man-eating leopards in the Kumaon hills. These man-eaters had killed about 900 people. Much has changed in these hills since then, as in many other parts of this world. The bridle paths on which men and their horses walked for days, (often through dense and forbiddingjungles), to reach their destinations; have been converted into motorable roads where buses roar past each other.

Pati, the village that Jim Corbett mentions in his account of the Champawat man-eater, had a population of 50 people in 1907. It now has about 2500 people. The major victims of this change are the forests and wildlife.

The dense oak and scrub jungle that Corbett mentions in his book the Temple Tiger of Devidhura, has been lost to cultivation. In place of the single grass hut village there are now numerous masonry houses.

Poaching & Habitat loss

Sambar, the fabled ‘bara 12 singha’, is the staple diet of the tiger. Poaching has eliminated the sambar in most places. Stopping the poaching of wild ungulates (hoofed animals, including deer, wild boar and wild mountainsheep) is the immediate task. Many poachers have been eking out a living selling wildlife meat, and farmers living around wildlife reserves have been killing wild ungulates for the pot. (Markhor preservation in Chitral through trophy hunting and phased culling).

In the Corbett tiger reserve, which has the only viable population of tigers, 200 to 300 firewood cutters come on bicycles every day and collect firewood for sale in faraway places, and heavily disturb this area.

Monoculture plantations, particularly Teak, makes for an inferior habitat for sambar and pig. They do not offer the shade critically needed in summer, and in the winter they do not provide enough cover for the tiger to stalk its prey. Polyculture plantations of species that are unpalatable to cattle and wild ungulates are the answer.

In late April 1993, 84 years after Corbett’s visit, Johnsingh explored the same forest with a colleague in a 10 days trip using ajeep. They decided to see the areas between Kaladhungi and Tanakpur where Corbett had shot the Mukteshwar, Champawat, Chuka and Thak man-eaters, a distance of 300 kilometers. His is a dismal narrative of his trip, a tale of human population explosions and rampant human greed that has devastated the once pristine and flourishing flora and fauna of the Kumaon and its Terai and Bhabhar districts.

Shifting Baseline & collective ecologicalamnesia

Dr. John Seidensticker, senior scientist at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington D.C., has written the Foreword to Johnsingh’s book, and in it he talks about the collective ecological amnesia. A father can tell his son how it was, but the son, who has never experienced what his father has seen, simply cannot appreciate the changes in nature that are happening everywhere.

For this reason, our collective idea about what is natural changes, usually for the worse. Ecologists recognize this and have given it a name: the shifting baseline. Consequently, our environmental history is not grounded, and we simply do not see or understand the deterioration that is occurring.

But Dr. Johnsingh is not pessimistic. He sees a growing conservation awareness in India’s young people. He has spent his life imparting his enthusiasm to his many students at the Wildlife Institute of India. There is hope, and Umeed pay Duniya qaim hai.

 

Jim Corbett Early life

Edward James "Jim"Corbett, born 25^th July 1875 in Nainital, United Provinces, British India. Died 19^th April 2955, aged 79, in Nyeri, Kenya. Of British Indian nationality, his occupation is listed as ‘hunter, naturalist, and writer’.

Corbett held the rank of colonel in the British Indian Army and was frequently called upon by the government of the United Provinces, now the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, to kill man-eating tigers and leopards that were preying on people in the nearby villages of the Garhwal and Kumaon regions. His hunting successes earned him longstanding respect and fame in Kumaon. Some even claim the locals considered him a sadhu (holy man).

Avid photographer

Corbett was an avid photographer and after his retirement authored Man-Eaters of Kumaon,Jungle Lore,and other books recounting his hunts and experiences, which enjoyed critical acclaim and commercial success. Later on in life, Corbett spoke out for the need to protect India's wildlife from extermination and played a key role increating a national reserve for the endangered Bengal tiger by using his influence to persuade the provincial government to establish it. In 1957 the national park was renamed Jim Corbett National Park in his honour.

Edward James Corbett was born of English ancestry in the town of Nainital in the Kumaon of the Himalaya (now in the Indian state of Uttarakhand). He grew up in a large family of 16 children and was the eighth child of Willam Christopher and Mary Jane Corbett. His parents had moved to Nainital in 1862, after Christopher Corbett had been appointed the town's postmaster.

In winters, the family used to move to the foothills, where they owned a cottage named 'Arundel' in Chhoti Haldwani or "Corbett's Village", now known as Kaladhungi. After his father's death, when Jim was 4 years old, his eldest brother Tom took over as postmaster of Nainital.

From a very young age, Jim was fascinated by the forests and wildlife around his home in Kaladhungi. At a young age,through frequent excursions, he learned to identify most animals and birds by their calls. Over time he became a good tracker and hunter.

He studied at the Oak Openings School, later merged with Philander Smith College in Nainital (later known as Halett War School, and now known as Birla Vidya Mandir, Nainital).Before he was 19, he quit school and found employment with the Bengal and North Western Railway, initially working as a fuel inspector at Manakpur in the Punjab, and subsequently as a contractor for the trans-shipment of goods across the Ganges at Mokameh Ghat in Bihar.

Hunting Man-eaters

Between1907 and 1938, Corbett tracked and shot a total of 33 man-eaters, though only about a dozen were actually well documented. It is claimed that these big cats had killed more than 1,200 men, women and children.

The first tiger he killed, the Champawat Tigress in Champawat, was responsible for 436 documented deaths. She had arrived from Nepal a full-fledged man-eater, having been driven out by a body of armed Nepalese after she had killed 200 people there. Though most of his kills were tigers, Corbett successfully killed at least two man-eating leopards. The first was the Panar Leopard in1910, which allegedly killed 400 people.

The second was the man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag in 1926, which terrorized the pilgrims on the holy Hindu shrines Kedarnath and Badrinath for more than eight years, claiming responsibility for more than 126 deaths.

Other notable man-eaters he killed were the Talla-Des man-eater, the Mohan man-eater,theThakman-eater, the Muktesar man-eater and the Chowgarh tigress.

Corbett preferred to hunt alone and on foot when pursuing dangerous game. He speaks of possessing a strong 6^th sense that warns him of impending danger.Before he receives any indication from birds or other animals of the tiger’s presences,his 6^th sense tells him it has arrived.

He often hunted with Robin, a small dog he wrote about in Man-Eaters of Kumaon. At times, Corbett took great personal risks to save lives. He was deeply respected where he worked.

Why Tigers become man-eaters?

Analysis of carcasses, skulls and preserved remains show that most of the man-eaters were suffering from disease or wounds, such as porcupine quills embedded deep in the skin or gunshot wounds that had not healed. The Thak man-eating tigress, when skinned by Corbett, revealed two old gunshot wounds; one in her shoulder had become septic, and could have been the reason for the tigress's having turned man-eater, Corbett suggested. In the foreword of Man Eaters of Kumaon, Corbett writes:

The wound that has caused a particular tiger to take to man-eating might be the result of a carelessly fired shot and failure to follow up and recover the wounded animal, or be the result of the tiger having lost his temper while killing a porcupine.

In an encounter with a porcupine the Mukteswar man-eating tigress lost an eye and got some 50 quills, 1 to 9 inches long, embedded in its arm and under the pad of its right foreleg. Several of these quills, after striking aone, had doubled back in the form of a ‘U’, and these had become septic.

She was lying in a thick patch of grass, starving and licking her wounds, when a woman selected this particular patch to cutter fodder for her cattle. At first the tigress took no notice, but when the woman had cut the grass right up to where she was laying the tigress struck once, crushing the woman’s skull. Death was instantaneous. The woman was still holding her sickle in one hand and the tuft of grass she was about to cut in the other hand.

Leaving the woman lying where she had fallen, the tigress limped off for over a mile, and took refuge in a little hollow under a fallen tree. Two days later a man came to chip firewood off this fallen tree, and the tigress who was lying onthe far side, killed him. The smell of blood trickling down his body possibly gave her the idea that here was something she could satisfy her hunger with, and before leaving she ate a small portion from his back.

Aday after that she killed her third victim deliberately and without any provocation. Thereafter she became an established man-eater, and had killed 24 people before she was finally accounted for.

Itis a popular belief that man-eaters do not eat the head, hands and feet of the human victims. This is in correct. Man-eaters, if not disturbed, eat everything, including the blood soaked clothes.

Benefit of the Doubt

A tiger on a fresh kill, or a wounded tiger, or a tigress with small cubs, will occasionally kill human beings that disturb them. But these tigers cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be called man-eaters, though they are often so called.

Personally, I would give the tiger the benefit of the doubt once, and then once again, before classifying it as a man-eater. Wherever possible I would subject the victim to a post mortem…. I know of cases where deaths have wrongly been ascribed to carnivora.

Cubs of man-eaters do not automatically become man-eaters. Human beings are not the natural prey of tigers or leopards.

As a general rule tigers are responsible for all kills that take place in daylight, and leopards kill at night. When a tiger becomes a man-eater it loses all fear of human beings. A leopard, even after it has killed scores of people, never loses its fear of man. Hence man-eating tigers are easier to shoot than man-eating leopards.

A tiger unmolested does no harm. Stand perfectly still until it has passed and gone. A radical example of this is mentioned by Johnsingh as he recalls an incident regarding the Champawat man-eater narrated by Jim Corbett. P22-23 (Johnsingh)

A tiger’s function in the scheme of things is to help maintain the balance in nature, and if, on rare occasions, when driven by dire necessity, he kills a human being, or when his natural food has been ruthlessly exterminated by man, he kills 2% of the cattle he is alleged to have killed, it is not fair to brand the entire species as being cruel and bloodthirsty.
The tiger is a large hearted gentleman with boundless courage. When he is exterminated, as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies to his support, India will be poorer by having lost the finest of her fauna.

How Leopards turn man-eaters (Jim Corbett Omnibus Author’s Note page xiv)

Leopards, unlike tigers, are to a certain extent scavengers. In his Author’s Note to ‘Man-eaters of Kumaon’, Jim Corbett writes: “The dwellers in our hills are predominantly Hindu, and as such cremate their dead. The cremation invariably takes place on the bank of a stream orriver so that the ashes may be washed down into the Ganges, and eventually into the sea.

As most of the villages are situated highup on the hills, while the streams and rivers are in many cases miles down in the valley, the funeral entails a considerable tax on the manpower of the small community when, in addition to the carrying party, labor has to be provided to collect and carry the fuel needed for the cremation. In normal times these rites are carried out very effectively.

But when disease in epidemic form sweeps through the hills, and the inhabitants dies faster than they can disposed off, a live coal is put in the mouth of the deceased, and they carry the body to the edge of the hill and cast it into the valley below.

A leopard, in which his natural food is scarce, finds these bodies and very soon acquires a taste for human flesh. When the disease dies down the leopard, on finding its food supply cut off, takes to killing human beings.

Of the two man-eating leopards of Kumaon,which between them killed 524 people, one followed on the heels of a very severe outbreak of cholera, while the other followed the mysterious disease which swept through India in 1918 and was called ‘war fever’.

Hunter turned conservationist

Corbett bought his first camera in the late 1920s and, inspired by his friend Frederick Walter Champion,started to record tigers on cine film. Although he had an intimate knowledge of the jungle, it was a demanding task to obtain good pictures, as the animals were exceedingly shy.

Corbett became deeply concerned about the tigers' habitat and fate; he didn't kill a tiger without confirmation of its killing people. He took to lecturing groups ofschool children about their natural heritage and the need to conserve forests and their wildlife.

He promoted the foundation of the Association for the Preservation of Game in the United Provinces and the All-India Conference for the Preservation of Wildlife. Together with Champion he played a key role in establishing India's first national park in the Kumaon Hills, the Hailey National Park, initially named after Lord Malcolm Hailey. The park was renamed in Corbett's honour in 1957.

Corbett was a humanist and deeply empathized with the poor, innocent locals living inand around the Corbett village or Kaladhoongi in the United Province (now Uttrakhand).

Asa railway contractor he employed scores of Indians at Mokameh Ghat. While dedicating his book My India to "...my friends, the poor of India", he writes "It is of these people, who are admittedly poor,and who are often described as 'India"s starving millions', among whom I have lived and whom I love, that I shall endeavor to tell in the pages of this book, which I humbly dedicate to my friends, the poor of India."

Retiring in Kenya

JimCorbett resided in the GurneyHouse alongwith his sister Maggie Corbett. They sold the house to Mrs. Kalavati Varma, before leaving for Kenya in November 1947. The house has been transformed into a museum and is known as the Jim Corbett Museum.

After 1947, Corbett and his sister Maggie retired to Nyeri, Kenya, where he continued to write and sound the alarm about declining numbers of wild cats and other wildlife. Corbett was atthe TreeTops, a hut built on the branches of a giant ficus tree, when Princess Elizabeth stayed there on 5–6 February 1952, at the time of the death of her father, King George VI.Corbett wrote in the hotel's visitors' register:

"Forthe first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a treeone day a Princess, and after having what she described as her most thrillingexperience, she climbed down from the tree the next day a Queen—God bless her."

Corbett died of a heart attack a few days after he finished his sixth book, Tree Tops, and was buried at St. Peter's Anglican Church in Nyeri. His memories were kept intact in the form of the meeting place Moti House, which Corbett had built for his friend Moti Singh, and the Corbett Wall, a long wall (approximately 4.5 miles (7.2 km)) built around the village to protect crops from wild animals.

Man-eaters of Kumaon was a great success in India, the UnitedKingdom and the United States, the first edition of the American Book-of-the-Month Club being 250,000 copies. It was later translated into 27 languages. Corbett's fourth book,Jungle Lore, is considered his autobiography.

The Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand, India was renamed in his honour in 1957. He had played a key role in establishing this protected area in the 1930s.

In1968, one of the five remaining subspecies of tigers was named after him: Panthera tigris corbetti, the IndochineseTiger, also called Corbett's tiger.

In1994 and 2002, the long-neglected graves of Corbett and his sister (both in Kenya) were repaired and restored by Jerry A. Jaleel, founder and director of the Jim Corbett Foundation.

Hollywood movie

In1948, in the wake of Man-Eaters of Kumaon's success, a Hollywood film, Man-Eater of Kumaon, was made, directed by Byron Haskin and starring Sabu, Wendell Corey andJoe Page. The film did not follow any of Corbett's stories; a new story was invented. The film was a flop, although some interesting footage of the tiger was filmed. Corbett is known to have said that "the best actor was the tiger".

Other adaptations

In1986, the BBC produced a docudrama titled Man-Eaters of India with Frederick Treves in the role of Jim Corbett. An IMAX movie India: Kingdom of the Tiger, based on Corbett's books, was made in 2002 starring Christopher Heyerdahl as Corbett. A TV movie based onThe Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag starring Jason Flemyng was made in 2005.

Kumaon (Hindi) or Kumaun

This is one of the two regions and administrative divisions of Uttarakhand, a mountainous state of northern India, the other being Garhwal. It includes the districts of Almora,Bageshwar, Champawat, Nainital,Pithoragarh, and UdhamSingh Nagar. It is bounded on the north by Tibet, on the east by Nepal, on the south by the state of UttarPradesh, and on the west by the Garhwal region. The people of Kumaon are known as Kumaonis and speak the Kumaoni language.

Importanttowns of Kumaon are Haldwani, Nainital, Almora,Pithoragarh, Rudrapur, Kashipur,Pantnagar, Mukteshwar and Ranikhet. Nainital is the administrative centre of Kumaon Division and this is where the Uttarakhand high court is located.

The name Kumaon is believed to have been derived from "Kurmanchal",meaning land of the Kurmavatar (the tortoise incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the preserver according to Hinduism). The region of Kumaon is named after as such.

The Kumaonis were never fully subjugated by the powerful Muslim dynasties of Delhi. Kumaonis were observed by the British, their valour was thus given recognition by the British and were included in the British Army. It is interesting to note that the 3rd Gorkha Rifles was known asthe Keemaon battalion when it was first formed.

Kumaon Geography

The Kumaon region consists of a large Himalayan tract, together with two submontane strips called the Terai and the Bhabhar. The submontane strips were up to 1850 feet an almost impenetrable forest, given upto wild animals; but after 1850 feet the numerous clearings attracted a large population from the hills, who cultivated the rich soil during the hot and cold seasons, returning to the hills in the rains. The rest of Kumaon is a maze of mountains, part of the Himalaya range, some of which are among the loftiest known. In a tract not more than 225 km in length and 65 km in breadth there are over thirty peaks rising to elevations exceeding 5500 m.

The rivers like Gori, Dhauli, and Kali rise chiefly in the southern slope of theTibetan watershed north of the loftiest peaks, amongst which they make their way down valleys of rapid declivity and extraordinary depth. The principal are the Sharda (Kali Ganga), the Pindari and Kailganga, whose waters join the Alaknanda. The river Sharda (Kali Ganga) forms the international boundary between India and Nepal.

The chief trees are the Chir Pine, Himalayan Cypress, Pindrow Fir, alder, sal or iron-wood, and saindan. Except in the submontane strips and deep valleys the climateis mild. The rainfall of the outer Himalayan range, which is first struck by the monsoon, is double that of the central hills, in the average proportion of2000 mm to 1000 mm. No winter passes without snow on the higher ridges, and in some years it is universal throughout the mountain tract. Frosts, especially in the valleys, are often severe.

Passages from “On Jim Corbett’s Trail”

Mammoths

At love and war P80;Major population P83; Hurdles to movement in Rajaji-Corbett corridor P83-84-85;Sex ratio P86; Bulls in Musth P87; Big Boss’s last stand P91

Vanishing Tiger

P73– In the year 1900 E.P.Gee, an English tea planter in Assam, made the first guesstimate of the tiger population in India, and put the number at 40,000. In1947 Jim Corbett wrote in ‘the Man-eaters of Kumaon’ that the Himalayan foothills had 10 times more tigers than that, about 400,000 when he learnt to hunt there as a boy in the late 19^th century. Maharaja Kumar of Udaipur shot at least 1000 tigers during his lifetime, and the Maharaja of Surguja’s score topped Udaipur’s by 150.

Poisoning carcasses

Improved healthcare enabled the human population to increase rapidly, resulting in the loss of more and more tiger habitat to agriculture and development projects.Crop protection guns were easily available, and poaching became uncontrollable.Villagers began to poison the carcasses of the cattle killed by tigers. This was by far the greatest danger to tiger populations. While legal hunting was selective, and poachers usually shot a single animal, poisoning can eradicate entire families of tigers that feed on the poisoned carcasses, along with hyenas and jackals that often scavenge on tiger kills.

Tiger hunting was banned in India in 1969. By 1972 India’s tiger population had dwindled to 1827. In 1973 a national campaign Project Tiger was launched, and 9 reserves were selected covering 16,314 square kilometers and representing diverse bio-geographic zones, with the objective of protecting and managing ecosystems in which the tiger lives. Livestock in the villages situated inside the periphery of the reserves were vaccinated against communicable diseases such as foot-and-mouth and rinderpest which often take a heavy toll on the deer population when it comes in contact with infected livestock. In 2003 there were 27 tiger reserves commanding an area of 37,761 sq km supporting some 1615 tigers, according to forest department records. In 1972 the 9 tiger reserves had only 268 tigers. In 1989 tiger numbers stood at 4334.

Project Tiger was acclaimed as a conservation success story, though in the view of some skeptics the rise in numbers was due to unscientific methods of counting. On the day of the census a large number of untrained and unmotivated people are employed to do this exercise, leading to the collection of unreliable data.

Of the 8 sub-species of the tiger, the Caspian, Javan and Balinese are now extinct, and the South China tiger is close to extinction. Only the Indian tiger has managed to revive its population.    

Trade in tiger body parts

While India was well aware of the trade in tiger skins, until the late 1980s it was almost oblivious to the magnitude of the trade in tigerbone and other body parts for oriental medicine. China and Taiwan use every part of the tiger in their traditional medicine, as well as in the brewing ofliquor. In 1950 the South China tiger population was estimated at 4000. There were also a considerable number of Siberian or Amur tigers, and maybe 2000 Indi-Chinese and Indian tigers.

When the Chinese tiger population came close to extinction, traders looked for supplies from Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Next on the traders radar came Nepal, Bhutan and India.

In the year 2000 Peter Mathiessen in his book ‘Tigers in the snow’ reported that 15 kilos of powdered tiger bones can fetch a street price of US$750,000/-. Tiger skins fetched only 10,000 rupees. In the first half of 1993 TRAFFIC India, the wildlife trade monitoring arm of the WWF reported the seizure of 475 kg of tiger bones and 13 tiger skins. It was estimated that at least 30 tigers were killed for that material. In 1999,according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India, 280 kg of tiger bones got smuggled out of India. Conservationists fear this is the tip of theiceberg.

The inadequately paid, under-equipped and poorly motivated staff of the wildlife protection force are insufficient and unprepared to fight the nexus of poachers dealing in very big bucks. Adding further insult to injury and undermining the system is the state’s unwillingness to administer justice to poachers who are apprehended.

Mahseer

P118 – Fresh water scaly fish. Huge size. 70 to 80 kg frequently caught. Can grow to over 100 kg. In ‘Man-eaters of Kumaon’ Corbett describes fishing for Mahseer in a river that flowed for some 60 km through a wooded valley teeming with wildlife. As Corbett fished for his dinner, the air was filled with the fragrance of flowers and the spring songs of a multitude of birds. Angling for Mahseer in a submontane riverin such an atmosphere, Corbett thought, was a sport fit for kings. Long after he had forgotten the weight of the 50 pounds fish he had caught, he ruminated, he would remember the beauty of that river valley. Corbett’s descriptions fit well with the Ramganga Valley in the Corbett Tiger Reserve which is still one of the few strongholds of the Mahseer in India.