Animal Kingdoms: Hunting, the Environment and Power in the Indian Princely States by Julie E. Hughes (review)

Hughes’ stimulating volume explores the ties that linked India’s princes to sport hunting (shikar), and how this practice shaped their relations with the colonial government, their own subjects, and the environment. Hughes argues that, in the jungle (in this context, any uncultivated land), princes “could commune with tigers” and even “assimilate the animals’ vitality into their own bodies” (45, 47). In so doing, they could at once reclaim their martial heritage, assert an enduring masculinity, and validate their sovereignty.

Three fascinating case studies of individual Rajput princes illuminate Hughes’ argument. Based on rarely examined source materials—including game diaries, the memoirs of huntsmen, and even Rajput miniature paintings—these accounts provide a unique insight into how princes saw themselves and their role in Indian society. Princes targeted whatever animals roamed their states. Tigers were always the most prized, but wild boar, grouse, and other wildfowl also fell to princely guns. The total number of kills could be enormous. By the end of his life, Ganga Singh of Bikaner, who kept meticulous records, had accounted for 25,000 sand grouse and nearly as many duck. Killing wild boar was central, Hughes argues, to the construction of Rajput identity; the boar was a tenacious opponent, especially when fought on horseback. Moreover, gifts of pork enabled a prince to “assert his superior status and political authority” over his nobles (124).

On a hunting expedition, a prince could also join with the British in a common endeavor. By hosting shooting parties, a prince could visibly proclaim his loyalty and announce his ability as a “modern administrator” (184). At the same time, as in the miniature paintings hidden in Mewar’s shooting boxes, princes could mock the British for their lack of skill, thus re-affirming their own “honor and independence” (135). But the restraints of the colonial order could never be wholly eliminated; nor was “directing shooting campaigns against birds” ever the same as “leading soldiers in battle against other men” (220).

In her final chapter, entitled “Threatened Kingdoms of Dwindling Beasts,” Hughes endeavors to assess the social and ecological consequences of setting aside large tracts of “jungle” for hunting purposes. Although acknowledging that the “conservation of princely environments and royal beasts” sometimes subjected villagers to attacks by tigers and the depredation of their crops by wild boar, Hughes nevertheless insists that subjects conceded a prince’s right to hunt, and even “celebrated their prince’s sporting successes” (266). The development of irrigation facilities in desert Bikaner, which jointly announced the prince’s “modern credentials” and extended his shooting opportunities by providing water and forage for wildlife, was “culturally intelligible and comparatively acceptable” (181).

Hughes concludes the book with a plea for a conservation model in the India of today, where only 1,706 tigers remain. What is required, she argues, are not fenced preserves but “parks with people” who take responsibility for their wildlife (274). This policy, she says, was a “defining feature of princely ecology” and remains well worth sustaining (274). Students of wildlife management and ecology, as well as historians of India and the British Empire, will welcome this thought-provoking study.