Tracking the history of the cheetah

The Story of India’s Cheetahs

Author: Divyabhanusinh

Publisher: MARG Foundation

Pages: 322

Price: Rs 2,800 

Indian conservation has been in the spotlight since September 2022, when cheetahs from Namibia, and later from South Africa, were brought to the Kuno National Park, Madhya Pradesh. The controversy over the pros and cons of this project rages on.

But to get a sense of perspective on how, when and where this elegant and fleet-footed cat lived across South Asia and why it died out has never been more important.

That history has itself been subject of controversy that is about as animated as the one on the dos and don’ts of cheetah re-introduction. Whether the species did or did not exist there except as exotic aliens that escaped princely collections has been raised in one recent work. Titled Exotic Aliens in India  and published a decade ago,  it has also resurfaced in the current debate.

Dr Divyabhanusinh’s brush with the cheetah dates to mid-1984 when the Indian Board for Wildlife sought his opinion on the species. That he, a hotelier by training, took on the task with serious intent became evident in the earlier version of this work published in 1995. Intriguingly called The End of a Trail, it concluded with a plea for the reintroduction of the species in select habitats.
 

We now know much more about cheetahs than we did then and here the author retraces fresh evidence on its existence as well as its decline from the late 19th century onwards. Much like the lion and the gazelle, the acacia tree and the bulbul, this cat is part of the Ethiopian bio-geographic realm the global edge of which lies in west, north and central India.

Not only was the cheetah in India known to the Greeks and to early rulers, notably the Chalukyas, they recognised a feature noted by the Egypt of the Pharaohs. The cheetah does not hunt, kill, or eat humans and, more important, adults if trapped and trained can be used to run down antelopes.

This book is valuable in many ways but the collection of period piece photographs and of paintings, the latter mostly from the Mughal era, certainly enhances its value. Detailed work with the gifted naturalist historian Raza Kazmi adds to the sorry tale of the process of decline and near extinction in the British era.

Cheetahs, according to British bounty killing records as well as sporting memoirs, had a vast range stretching south into Bellary, North Arcto and Tirunelveli. They lived not only in tree-dotted savannah but also in ravine country and in glades interspersing sal forests.

The cheetah was never sought after as a trophy the way the tiger or gaur were. Nor did it win the protection of a princely benefactor as did lions in the Gir Forest from the ruler of Junagarh or the rhinos of Kaziranga from the British. What steps came in 1952 were too little but were they too late?

The most fascinating trail here is that of the last remnants of declining populations. Dr Divyabhanusinh relies here not on hunting records but on memoirs and interviews. He places the last cheetahs not in 1948 but in 1967-68 at two sites in Chhattisgarh and in Daato village, Hazaribagh now in Jharkhand. All these were forest-edge habitats, where the species was literally on its last legs.

Specific insights apart, the art and craft of trapping and training cheetahs and also of the smaller caracal are richly detailed here. In later years animals were indeed imported from Africa. What is fascinating given the recent rumpus over mortalities is the abiding concern over injury and illness among keepers and owners of the cheetahs.

Emperor Akbar innovated a new method of trapping, minimising injury to the limbs of the animals. Equally fascinating are accounts of cheetah diets in captivity: Venison and wild peacock and jungle fowl with the roughage all intact. Further, the big cats even if kept on leashes were regularly taken out and allowed to run free. The care, upkeep and maintenance of cheetahs is now a dead art but its study may hold clues for the present.

More than the species or its prey animals, chiefly the black buck and Indian gazelle, it is the landscape that these inhabited that has been obliterated or degraded. It is not only dry grassland but also the scrub forests that need much more attention and care.

It is worth noting that in the past 15 years the state of Madhya Pradesh has re-introduced successfully the tiger in Panna, the gaur in Bandhavgarh and the central Indian swamp deer in Bori. No doubt the transcontinental relocation of cheetahs is more of a challenge in scale and scope.

The larger question is of how far conservation in this century will be not only about protecting ecosystems but also about restoring them. India’s story has in the past included attempts at re-introduction, most notably of greater one-horned rhinos to Dudwa in Uttar Pradesh. When, how and where should such attempts be made and how they are to be assessed is a matter worth serious debate.

What makes the cheetah so compelling as an icon? It was the lion and the elephant that were symbols of regal and imperial power. The tiger had a key role in magic and ritual, the vyagra charma or tiger skin being critical to a certain school of ascetics as the deer skin was to the priests who conducted the fire sacrifice.

The debate over the cheetah is a reminder of how our own power needs to be tempered not just by knowledge but wonder. This is not a book to be missed.

The reviewer teaches history and environmental studies at Ashoka University, Haryana