The Shikar and Hunting: Eradication of Wildlife in Colonial Jungle Mahal

Abstract

The article depicts a broader discourse on 'Hunting' or Shikar in the areas designated as 'Jungle Mahal' and the critical impacts of related activities on the socio-economic conditions of the local inhabitants living in and around the forests. During the early nineteenth century, this region was covered with thick forests and was home to various species of wild animals. The tribal population living in and around this jungle terrain had been thriving, from time immemorial, on shifting cultivation, cattle grazing and hunting. Their lives revolved around the attributes and ethos of the forests around them. The article focuses on Shikar or hunting practices of the tribal people as well as the organised hunting expeditions conducted by the then British administrators, European hunters and native kings over a period of more than one hundred years, starting from the early nineteenth century. Hunting expeditions and the commercial trading of precious wood set in motion the process of random destruction of wild animals and the forests of Jungle Mahal.