scholarly journals To Hunt or Not to Hunt: Tiger Hunting, Conservation and Collaboration in Colonial India

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 815-839
Author(s):  
Rajarshi Mitra
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
International Collaboration ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Political Ties ◽  
Cultural Status ◽  
Bengal Tiger ◽  
Tiger Conservation ◽  
Indian Forests

As the Edwardian era came to an end in Britain and its Empire began to decline, the glorious days of tiger hunting in India were being measured against a genuine fear of the total extinction of tigers. This article maps the precarious position of Indian tigers in the hands of hunters against the rising concern over preservation of the species in the first half of the twentieth century. Ranging from the bureaucratic to the overtly sentimental and personal, these attitudes, taken together, reveal a pre-‘Project Tiger’ conservation milieu in colonial India. They help us to judge the cultural status and symbol of the Bengal tiger before it became an iconic species for wildlife conservation in postcolonial India. The various debates and representations of tigers in hunting memoirs often throw light on intricate socio-cultural problems threatening the survival of the cat. In fact, the debates, as much as they spread awareness, ended up strengthening the bureaucratic and sometimes political hold over Indian forests. The article further tracks imperial discourse on the systematization of tiger hunts, which was effectively linked with the preservation of tigers and collaboration with Indians. During the twilight of the British Empire, tiger hunt and tiger conservation would emerge as sites for possible collaboration between Indians and their rulers. As recent efforts at international collaboration to protect tigers have shown, the tiger retains enough sentimental value to secure bureaucratic and political ties between nations.

Forging a British World of Trade

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Thackeray
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Collaboration ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Business Leaders ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
The Eu

Brexit is likely to lead to the largest shift in Britain’s economic orientation in living memory. Some have argued that leaving the EU will enable Britain to revive markets in Commonwealth countries with which it has long-standing historical ties. Their opponents argue that such claims are based on forms of imperial nostalgia which ignore the often uncomfortable historical trade relations between Britain and these countries, as well as the UK’s historical role as a global, rather than chiefly imperial, economy. This book explores how efforts to promote a ‘British World’ system, centred on promoting trade between Britain and the Dominions, grew and declined in influence between the 1880s and 1970s. At the beginning of the twentieth century many people from London, to Sydney, Auckland, and Toronto considered themselves to belong to culturally British nations. British politicians and business leaders invested significant resources in promoting trade with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa out of a perception that these were great markets of the future. However, ideas about promoting trade between ‘British’ peoples were racially exclusive. From the 1920s onwards colonized and decolonizing populations questioned and challenged the bases of British World networks, making use of alternative forms of international collaboration promoted firstly by the League of Nations and then by the United Nations. Schemes for imperial collaboration amongst ethnically ‘British’ peoples were hollowed out by the actions of a variety of political and business leaders across Asia and Africa who reshaped the functions and identity of the Commonwealth.

Public Finance and Personal Law in Late Colonial India

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleanor Newbigin
Keyword(s):  
Public Finance ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Personal Income Tax ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Personal Law

This chapter considers the ways in which the fiscal demands of representative government, and specifically the development of a direct, personal income tax, impacted legal subjecthood during India’s transition to Independence. It shows how early twentieth-century understandings of economic value and public finance were embedded into Indian society and legal system through discussions about personal law. This had particular consequences for Hindu personal law, which, under pressure from a centrally administered income tax regime, was re-imagined as a singular, homogeneous all-Indian legal system in ways that rendered the Hindu joint family synonymous with the representative and fiscal structures of the Indian state.

Reinventing Ramanand: Caste and History in Gangetic India

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Pinch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
English Language ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Religious History ◽  
North India ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Literature And Religion ◽  
History Of

According to Sir George Grierson, one of the pre-eminent Indologists of the early twentieth century, Ramanand led ‘one of the most momentous revolutions that have occurred in the religious history of North India.’Yet Ramanand, the fourteenth-century teacher of Banaras, has been conspicuous by his relative absence in the pages of English-language scholarship on recent Indian history, literature, and religion. The aims of this essay are to reflect on why this is so, and to urge historians to pay attention to Ramanand, more particularly to the reinvention of Ramanand by his early twentieth-century followers, because the contested traditions thereof bear on the vexed issue of caste and hierarchy in colonial India. The little that is known about Ramanand is doubly curious considering that Ramanandis, those who look to Ramanand for spiritual and community inspiration, are thought to comprise the largest and most important Vaishnava monastic order in north India. Ramanandis are to be found in temples and monasteries throughout and beyond the Hindi-speaking north, and they are largely responsible for the upsurge in Ram-centered devotion in the last two centuries. A fairly recent anthropological examination of Ayodhya, currently the most important Ramanand pilgrimage center in India, has revealed that Ramanandi sadhus, or monks, can be grouped under three basic headings: tyagi (ascetic), naga (fighting ascetic), and rasik (devotional aesthete).4 The increased popularity of the order in recent centuries is such that Ramanandis may today outnumber Dasnamis, the better-known Shaiva monks who look to the ninth-century teacher, Shankaracharya, for their organizational and philosophical moorings.

Jainism in Danger? Temple entry and the rhetoric of religion and reform in post-colonial India

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
MANISHA SETHI
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Open The Doors ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract A bitter debate broke out in the Digambar Jain community in the middle of the twentieth century following the passage of the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act in 1947, which continued until well after the promulgation of the Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955. These laws included Jains in the definition of ‘Hindu’, and thus threw open the doors of Jain temples to formerly Untouchable castes. In the eyes of its Jain opponents, this was a frontal and terrible assault on the integrity and sanctity of the Jain dharma. Those who called themselves reformists, on the other hand, insisted on the closeness between Jainism and Hinduism. Temple entry laws and the public debates over caste became occasions for the Jains not only to examine their distance—or closeness—to Hinduism, but also the relationship between their community and the state, which came to be imagined as predominantly Hindu. This article, by focusing on the Jains and this forgotten episode, hopes to illuminate the civilizational categories underlying state practices and the fraught relationship between nationalism and minorities.

Book review: Sujata Mukherjee, Gender, Medicine, and Society in Colonial India: Women’s Health Care in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Bengal

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-456
Author(s):  
Bikash Das
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women’S Health ◽  
Women's Health ◽  
New Delhi ◽  
Gender Medicine ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Women's Health Care ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

Sujata Mukherjee, Gender, Medicine, and Society in Colonial India: Women’s Health Care in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2017), xxxv + 223 pp.

Englishness, Empire and Nostalgia: A Heterodox Religious Community's Appeal in the Inter-War Years

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 374-392
Author(s):  
Jane Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Belief Networks ◽  
Healing Ministry ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Sense Of Identity ◽  
The Rich

This article looks at the ways in which the Panacea Society – a heterodox, millenarian group based in Bedford during the inter-war years – spread its ideas: through personal, familial and shared belief networks across the British empire; by building new modes of attracting adherents, in particular a global healing ministry; and by shipping its publications widely. It then examines how the society appealed to its (white) members in the empire in three ways: through its theology, which put Britain at the centre of the world; by presuming the necessity and existence of a ‘Greater Britain’ and the British empire, while in so many other quarters these entities were being questioned in the wake of World War I; and by a deliberately cultivated and nostalgic notion of ‘Englishness’. The Panacea Society continued and developed the idea of the British empire as providential at a time when the idea no longer held currency in most circles. The article draws on the rich resource of letters in the Panacea Society archive to contribute to an emerging area of scholarship on migrants’ experience in the early twentieth-century British empire (especially the dominions) and their sense of identity, in this case both religious and British.

scholarly journals World Domination Games and its Impact on the 21st Century

2017 ◽  
Vol II (1) ◽  
pp. 44-56
Author(s):  
Haseeb Ur Rehman Warrich ◽  
Muhammad Rehman ◽  
Sahrish Jamil
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Profound Impact ◽  
The World ◽  
Sustainable Economic Growth ◽  
And Control ◽  
Great Game ◽  
Game Changer

No other element impacted the historical conditions of the preceding 100 years to such an extent as the war to secure and control the world's reserves of petroleum. Sustainable economic growth after 1873, that discouraged British Empire, arose mechanical economies in Europe. Central Asia remained the object of rivalries and machination by the giant countries of the Europe. World Domination Games started from Pillage Games that lead towards many “Games” such as Great Game, New Great Game, Game Changer and New Game Changer. All prefect countries desire to have a control over the world for the last two centuries. Their efforts turn into numerous clashes and clashes led towards wars. In the twentieth century wars transformed not only their names but also their genetics that has profound impact on the 21st Century. This laid foundation of the emerging new superpowers in every century.

scholarly journals Factors Influencing People's Response Toward Tiger Translocation in Satkosia Tiger Reserve, Eastern India

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaishali Vasudeva ◽  
Pitchai Ramasamy ◽  
Rabi Sankar Pal ◽  
Gatikrishna Behera ◽  
Pradeep Raj Karat ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Resource Dependence ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Forest Department ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Tiger Reserve ◽  
Tiger Conservation

Local communities are an important stakeholder in any carnivore translocation programme and therefore, their acceptance of the translocation and support are essential to ensure its viability. Recent tiger augmentation efforts in Satkosia Tiger Reserve, India received mixed responses from the local communities, causing a stalemate in its progress. As a part of the adaptive management strategy, it was required to assess the concerns and issues to provide a practical solution. Hence, we analyzed the attitude of the people toward conservation in general and tiger specifically. We used structured questionnaire surveys and interviewed 1,932 households from 43 villages located in and around the reserve. We tested the influence of several variables representing four categories- (1) socio-economic, (2) ecosystem values and dependence, (3) relationship with the forest department and (4) losses and fear, on the attitude toward tiger conservation. The villages were clustered based on the responses received under these categories. While conserving forest was important to 91% of respondents, 71% of respondents supported wildlife conservation and only 35% felt important to conserve tiger. The logistic binary regression predicted that at the household level attitude toward tiger conservation is influenced positively by economic well-being, sense of forest ecosystem services, resource dependence and negatively influenced by restrictions from the forest department, and previous experience of loss due to wildlife. At the village level, literacy, resource dependence, access to clean cooking fuel and cooperation from the forest department predicted a positive attitude toward tiger conservation. Restriction from the forest department, fear for livestock, and experience of losses due to wildlife had a negative influence on attitude. We recommend that the villages in the landscape are prioritized based on their needs and accordingly, specific interventions are made to address their concerns. Future augmentation programme must give importance to intangible factors such as fear and perceived restrictions and opt for the involvement of the local community in the decision-making process.

Provincial Pasts and National Histories: Territorial self-fashioning in twentieth-century Bihar

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 1347-1374
Author(s):  
ARYENDRA CHAKRAVARTTY
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Regional Identity ◽  
Research Society ◽  
National Integration ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
National Framework

AbstractThis article explores how local lived experiences and nationalist sentiments converged to shape a regional literati's conception of the province of Bihar in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial India. Following the formation of the separate province of Bihar in 1912, certain very powerful Indian-nationalist and cultural-historical factors were deployed to create a much-needed cultural-historical past for Bihar. In this project of territorial self-fashioning, institutions such as the Bihar and Orissa Research Society (1915) and the Patna Museum (1917) became crucial to the new political-cultural configuration of the region. Additionally, they also made Bihar's ancient past visible in a deliberately nationalist narrative. Projecting its rich ancient past onto a national framework provided Bihar with the possibility of overcoming its characterization as ‘backward’ and provincial. This article therefore moves beyond analytic frameworks of nationalism which emphasize particularities of regional identity by framing them in perpetual antagonism to the efforts of Indian national integration. By looking at the construction of narratives of an ancient past that straddled the region and the nation, I argue that the emergence of an entity called Bihar was braided into India's nationalist imagination.

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