1) How the Asiatic lion lost his throne in India; 2) Gir’s lions need a second home to survive; 3) From princely symbol to conservation icon: A political history of the lion in India; By Mahesh Rangarajan

[Guest guest]

1)

How the Asiatic lion lost his throne in India;

 

2) Gir’s lions need a second home to survive;

3) From

princely symbol to conservation icon:A political history of the lion in India

By Mahesh

Rangarajan

 

How the lion lost his throneFebruary 5th, 2010; By Mahesh Rangarajan; Deccan

Chronicle

 

It was a coup with a difference. No life was lost. No

blood was shed. No one lost power. There was, to use a common phrase of

this century, no regime change. But a king lost a crown. A new claimant

became an icon.

It was a momentous time in human affairs. Conservation was among her

priorities as Indira Gandhi tightened her grip on the polity. But it

was the tiger that took pride of place, and not just in conservation

efforts. In 1972, the tiger replaced the lion as India’s national

animal.

Project Tiger’s first director, Kailash Sankhala, celebrated the moment

later as one where the tiger ousted the lion that “had ruled

meaninglessly for thousands of yearsâ€.

Both animals had long held claim to the human imagination. But from at

least three centuries before the Common Era it was the lion that

dominated verse and prose. The Buddha was known as “Shakta Simhaâ€, or

the lion among the shaktas (worshippers of God). The sermon at Sarnath

was compared to the roar of the lion.

Royalty and divinity embraced the lion imagery even more than

sainthood. The Tirupavai of Andal compared the gait of Lord Vishnu to

the walk of a lion. The lion throne or simahasana, still common in

Hindustani, has a long and distinguished lineage.

Sankhala, founding director of Project Tiger, saw cause for enthroning

the tiger. It would be the rallying point to save an endangered natural

heritage. Dr Karan Singh, chair of the steering committee of Project

Tiger, hoped that the tiger would be a symbol of unity in diversity.

As it turned out the lion did get protection, not only directly but

also for its forest home and prey. More chital and sambhar meant less

cattle kills. As conflict with humans dwindled, lions bred.

Today, the tiger gets its share of press. By contrast the spell of

poaching lions two years ago in Gujarat has not been repeated. The

lions may be secure but biologists argue it needs a second home. No

amount of persuasion seems enough to get Gujarat to part with its

prized possession: the lions of the Gir Forest.

The lions have taken things into their own paws and have a range well

beyond the frontiers of the protected zones, whether national park,

sanctuary or reserved forest. The big cats are peripatetic and do not

recognise human-made boundaries.

But their future is trapped, amongst those who cannot or will not think

beyond the bounds. The fact of being in Gujarat is said to secure their

future. In a narrow and immediate sense this is indeed true. Over four

decades of science-based surveys and studies indicate a healthy,

breeding population, cubs and all. But all it will take to wipe them

out is a round of feline distemper or a virus. As it turns out, the

lions of Gir have a narrow variation in their genes. More of them are

likely to be vulnerable to a calamity in the form of disease than

appears so at first sight.

How and why they became symbols of regional pride has to do with

Gujarat’s own history. Narendra Modi is now the champion of their

cause, but it were the Muslim nawabs of Junagarh who saved the animals

from near certain extinction. They doled out hunting invitations in the

most miserly way possible and shot only a few. In return, the lions

flourished.

There was a bill to be settled, not with the hunters but with the

cattle keepers. A buffalo owner is unlikely to take kindly to his

prized milch animals ending up as dinner for the king of beasts. So as

early as 1900, the nawabs set up systems to pay compensations for loss

of stock.

They knew just how rare the lions were. In his magisterial and richly

illustrated The Lions of Asia, Divyabhanusinh shows how the nawabs

resisted pressures form even the rulers of Gwalior to transfer a few

lions to their hunting reserves. Rarity was what made the big cats so

valuable. Rarity and the unique status of being the last lions in all

of Asia.

What got the species into trouble is probably what made them so

significant in legend, icon and symbol down the ages. The mane of the

male made it a magnificent trophy. Hunters with bow and arrows, spears

and swords did not make the inroads that modern weapons did, one

British officer shooting dead as many as 55 within a day’s ride in

Delhi in 1857-58. But more than the gun, it was the axe and plough that

cleared the dry grasslands, its ideal home. Cattle were always easy

prey. But this earned the lions the deep animosity of cattle owners.

Gir was unique. Its maldharis, or buffalo keepers, learnt to live with

the lions, securing herds in thorn fences at night. The hills were

malarial, a deterrent to settlers. So the big cat survived in this

corner of India, helped by the nawabs’ beneficence and the

pastoralists’ tolerance.

But as is often the case, there is more to this than meets the eye. For

a species that once ranged right across north and central India and

westward to Palestine, this is tiny toe, or should we say claw, hold of

a home. The lions have helped protect the Gir, the largest intact

natural forest in Gujarat.

The commendable job of the state has kept alive in flesh an animal that

resonates deeply in culture and legend. Yet, care is not enough. The

Kuno reserve in Madhya Pradesh, readied over a decade ago, still awaits

lions. These would be only an insurance should disaster strike Gir.

Politics deprived the lion of a status at a national level. Regional

nationalism needs to see reason. A second home would do more than

secure the lion’s future. So much for the throne long gone. Will

Gujarat let India give the lion a future?

* Mahesh Rangarajan is an environmental historian. He recently co-edited the

book Environmental History: As If Nature Existed

Source:

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/op-ed/how-lion-lost-his-throne-640

 

Also see:

 

 

CALL OF THE WILD Gir’s lions need a second home to survive

By MAHESH RANGARAJAN

 

April 17, 2007; The Telegraph, Calcutta, India

 

 

The

recent poaching of six lions for claws in the Gir forest has led to

calls for better policing and protection. The immediate response of

both the Union and the Gujarat state governments has been on expected

lines.

So

far, so good. But what next? To learn better how to protect and

safeguard the lion, it is necessary to ask why it is a dim memory

across so much of its historic range.

Just

two centuries ago, the species had a range across much of north and

central India. It is not widely known that later Mughal rulers like

Shah Alam II hunted lions on elephant-back in the region now comprising

Haryana. In the aftermath of the Great Rebellion of 1857, a British

officer, George Acland Smith, shot as many as 300. Of these, over 50

were shot within a day’s horse ride out of the old imperial capital of

Delhi.

By

the turn of the earlier century, the prides that had roamed the

grasslands and the scrub jungles of the subcontinent for millennia had

vanished. Some were shot by trophy-hunters equipped with better,

long-range rifles. Others were poisoned by their owners, whose

antagonism was further fuelled by the rich bounties offered for the

great beasts by the new British rulers. The princes and maharajahs did their

share of polishing off what was left. Even before much of its

dry grassland home in the plains was converted to cultivation, the big

cat had vanished.

The

Gir hills of the Kathiawar peninsula were one place where a few

survived. They survived, but only just. From the late 19th century, a

most unusual bond grew up between the Babi Pathan dynasty that ruled

over Junagadh and the lions of the Gir forest. Efforts to protect them

from the hunter’s bullet and the poison of the irate cattle-owner were

unusual for a time when all carnivores were seen by rulers (British or

princely) as evil incarnate.

But

about 1900, such protection is exactly what the lions got. A few were

still shot, but only large males with big manes. The lionesses and

cubs, and most of their male kin, were under formal princely

protection. When Ranji, the famous prince of Nawanagar, shot a lioness

in an adjacent range outside the territory of Junagadh, he came under

widespread criticism.

The engaging story is well told in a recent work by Divyabhanusinh. The Story of

Asia’s Lions,

as he calls it, is not merely a tale from ages past. On not one but two

occasions, the species had a brush with the spirits. The first was at

the time of independence, when the nawab fled to Pakistan. The aarzi hukumat or

people’s government under Samaldas Gandhi (a nephew of the Mahatma)

had other, more pressing tasks. But intervention by Jawaharlal Nehru,

in February 1948, got the government to act. Pickets were put up, and

the protection against trigger-happy hunters remained in place. The

lions had won a lease of life.

Yet,

Gir was more than a forest of the lions, the only ones left in the wild

in all of Asia. There was a slow-burning conflict with the buffalo

herding maldharis, a people who have long made the Gir their

home. Cultivation nibbled away the valley floors, while deer and wild

boar became increasingly rare. Predation on cattle led to intense

conflicts with people.

It

was under president’s rule in 1974 that a Gir lion project got under

way. It is largely due to the protection of the prey, predator and the

habitat that the lion and the forest staged a remarkable recovery.

Research by scholars like Ravi Chellam was to show later, and

decisively, how the lions turned from preying on buffaloes to deer as

the latter grew in number.

While

accepting encomiums for the remarkable success story, the government

and the people of Gujarat have been deeply conscious of how special

their prides are. Nowhere else in Asia are there lions in the wild. In

the pre-independence period, the rulers of Junagadh and a few adjoining

states took great pride and joy in “their†lions. Already by the time

Nehru sent his urgent telegram to the local administration, Gujaratis

in cities like Ahmedabad were seeing the lion as a distinctive symbol

of their region. About a quarter century later, it was also declared

the state animal of Gujarat.

Therein

lies the nub of today’s problem. The name for the lion in India is not

the Asian lion (as elsewhere in the world) or the Indian lion (as often

described before 1972, when it was displaced by the tiger as the

national animal). It is known simply as the Gir lion.

The

problem is that the very regional pride that has helped save the

animals has now become a hindrance to their future. Nowhere is this as

clear as in the near total opposition to relocating a small number of

lions to a second home in central India’s Kuno wildlife sanctuary.

One

of Narendra Modi’s predecessors, Shankersinh Vagehla, once told a

journalist that he would not even part with a single lion cub, let

alone a lion. Since then, attitudes have hardened. The Gujarat

government is considering the re-introduction of lions in the Barda

hills in the Saurashtra peninsula. It is, however, not willing to

consider parting with a few lions for a second home outside the state.

Regionalism,

once a valued ally, can also be immune to reason. The lions of Gir are

vulnerable to epidemics like tick fever that resulted in the death of

over a thousand lions in Tanzania’s famous Serengeti in the early

Nineties.

Neither

a chief ministerial visit, as Narendra Modi’s within days of the recent

poaching incidents, nor the newly established Wild- life Crime Cell

will be of much help were a disease to strike the lions.

If

anything, Gujarat could take a leaf out of the pages of another state

known for its regional nationalism: Assam. A small number of rhinos

translocated to Dudwa in Uttar Pradesh helped repopulate a part of

their range.

The

lions of Gir do not just face threats from poachers. Their habitat

needs protection. The Vanishing Herds Foundation, funded by expatriate

Gujaratis has done commendable work in covering wells that often become

death traps. The Gir Wildlife Club has mobilized youngsters along the

rim of the forest to become nature-lovers. Yet, the easing of

restrictions on vehicle entry to pilgrimage sites in the forest, like

the famous Kankai Mata temple, disturb the habitat.

Above

all, the saga of the Gir lions raises a question that lies at the very

heart of conservation. Protection of rare fauna or landscapes, the

lions of Gir or the rhinos of Assam, has often gained from regionalism.

There are examples of this in other nation-states. The gorillas of

Rwanda, for instance, were safe even in the fratricidal civil war of

the mid-Nineties.

Yet,

that very sense of regional pride can be the cause of a fall. In the

case of the last of Asia’s lions, there is little doubt that a second

home will ensure their survival. Gir will always be their first home.

It need not be their only one.

The

last century saw not one but two remarkable conservation success

stories with the lions. It is time to launch a new venture, one that

gives them not just a second habitat but also the guarantee of survival.The

author is an independent researcher whose most recent work is an edited volume,

Environmental Issues in India

 

Source:

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070417/asp/opinion/story_7643995.asp

 

 

From princely symbol to conservation icon:

A political history of the lion in India

Mahesh Rangarajan

Unfinished

Agenda, Nation Building in South Asia

Nehru

Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, India

Rangarajan, Mahesh (1998), 'From Princely Symbol to Conservation Icon:

A Political History of the Lion in India', Occasional Paper No. 54. New

Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.

http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/SouthAsia/workshop/pdf/mrangarajan.pdf

http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/southasia/workshop/land_genome.asp

 

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v & q=cache:ylHkBTMvXnYJ:www.einaudi.cornell.edu/S\

outhAsia/workshop/pdf/mrangarajan.pdf+Mahesh+Rangarajan+gir+lion+president & hl=en\

& gl=ca & sig=AHIEtbQa3HzK74N8zUwpd3fcIYwtxJTg6w>

 

 

 

Environment

Green Rainbow

Our biodiversity, thriving so far despite the depredations, is a fragile gift we

hold in trustMahesh Rangarajan; Aug 24, 2009; Outlook India magazine

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?261339

 

 

Princely hunts and royal preserves By ; January 21, 2001; The Hindu

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/01/21/stories/1321067g.htm

 

CURRICULUM VITAE

MAHESH RANGARAJAN

http://cmsprod.bgu.ac.il/NR/rdonlyres/5FD14FA5-21C4-4676-A402-435907B0D5FC/70971\

/cvmahesh.pdf

 

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v & q=cache:Ybfvo1QkN2kJ:cmsprod.bgu.ac.il/NR/rdon\

lyres/5FD14FA5-21C4-4676-A402-435907B0D5FC/70971/cvmahesh.pdf+From+princely+symb\

ol+to+conservation+icon:+A+political+history+of+the+lion+in+India & hl=en & pid=bl & s\

rcid=ADGEEShGuecZRi4_AaD6wRoujYw3Qh1qiG9SrLrnOIKwY_WmhC0eM-joMtNHk2v51Bp5ozjqckk\

fmwdLBPAz5IxrZyczqeNHUKE1npdYlN00QQaNgg1XzroRWcfTfriGeEPFDXEF3ZX3 & sig=AHIEtbSFIZ\

IpwPkTqmM5U9sEPf80XgU8sA

 

 

Mahesh Rangarajan- From Wikipedia, the free

encyclopediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahesh_Rangarajan

 

************************************

 

 

Atul

Singh Nischal

atulsinghnischal

ASIATIC LION GROUP

http://pets.Asiatic_Lions/

Asiatic Lion Messages & Links are

accessible to all:

http://pets.Asiatic_Lions/messages

http://pets.Asiatic_Lions/links/Folder_Indian___Iran_0011\

58077222/

http://pets.Asiatic_Lions/links/

 

For more information on critically

endangered Asiatic Lions please also visit:

 

ASIATIC LION

" CRISES " in India(Please see all links

& messages collected in this folder)

http://pets.Asiatic_Lions/links/Folder_Indian___Iran_0011\

58077222/ASIATIC_LION__CRISES_001175900857/

 

Asiatic Lion Group Links on Asiatic Lions,

Click on " Folders " for more links:

http://pets.Asiatic_Lions/links/Folder_Indian___Iran_0011\

58077222/

Why Should some 10 or 15 lions be sent to Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya

Pradesh, as soon as possible, please check in " Madhya

Pradesh Folder " :

http://pets.Asiatic_Lions/links/Folder_Indian___Iran_0011\

58077222/Details_on__KUNO_Wil_001158438437/

Gir Sanctuary, " Gujarat Folder " :

http://pets.Asiatic_Lions/links/Folder_Indian___Iran_0011\

58077222/Details__GIR_Nationa_001158438899/