When the British colonized India throughout the 18th century they imported their narrative about the relationships between human and non-human animals. A narrative of violence and cruelty, in which wild animals were born to be hunted.
But as author Sadhana Naithani writes in The Inhuman Empire, India was home to folk narratives that had existed for many hundreds of years before, telling a very different story, one of animals and humans living in harmony, of animals that are far more sentient than many people today will admit. For example, the Pañcatantra was a series of ancient Indian fables written from the point of view of animals. Naithani quotes from one fable in which a crow looks down on a hunter: “… he appeared a second god of destruction, noose in hand; the very incarnation of evil and the soul of unrighteousness; prime instructor in crime and bosom friend of death.”
Naithani contrasts these ancient stories with writings on Indian wildlife between 1860 and 1960, by a number of British hunters. These men were eager to shoot at pretty much anything that moved (often supported by hundreds of locals who would help locate the animals and then drive them from the forests). Then these men would write home about their brave battles against “man eating” tigers and lions. When, in truth, as Naithani notes, snakes were far more dangerous to humans than any tiger or lion.
Naithani reads between the lines of these narratives, noting that local villages often resisted these hunts, doing their best to frighten off animals before the hunters could fire at them. In India, many of these animals were consider sacred, such as cows and monkeys and elephants. And even tigers and lions were animals villagers had coexisted with for hundreds of years.
But coexisting didn’t fit the imported narrative. And the results were horrific. Naithani notes that an estimated “80,000 tigers, 150,000 leopards and 200,000 wolves were killed for sport between 1875 and 1924.” This means roughly five tigers were killed each day; it wasn’t until 1972 that hunting of wild animals were made illegal.
Not all hunters were equally ignorant and violent. Naithani includes writing from John Corbett a reformed hunter who turned his energy to protecting wild animals, though too late. This book provides a much-needed reassessment of the true costs of colonization. Not only did humans suffer catastrophic losses, so too did the animals who were unfortunate to be viewed a worthwhile targets of men with guns.
The book also expands our definition of Anthropocene. Naithani writes:
“Anthropocene” did not simply happen nor did it happen just a few hundred years ago. It happened a far longer time ago as the man has been on this journey of controlling and subordinating all others on this planet to his desires ever since life, as we know it, started on this planet.
The Inhuman Empire is an academic book, which means it carries steep price tag. I recommend seeking it out at a local university library. And while some of the stories of killing are not easy to stomach, the book itself is welcome addition to a growing body of writing that has turned “hunters” into “poachers,” for that, in the end, was what these men were actually doing.
What’s important to take away from this book is that narratives can and do evolve — perhaps not as quickly as we’d like. And writers have a critical role to play in crafting new narratives — or, in this case, retelling some of the oldest narratives of all.
The impact of the folk narrative on the human mind, however, has not been calculated by any scientific theory or technology, yet that impact is visible in all societies in varied contexts. … The resistance that the might of the British colonizers encountered in their decimation of the wildlife in India came from people who believed in their narratives, and in certain cases, the might of the gunpowder had to give into the power of the narratives. People’s belief in narratives did not lose to guns but the might of another narrative: that science knows better because it can prove what it knows.
John is co-author, with Midge Raymond, of the eco-mystery Devils Island, forthcoming in 2024. He is also author of the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. Co-founder of Ashland Creek Press and editor of Writing for Animals (also now a writing program).
