Agricultural History Review, Volume 70 Part 2 (2022), p. 328

Shooting a tiger is a compelling account of the intrinsic links between big-game hunting, conservation, and the colonial governance of India. Building on his previous publications on the Raj, and his PhD thesis, Mandala draws on extensive sources compiled in India and the UK, over a seven-year period. His materials stretch from memoirs, published documents and images. He charts critical course through the ever-changing role of shikar (hunting) in India. Shooting a tiger offers new perspectives on the essential roles of big-game hunting and conservation, wow hunting moulds political power, colonial administration, and assertions of masculine oppression in an imperial world.

Shooting a tiger is illuminating and accessible with exhaustive examples. It has a comprehensive introduction grounding the book in wider literature. Mandala is meticulous at critiquing and building on work in this field. Reading as a geographer, I found this useful in providing context to Mandala’s research. The foreword, written by John MacKenzie, is likewise useful for this purpose.

In chapter 1, Mandala plots the multiple roles of big-game hunting in empire building, providing historical context before exploring the specific allegory of shikar in India. His first detailed discussion focuses on the Mughal Empire where he outlines the practical and symbolic uses of shikar as extravagant shows of political, military, and masculine dominance by the Mughal elite. These were complex discourses encoded in the Indian imagination that were later shared and manipulated during British colonization. Diverging from previous literature, Mandala argues that shikar straddles a dichotomy; being both a flamboyant showcase, with rulers riding bejewelled elephants, and the much smaller mundane acts of soldiers and imperial men. The more mundane but vital acts of administration and societal interaction were indispensable cogs in the Empire’s machine. The traditional, hierarchical hunting culture developed comradeship, forged alliances, and allowed intelligence surveillance to aid territorial expansion.

Chapter 2 analyses the impacts of physical geography on big-game hunting, and how exploring new topographical frontiers influenced hunting practicalities and inspired the British colonial imaginations. Comparing the Nilgiri Hills and the Himalayan hill stations to the Indian plains, Mandala interprets the adaption of hunting to the mountains as part of a new aesthetic adopted by the upper classes. Mandala proposes that masculine and racial codes dictated new metaphors connecting Indian hill hunts with health, authenticity, and European superiority. Identifying the mountain as a befitting environment for Europeans where increased challenges taxed the imperial man’s elevated skills. This led to the establishment of clubs like the Ootacamund Hunt, building of military sanatoria, and the coveting of racially exclusive property in the hills. Mandala offers fresh perspectives on the complexities of masculinities and moralities that were constructed in the hills of India.

Chapter 3 argues that emerging codes of sportsmanship in shikar, use of hero sportsman narratives and developing gun-technology had resonances with authority, masculinities, and sought to exclude the ‘other’. Mandala interprets sporting memoirs to provide examples of how imperial hunters gained privilege and masculine superiority through hunting man-eaters and saving native villages. Mandala infers that forest legislation and arms licensing exposes colonial perceptions of indigenous hunters. The poor hunted for food, and this was considered a barbaric and a lower-class attitude to the sport of hunting. Mandala argues that ideologies of scientific racism, social Darwinism and fears of rebellion fuelled by gun-ownership redefined shikar throughout the nineteenth century. He concludes that codes of sportsmanship reaffirmed the controlling societal structures in imperial India.

Chapter 4 discusses the collusive roles of Indians, specifically Indian princes, in constructing the powerful image of the Raj and reaffirming hierarchies. By examining paintings and media articles, Mandala observes how the extravagant shikars, such as tiger hunts hosted by Indian royalty, gave credence to colonial rule. Mandala argues that Indian princes were neither pliant nor idle, and that shared hunting opened opportunities for the Indian elite to negotiate beneficial relationships and assert their own political dominance. This chapter makes a convincing case that without the collaboration of Indian royalty, and the act of hunting on their reserves, the Raj’s image of authority would have been limited and Indian princely powers diminished.

In the final two chapters, Mandala intertwines the paradoxical ideologies of big-game hunting and conservation. Mandala gives examples of acts of conservation that were not philanthropic but selective, safeguarding hunting stocks, reinforcing imperial narratives, and consolidating British ownership. He provides a convincing case of how imperial imaginations determined animal hierarchies. The anthropomorphic tendencies of the British painted the elephant as noble and the tiger as villainous vermin. This influenced conservation policy throughout India until the early twentieth century. Mandala argues that the British supported an inherently contradictory in policy, eradicating tigers on the premise of protecting indigenous people while protecting elephants who were far more destructive. Further convincing connections are made through a critical analysis of the lives of Jim Corbett and Colonel Richard Burton. Both men spent most of their lives hunting ‘man-eaters’ while also promoting conservation and study of Indian wildlife. Accounts of these men show how they inhabited paradoxical spaces aligning their hunting practices with acts of preservation, using altruism to justify their behaviour while also reinforcing discrimination and imperial codes. This section explores how their experiences show unique relationships and contradictory colonial attitudes to wildlife, hunting and indigenous peoples.

Mandala, in writing Shooting a tiger, has succeeded in creating a well-illustrated and thoroughly researched set of accounts of big-game hunting and conservation in colonial India. Within each section, sophisticated interpretations and substantiated connections are crafted with appropriate links made to wider literature. Mandala’s focus on the mundane experiences and administrative accounts add to engaging literature of imperial hunting and environmental studies.