Nimrods on the Hills—Hunting, Environment, and Its Fauna

Abstract

Drawing on rich archival material, sportsmen’s memoirs and colonial documents, this chapter develops the argument that hill-sport was another important feature of British social and cultural life in colonial India. Hill-sport played a significant role in shaping and transforming their cultural identity from the beginning of the nineteenth century. While scholarship to date has not touched upon this subject, chapter two traces the historical antecedents of the British military conquest, which led to exploration and the discovery of new geographies, that is, mountain and hill terrains in the north and south of India. It is possible to argue that the Nilgiris and the Doon Valley had the advantage of favourable climatic conditions and better hunting grounds, and therefore plentiful opportunities for hill-sport, which in turn provided the healthier lifestyle to the Britons living on the hill stations. In such mountain peripheries, there emerged aesthetic preferences among the colonial sporting fraternity, which were born out of their hunting experiences in the cultural geography of the Himalayas and the Nilgiris. Furthermore, this chapter also suggests that the British hunters in colonial India also created a dichotomy of difference in terms of the ecology and wild fauna of the mountains, which also influenced their development of different genres of hill-sport. In addition, this chapter offers a fresh perspective on the notions of masculinity and virile energy enshrined in the big-game hunting tradition in relation to mountain geographies in colonial India.