Book Review | Climate change and evolution of the ‘crooked’ cat

In this age of the anthropocene — where human action has basically triggered and hastened the progress of the ‘sixth great extinction’ — conflicts between humans and wild animals have increased manifold. In this study, anthropologist Nayanika Mathur examines this phenomenon with special reference to ‘crooked cats’ — tigers, lions and, particularly, leopards that have gone rogue, instilling terror and making meals of us as they please.

The root cause of it, according to her is climate change. In this exhaustively researched book she has touched upon aspects of the subject from myriad different viewpoints, examining them through an anthropologist’s lens. Climate change is the main culprit, and has been caused by our wanton destruction of Himalayan habitats — deforestation, the reckless damming of rivers, the destructive impact of ‘capitalist and elitist’ developers and realtors — all usually aided and abetted by the governments in charge. Leopards, less so than tigers, have had no choice but to move into urban and semi-urban spaces, taking dogs, goats and often women and children. (In Mumbai they have been surrounded by the teeming city.)

Pahari people — in Uttarakhand and other hill states, have long pointed fingers at ‘maidani’ people — those living in the plains for invading their mountains and destroying their way of life and robbing them of their precious natural resources. So much so that they defend their pahari leopards, maintaining that all the crooked cats in their mountains have been deliberately trans-located there from the plains and city zoos to let loose havoc in their hills.

The straitjacket laws enshrouded in the Environment Protection Act of 1972 make it virtually impossible for rogue animals to be dealt with swiftly(and begets the question: what is more valuable: human or animal life?)  Hunters have to be 100 percent sure that the animal they have shot is indeed the ‘adamkhor’ which despite technology such as camera-trap identification and the ‘guilty-look-in-the-eye’ is virtually impossible to prove — until and unless subsequent killings stop. Forest officials are pressurised by agitated villagers to the extent that hunters may be called in clandestinely to gun down the first leopard they meet to assuage the local populace — the animal is quietly buried and no records maintained.

Mathur also examines our relations with such animals: there is terror (as the man-eating leopard of Gopeshwar instilled), anger; the desire for vengeance and also empathy for the creature that has so gone off the rails... Vijay the white-tiger in the Delhi zoo which killed a disturbed young man who entered his enclosure has become a star and been described as cute! Mathur is somewhat skeptical of Jim Corbett and his famous exploits (for example the man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag); he indeed took up the ‘white man’s burden’ liberating despairing villagers by killing their tormentors; something only the white man was capable of. (I wonder what she would have made of Kenneth Anderson’s stories!). In many areas (like in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park Mumbai and in many hill towns and villages) people and leopards live more or less companionably together once they learn not to tread on each other’s toes — something that was learned in Mumbai the hard way.

Relocating a ‘tedha’ (crooked) animal is not really a solution: Firstly, capture is traumatic (often leading to injury, death and a nastier disposition afterwards!) secondly, big cats are territorial and will try and return to their original localities, causing havoc en-route.

There are other fascinating indefinable aspects that are dwelt on: how a hunter just ‘knows’ the animal that he is after is the ‘guilty’ one, usually by just looking at it in the eye (before shooting it), how villagers ‘feel’ the animal’s gaze on them as it stalks them through the jungle.

Mathur does slip into what I call ‘academese’ every now and then, but it’s by no means impenetrable for the lay reader. Exhaustively researched in situ (in Gopeshwar and Mumbai for example) and referenced, there is an extensive bibliography added too. For an all-round view of the subject this book is indispensable.

Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene
By Nayanika Mathur
HarperCollins
pp. 208, Rs 499