Cheetah back in India

 The British left India in the year 1947. India which until then was a conglomeration of small and big Kingdoms came into existence as a single, independent and united nation. The same year the Maharajah of one such Kingdom in present day Chhattisgarh shot dead the last Asiatic Cheetah, causing the animal's extinction from the Indian subcontinent. (India has plenty of Leopards whom many confuse with Cheetah).

Though we have a tendency to leave all the ills plaguing India on the doorsteps of the British, our own Rajas, Maharajas, Sultans, Nizams, their sundry vassals and Zamindars were no less in exploiting and looting their own. They engaged in wining, dining and were champion womanizers (one king who collected as a trophy the nose piercing of every virgin he deflowered boasted of accumulating several hundreds of those).

Hunting was their favorite pastime as they were mostly responsible for wiping out several species of fauna from India, including the swift and majestic Cheetah and almost wiping out the lions who used to roam freely all over India are now shrunk to the Gir forest of Gujarat.

While chasing its pray a Cheetah can run upto a speed of 70 miles per hour, an amazing speed for a land animal. But several attempts to bring back Cheetah since its extinction 75 years ago to India went on at a snail's or tortoise's pace. But finally slow and steady won the race. It is so heartening to know that few Cheetahs have been flown down from Africa to make India their home - not in the zoos, but in the wild.

Like their lion and elephant cousins, the Asiatic Cheetah is different from its African counterpart. Yet we should welcome their arrival on Indian soil. As goes the Odia Dhaga (proverb) - "NAHI MAMU THARU KANA MAMU BHALA", having a singled eyed maternal uncle is better than having non at all. It simply means, having something is always better than having nothing.

No country on earth is blessed with such a large variety of wildlife as India is. With the probable exception of Giraffe and Zebra, almost all tropical species are part of India's fauna. India is the only country on earth which has both tigers and lions (Africa though rich in wildlife doesn't have tigers). The biggest of the tigers, i.e. Royal Bengal tiger belongs to India. The world's largest venomous land snake King Cobra is a native of India. The amount of neurotoxin venom released by a King Cobra in a single bite is gargantuan - potent enough to kill a full grown Bull Elephant and twenty adult humans.

Wildlife galored in India in ancient and medieval times when there were more forest cover and less humans. Akbar kept a thousand Cheetahs as his pets. Now cornered in Kaziranga National Park in Assam, the Asian Rhinos roamed freely in Indian hinterland in huge numbers. 

British author Willam Dalrymple's well researched book "LAST MUGHAL" mentions about one of the several sons of last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zaffer was eaten by a crocodile while taking batch in river Yamuna in the year 1850. It is interesting to know that Crocs roamed as far as Delhi as late as 19th century. Around the same time, lions now restricted to Gir forest of Gujarat and the extinct Asiatic Cheetah were roaming in large numbers in North and Central India.

The rate we are killing many of these exotic animals is alarming. Unless some drastic measures are implemented we might see the extinction of some species during our lifetime, a few of them only restricted to the zoos. A step in the right direction, today's news of the reinstating Cheetah in India was a breath of fresh air.