Contested legacy of Billy Arjan, prince of cats

These three remarkable books — ‘Tiger! Tiger!’, ‘The Legend of Man-Eater’ and ‘Prince of Cats’ — are about three amazing individuals. There’s Billy Arjan Singh, his beloved Tara — a fifth-generation captive-born tigress of unknown pedigree whom he hand-raised and released back into the wild — and Prince, the handsome leopard who was orphaned when his mother was killed and then Billy raised him and ‘returned’ him back to the wild. These books are about the adventurous and controversial lives of these three beings. The paths of these remarkable individuals crossed with many other incredible humans and non-humans: Babu Lal, the caretaker of the cats, Eelie the mutt, Sitara the elephant, Tiffany the fishing cat, Abubakr the ram, Harriet and Juliette the female leopards; and the many tigers: Median the Dominant Female, Old Crooked Foot, Tara’s Male, Long Toes, among others.

The events described in these books are so incredible that they have happened only a handful of times in human and animal history and are unlikely to repeat anytime in the foreseeable future and, therefore, it has to be read in the context of its time.

Billy Arjan Singh’s life blended a rare mix of privilege and passion for wildlife. Like many people who were born in wealth at that time (the 1920s), Billy grew up as a trigger-happy boy with a penchant for killing and destruction, but soon (not soon enough, according to Billy), the hunter turned into a conservationist. And unlike most people of his time with access to power, Billy dedicated his life to conservation. These three books are about his three most important ‘experiments’ to return captive-born tigers and leopards back to the wild: Prince, Harriet & Juliette, and Tara.

No research committee will allow such experiments today because they risk the lives of the animals and the people who live in the proximity of these places. And lives were lost. That is why we must learn as much as we can from these experiments because the price has already been paid.

These books were written about 45 years ago and should be read as such. Billy’s description of the landscape and the animals of the Himalayan foothills in Uttar Pradesh teleports the reader to the outskirts of what is today the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve. He writes with all honesty, without trying to hide his own shortcomings or exaggerating those of others. He does not shy away from calling a spade a spade. He takes on high-level forest officials without holding back any punches. He also states matter-of-factly about how he was directly involved in opening new farmland, taking forest contracts, and bringing tourists to these areas. He does not hide that he trusted his instincts more than the best piece of advice that he received from others.

With the benefit of hindsight, we sometimes find Billy on the wrong side of modern-day science. He trusted his understanding of identifying tigers from their pugmarks (only at local scales and not for estimating populations across landscapes of the whole country) over using tiger stripes, which he believed changed with the age of the animal. Extensive use of live bait is another practice that he promoted. We now know well that baiting is unethical and even detrimental to the well-being of the carnivore in the long run.

And yet, some of his ideas were far ahead of his time. In ‘Prince of Cats’, he writes: “If I had expected that the leopard would welcome a return to the forest, I was mistaken. The jungle obviously struck him as a hostile environment, which he had no desire to enter.” Today we know well that big cats who have grown up in human-dominated areas, such as agricultural areas or mosaics of forests and villages, do not prefer to live in deep forests. Yet, even now, wildlife managers sometimes release tigers and leopards caught from buffer areas or human-dominated areas into core areas of Tiger Reserves. Such animals often find the jungle unpleasant. They move out and are labelled as ‘straying outside protected areas’.

Billy thought about tigers and leopards as individuals and planned projects with anticipation for what Prince or Tara or Juliette were likely to do in a given situation, and refrained from generalising what any given tiger or leopard ought to do. Treating each cat as an individual with a unique personality made Billy very good at predicting their behaviour in any given situation. Yet, the few times when his attention slipped, it caused havoc; human lives were lost. Critics may have been wrong in blaming his cats, but they cannot be faulted for blaming Billy. Some events will be judged harshly as time passes.

These three books are a great read for anyone with even a casual interest in environmental conservation, animals or adventure. These are among a handful of attempts where the life of ‘pet’ tigers and leopards is described at home and in the jungle. These books give an experiential understanding of India’s journey into conservation, especially the creation and early implementation of Project Tiger. Billy is unparalleled in his understanding of tigers and leopards, a real doyen of tiger conservation, a true champion for the Dudhwa Tiger Reserve, someone who could imagine alternate futures and do something to realise them.

— The writer is director of the India Programme of Snow Leopard Trust