The Forgotten Genocide of Wildlife Under British Colonial Rule

India's diversity is not limited to its religions, languages, and cuisines but also includes a wide range of wildlife. Among these, species such as tigers, lions, and monkeys have historically been regarded with religious reverence, often leading to their protection from serious harm. However, a significant decline in India's wildlife, particularly its big cat populations, became evident following the advent of British colonial rule. Scholarly inquiries into this phenomenon have sought to understand why such a precipitous decline, particularly in tiger and lion populations, was largely absent in pre-colonial India.

While hunting was not entirely prohibited before British rule—historical records and legends abound with accounts of royal hunting expeditions—it did not result in the same scale of depopulation. The British colonial administration, however, institutionalised hunting as a sport, introducing game laws that facilitated large-scale killings, thereby contributing to an ecological imbalance previously unseen in the subcontinent.
Within the Indian sub-continent, molecular studies indicate an unnatural decline in tiger populations dating back to around 200 years, a period that coincides with early establishment of the British Rule in India. ²

TIGERS, KINGS, AND LEGENDS

However, there were a number of rulers who opposed the large-scale killing of wildlife. The Nawab of Rampur in the North-Western Provinces opposed the extermination of tigers, arguing that they “do no harm to crops and keep down the numerous animals that do.” ³ In India, the relationship between humans and large predators was complex and multifaceted; tigers and lions were not only feared but also revered as symbols of power.

The Valmiki Ramayana echoes this duality, describing Dasaratha as a “lion among kings” while likening Rama and Lakshmana to “tigers among men.⁴ Similarly, several Islamic chronicles recorded that Muslim rulers, including Akbar, sought to reinforce their divine authority by associating themselves with legendary feats of dominance over tigers—sometimes said to be subdued by their mere gaze.⁵

Regardless of legends, it is evident that there was no inherent enmity between the local populace and big cats.

This reverence extended beyond rulers to local folklore. A European account from 1670 recounts an extraordinary belief from the swamps of Eastern Bengal: “Every Thursday night, a tiger comes out and salaams a fakir’s tomb.” ⁶ Such references suggest that Islam too had co-opted and assimilated older traditions of tiger worship into a new framework.

The prolonged coexistence with carnivores made it inevitable that various cultures and rulers in the subcontinent would perceive the animals in a multitude of ways. There were mutually contradictory strands, with the same animal being simultaneously revered and feared, hunted and worshipped. It would be anachronistic to see the past in terms of the easy coexistence of people and predators, but the dynamics of that interaction were about to undergo a very significant shift.

THE EUROPEAN TRADITION OF WILDLIFE ERADICATION

Europe had a long history of systematically targeting wildlife. Assaults on tigers, for instance, date back over 1,500 years to the Roman Empire, when the species was eradicated from the entire Middle East. ⁷
Fernand Braudel, in Civilization and Capitalism, observes that much like in other parts of Europe, there were sustained efforts to eliminate specific animals. ⁸ Such targeted extermination campaigns appear to have been a common practice among Europeans. In the British Isles, species were wiped out even before similar eradications took place across continental Europe. ⁹

Beyond mere extermination, the control of wildlife was also deeply tied to social hierarchies. As hunting evolved into a leisure activity for the elite, the landed gentry not only restricted access to game but also turned their weapons—both literally and symbolically—on predators that competed with them. Otters and wildcats, for example, were explicitly denied protection under the Game Act of 1671.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT IDEALS AND IMPERIAL WAR ON WILDLIFE

The Enlightenment placed humanity at the centre of the universe, elevating human reason above all else and reinforcing the belief that nature existed to be controlled and mastered. This self-appointed dominion extended beyond landscapes and resources to include wildlife, particularly carnivores, which were perceived as threats to civilisation itself.

Europeans exploited this privileged position with ruthless efficiency. The other dimensions of extermination were also significant. As game became an object of leisure, landed groups sought not only to exclude the lower classes, but also trained their guns—literally as well as metaphorically—on wild animals that preyed on birds and fish. Otters and wild cats were explicitly excluded from protection under the Game Act of 1671. They were vermin to be killed. ¹⁰ Some carnivores were even viewed as lawless creatures, outside the bounds of divine order. ¹¹ The tiger was seen as especially ferocious even among other flesh-eaters due to its fondness for people as prey.

It is evident that the same mindset was carried to India, where British colonial rulers saw local wildlife not as an integral part of the ecosystem or cultural tradition, but as a menace to be eradicated. They disregarded the deeply rooted, multifaceted relationship that indigenous communities had with the natural world and instead framed large predators as obstacles to human progress. In the Company Raj, different remedies were tried out in areas where the depredations of carnivores were seen as a threat to human life or as a barrier to cultivation. Wild creatures that harmed humans were perceived as violating what the conquerors held to be the order of God’s creation. ¹²

To exterminate these so-called “lawless beasts,” the British devised an extensive campaign of slaughter. One of the strategies they employed was to pay bounties for the heads of animals. In Madras, these were paid out for a variety of beasts from 1815 by the Board of Revenue. ¹³ There was a larger bounty for the female of a species. ¹⁴ In Indore, the bounty on a tiger’s head was the equivalent of four months’ pay for a court officer. ¹⁵The ferocity of their mission was evident in the words of a former army officer, B. Rogers, who demanded that the war on carnivores be waged with military precision. ¹⁶

As costs for bounties mounted, the colonial administration sought cheaper, more efficient methods of extermination. ¹⁷ In Coimbatore, the use of poisons to kill carnivores won encomiums from officials for cutting costs, as bounties proved expensive. ¹⁸ The obsession with eliminating India’s apex predators reflected not just a fear of the wild but an assertion of colonial dominance—over nature, over indigenous traditions, and over the very land itself.

PUSH BACK FROM INDIAN RULERS

In Rajputana, most rulers either downplayed the threat posed by carnivores or maintained that sport-hunting was sufficient for population control. In Alwar, despite the presence of prime tiger habitat in the thorn forests of the Aravallis, bounties were issued only for confirmed man-eaters. ¹⁹ By contrast, Mysore and Hyderabad took a more aggressive stance, implementing extensive bounty systems targeting wild animals and even snakes.²⁰Religious beliefs may have played a role in resisting such measures in Marwar, where the raja refused to support any organised effort to eliminate venomous reptiles.

Kotah had one of the most structured bounty systems, offering 10 rupees for a tiger and 5 rupees for bears, wolves, and leopards. Uniquely, Kotah was perhaps the only princely state still issuing rewards for killing lions—despite their extreme rarity—paying as much as 25 rupees per kill. ²¹
However, such policies remained exceptions rather than the norm until the 1870s, when the British actively promoted large-scale extermination efforts.

Lord Curzon, deeply concerned that foreign hunters were excessively depleting India’s wildlife, cautioned against turning forest reserves into sanctuaries. He considered any attempt to provide protection to wild animals “indefensible and immoral,” reinforcing the colonial commitment to unrelenting control over nature. The war on the tiger, in particular, remained far from over. ²²

Beyond large carnivores, colonial anxieties extended to other species as well. In the Konkan, hunters voiced alarm over the rising number of birds of prey, while anglers feared that otters were threatening their sport. In the name of protect fish stocks, three peons were assigned to eradicate freshwater crocodiles (Crocodilus parustrius) and destroy their eggs in the Tulsi and Virar lakes near Bombay. H.M. Phipson of the Bombay Natural History Society went so far as to denounce these creatures as “loathsome reptiles” responsible for the depletion of fish and wildfowl. ²³

This period marked a significant shift in wildlife policies, with colonial administrators not only intensifying extermination campaigns but also reshaping attitudes towards India’s fauna, framing many species as enemies of human interests and economic progress.

THE DISASTROUS OUTCOMES

The species vanished from the plains as extermination efforts and agricultural expansion progressed hand in hand. For instance, in the Bombay Presidency, the range of the big cat shrank significantly. While tigers were still present in the Sahyadris during the first half of the 1870s—when about twenty were killed annually near Bombay—they soon disappeared from these galley forests altogether. ²⁴

A similar trend was observed in Punjab, where tigers became “almost extinct” and were only rarely sighted even in the hilly parts of the Ambala district. ²⁵H. Maude recalled that between 1866 and 1869 alone, at least 84 tigers had been killed, with 50 taken in Pindi and 22 in Ambala. In Nainital Division, they were commonly hunted at waterholes and salt licks. ²⁶

The scale of extermination was staggering. Between 1879 and 1888, the bounty system had funded the killing of 16,573 tigers. Extrapolating from records between 1875 and 1925, the total exceeded 80,000, though with thirteen years of missing data, even this figure is likely an underestimate.²⁷Notably, the bounty system was heavily biased against tigresses. Moreover, while some numbers may have been exaggerated for rewards, there were also numerous cases where kills went unreported or rewards were denied due to insufficient evidence.

Yet, despite the colonial narrative of an unrelenting conflict between people and tigers, no such inherent hostility existed across the Indian subcontinent. Unlike the case of Java, where large predators were largely viewed as enemies, Indian attitudes ranged from outright hostility to a more nuanced tolerance. This variation was particularly evident in forested regions, where tigers were seen as part of the landscape. Certain communities held religious reservations about killing particular animals; the Bengal Rajputs, for example, traced their lineage to a royal tiger and protected the species “whenever” possible.²⁸Even those residing in areas frequented by man-eaters rejected the notion that all tigers posed a threat.²⁹

The Nawab of Rampur in the North-Western Provinces strongly opposed the indiscriminate elimination of tigers, arguing that they “do no harm to crops and keep down the numerous animals that do.” This perspective underscores the complexity of human-wildlife relations in pre-colonial India—contrasting sharply with the British view, which framed large predators as obstacles to be eradicated.