The White gentleman received serious injuries after falling from a tree. Earlier, he positioned in the tree to film tigers with a movie camera. Interestingly, he was familiar with a gun, and not a camera, in his hand. By that time, he gained fame by hunting and killing several man-eating tigers and leopards in northern India. A number of tigers and leopards had taken hundreds of victims in Kumaon, Garhwal, Champawat, Rudraprayag, Thak (a village in Kumaon Division) and Mohan (a small village in Nainital) before their deaths at his hands. However, the man was carrying a camera, instead of a gun, with him on January 10, 1939.

Edward James ‘Jim’ Corbett (July 25, 1875 – April 19, 1955), the Anglo-Indian hunter, an outspoken advocate of the nascent conservation movement and the author of international bestseller Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944), received a 16mm Bell & Howell camera from his friend Lord Strathcona as a gift in 1928. Frederick Walter Champion (August 24, 1893 – April 21, 1970), a British forester who is considered the Father of Camera Trap Photography and a renowned wildlife photographer, too, was a close friend of his. Corbett established a Jungle Studio in his farm in Kaladhungi in 1938 mainly to film tigers and other wildlife. The studio was a part of his broader efforts to document and understand the wildlife of the region, contributing to his conservation work in northern India. He also filmed the majestic movements of a tiger that year. Corbett captured wildlife, nature, rivers, people, fishing, etc., in frames in April-May 1933 and some of those photographs are still preserved in the British National Film Archive.

Even after becoming a saviour of local people by killing man-eaters, Corbett stressed on the preservation of forests and wildlife. He served as the Local Secretary of the United Provinces Branch of the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire Society, apart from editing a journal, named Indian Wild Life, jointly with Hasan Abid Jafri. Corbett and his organisation played an important role in organising the All India Wildlife Conference which prompted the Colonial British Government to enact the United Province National Park Law in 1935. The following year, India got its first national park, William Malcolm Hailey National Park, named after his friend and then Governor of (erstwhile) United Provinces William Malcolm Hailey. In 1957, it was renamed Corbett National Park in memory of Jim Corbett.

As a wildlife conservationist, Corbett penned his first article, titled Wildlife in the Village: An Appeal, in 1932 and it was published in the Review of the Week magazine. He wrote another article, titled A Lost Paradise: Forest Fires in the Foothills, for the same magazine in 1935. Corbett rightly realised that it would be important to form public opinion in order to protect plants and animals, their habitats, and to maintain ecological balance in order to ensure biodiversity. Hence, he urged the educated people, as well as the government, to help him to protect wildlife. He never considered hunting as an entertainment. He killed animals only to save human lives and later felt sorry for it. He always wanted the wild animals to live in forests on their own terms.

Corbett devoted his life to protecting animals in India (until 1947) and later in Kenya. As a member of the Nainital Municipal Board, he advocated for the protection of wildlife, including birds, in 1933. In April 1933, the local authorities imposed a ban on bird hunting in that area. The Board also decided to create a bird sanctuary. Corbett, along with his sister Maggie, moved to Nyeri, Kenya in November 1947 after selling their home in India. In Nyeri, Corbett purchased the bungalow of Lord Baden-Powell (February 22, 1857 – January 8, 1941), the founder of the Boy Scouts Association. Later, he constructed a pond specifically for birds in front of the bungalow. He had a calming presence that allowed birds to approach him without fear, even perching on his body and taking bread and cakes from his hand. Such a naturalist and conservationist should not be compared with other insensitive hunters.

Corbett’s first book, Jungle Lore, was published privately with only 100 copies printed. This edition was not intended for commercial sale, but for distribution among his family and friends. The book was self-published in Nainital in 1935. By May 1946, over half a million copies of his second publication Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944) were in print. The book was translated into four Western languages (including Spanish, Czech and Finnish) and six Indian languages! It went on to sell over four million copies worldwide by 1980. Corbett donated the copyright of this book to benefit Indian soldiers who lost their eyesight in the Second World War.

Corbett wrote his final letter (before his death in 1955) to his sister Maggie in which he mentioned: “I hope you will try to make the world a better place for others to live in.” In 2010, the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit in Russia declared July 29th as International Tiger Day, also known as Global Tiger Day, in order to raise awareness about tiger conservation. However, a conflict between wildlife conservationists and tourists regarding tigers is still going on in different parts of the globe.

Today, one needs to remember Jim Corbett’s visionary, as well as famous, quote. “A tiger is a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage and when he is exterminated – as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies to his support – India will be the poorer by having lost the finest of her fauna,” he wrote presciently in 1944.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das