When one thinks of “nature” or of “wildlife” in the Indian context, two names that immediately come to mind are Jim Corbett and Salim Ali. The first, an Englishman resident in India, became famous for his stories of hunting man-eating tigers and leopards. The second, an aristocratic Muslim from Bombay, wrote many authoritative books on birds in the subcontinent. Both Corbett and Ali also vigorously advocated for the setting aside of wild areas for the protection of endangered species.
Like M Krishnan, neither Corbett nor Ali had advanced research degrees. Ali had a BSc from Bombay University and Corbett never went to college at all. They were self-taught and self-trained. Both focused on a particular slice of the non-human world. Corbett was associated especially with the tiger. Ali was commonly referred to as the “Bird Man of India”. Where Krishnan differed from them was that he was an all-rounder who took equal interest in all aspects of the natural world. As Shanthi and Ashish Chandola write, Krishnan’s work
stands out as uniquely original, combining acute and systematic observation, depth of knowledge and the understanding of nature. The ultimate freelancer, Krishnan did not just write about birds, mammals, insects, and so on, but also about every aspect of natural history, even addressing issues like conservation and environment well before they had become commonplace. His mastery of English literature, exhibiting a rare charm, is evident in his writing. Such brilliance in nature writing had never been seen before or since in our part of the world.
Krishnan had a well-deserved reputation as an expert on the behaviour of the tiger and the elephant, yet he was as interested in plants and trees as in spectacular animals. “India’s flora,” he wrote, “is one of the richest in the world and definitely richer than her fauna, and no less a part of the country’s wildlife. We have magnificent trees, many superb timbers, a wealth of arrestingly lovely flowering plants, and many plants remarkable for their fruits or medicinal properties – and still, the flora is so seldom featured in the wildlife display of a preserve, and this is in spite of the fact that the local variations of the flora are often greater than in the fauna.” Of the publicity choices of the state Forest Departments and the conservation community, he mournfully noted that “the lesser life and the avifauna are also remarkably versatile display material, but in our preserves such poor interpretation service as there is preoccupied with the contrived display of a few large mammals, chief among them the man-shy and nocturnal tiger”.
Writing in the early 1960s, Krishnan said to name or designate a particular area as a “Tiger Sanctuary”, as conservationists were prone to do, was misleading and inappropriate. For one thing, these areas had wild herbivores such as deer and antelope that were then being avidly hunted, and thus “much more urgently in need of protection than the tiger”. For another, visitors to these parks were far more likely to see these other creatures than the tiger. “Why, then,” he asked, “call any forest area a Tiger Sanctuary, when the tiger is the most inconspicuous feature of the place?”
In his attention to humdrum and unglamorous landscapes, Krishnan was altogether uncharacteristic of nature conservationists in India and elsewhere. “People who think that India is a land of tree forests outside human settlements,” he once remarked, “know nothing about the country. A vitally geofloristic feature of India is its vast spreads of open country, arid plains and littoral scrub, tree-dotted scrub jungle, expansive herb-covered elevated plateaux, rolling hilltop pastures, and rocky hill-crests with limited xerophytic growth.”
Krishnan’s awareness of the wildlife potential of areas not categorised or seen – either by the state or by nature lovers – as “forests” came in part from his childhood experience, when his father was posted in places like Ramnad and Tirunelveli, and the years he later himself spent working in Sandur, in the Deccan. He noted that areas categorized as ‘wastelands’ in government records once had very rich plant and animal life and could do so once again if adequately protected. Mammals such as blackbuck and the wolf flourished in the open scrub that had now come under the plough or human settlement.
In an essay written when he was in his seventies, Krishnan observed: “Perhaps because of my boyhood interest in the open scrub and my years in the plains country, I know the plants and animals of such habitats better than most people. Such wastelands (as they are invariably termed by politicians and planners) have their own distinctive wild life which is every bit as much part of our heritage of nature as the hill forests, and much more in need of protection, because their wholesale depletion has not, apparently, caused any concern to our governmental conservation effort.”
Among the non-charismatic mammals Krishnan had a special fondness for was the blackbuck. Another was the lion-tailed macaque, which he had likewise studied in the field and extensively photographed. In the 1980s, a large dam threatened to drown one of the last refuges of this latter animal, an area known as Silent Valley in Kerala. Krishnan wrote a column on why it was important to preserve this tract, for the other parts of the Western Ghats in which the macaque was once often seen had given way to fields and plantations. Silent Valley, he wrote, “is now the only habitat where they have a fairly extensive and congenial environment”.
The naturalist argued that the case of the lion-tailed macaque demonstrated that “it is always animals of specialised habitats, incapable of adjusting themselves to changed environments, that have the least survival potential”. He wondered how to get the point across to the decision-makers in the national capital. The lion-tailed macaque, he remarked, “is too far away from Delhi and too little known there for any strong response; in the Delhi zoo it is housed, pitiably, in an enclosure provided with a few thorny, straggling desert trees and exotics at that (Prosopis julifora), to offer a denizen of the lofty, dark, evergreen forests a homely amenity!”
While appreciating the need for national parks and sanctuaries, Krishnan urged that areas within cities be made hospitable for nature to flourish. “Plant a section of every [city] park and [home] garden with native jungle trees (not forgetting a few fig trees) and thick bushes,” he wrote, “allow creepers and the undershrub to grow, and the birds and smaller beasts will come back.” When he was a boy, he himself had “ample opportunities for watching minor wild life in a city and in the countryside”. He wished for the present generation to be as fortunate. “The idea that our fauna should be penned up in national parks and preserves,” he remarked, “and that our children should visit these pens or some remote countryside for a glimpse of the great heritage of nature that is theirs, revolts me.”
In 1975, Krishnan was asked by a popular magazine to write about what particularly fascinated him about Indian wildlife. He responded with a long ruminative essay, recounting his experiences with wild animals and plants over the decades. He began with elephants, encountered singly or in groups, speaking of them as “incredibly surefooted in their movements, combining the most delicate sensibilities with terrific power, so like us in some ways and so utterly different in others, gentle and sure in their touch for all their bulk, so long and so intimately associated with our country and culture that without them I cannot envisage an India”. He then wrote with similar specificity (and sensitivity) of his experiences with the tiger, leopard, chital and blackbuck, and moved on to describing bird species which had fascinated and enchanted him, before launching into this lyrical passage on the gloriously varied vegetation of India:
One need not be a botanist to find authentic pleasure in the wild plants, in the great, towering trees of a rain-forest, in a noble rosewood or teak tree, or in the dramatic bursting into bloom of forest flowers. Early in summer, the Indian laburnum, the red silk-cotton (what a regal canopy of crimson!) and other forest trees flower, and in November it is the turn of the lesser plants, when the vivid red-and-yellow flowers of the wild lily, Glorioso superba, festoon the bushes and the most gorgeous and delightfully fragrant of ground orchids, Platanthera susanude, is in bloom.
Krishnan ended his essay with this line: “Yes, everything about our wildlife fascinates me. This is at once my burden and my solace.”
Excerpted with permission from Speaking with Nature: The Origins of Indian Environmentalism, Ramachandra Guha, HarperCollins India.
