In an article of some such, by Jim Corbett, he says of the Indian people, that while he loves them, and respects them, he does not think they will ever be capable of running their own country and for that reason is leaving.

I would not have imagined this was his reason for leaving although one could agree there's depth in his words.

quote:

Originally posted by tysue:
In an article of some such, by Jim Corbett, he says of the Indian people, that while he loves them, and respects them, he does not think they will ever be capable of running their own country and for that reason is leaving.

I have always suspected that despite all his fine qualities, Jim was a colonialist through and through, and despite his affection for the people and the good work he did with and for them, it was always from a position of the British colonialist and the privileges that brought. He rubbed shoulders with the gentry of the time both Indian and fellow colonials.
Once that position of privilege went with India's independence it appears he very quickly sought refuge in the still colonial Africa where he again enjoyed the company of his fellow kind including at one time the future Queen of England. He obviously enjoyed and made use of the native servile culture.

Kenneth Anderson on the other hand, whose writing I also enjoy greatly whether it is embellished as some claim or not, truly integrated himself into the land and culture he loved and while no doubt he may have been accorded status as the white sahib, he at least didn't abandoned ship with India's independence and continued to live, work, and eventually died in that country as did his son.

While many people then and today lived and live out their lives in countries other than their own of birth for a whole range of reasons, for me Jim's seeming abandonment of India because colonialism came to an end has always taken the gloss off his fairytale life story.

All the Europeans enjoyed a superior status in India. The local society particularly until the 60s or even 80s was so class structured that even Indian officials in those situations were masters. The rest were mere subjects!

When I worked in the Tea plantations in Assam in 1981, the last of the British were retiring. The Brits did not appoint Indians to executive positions until independence in 1947! Even I as a 24 year old fresher out of University had a great status - a big bungalow with 5 servants to look after me etc. I left the industry after 3 years - I learned a lot about managing people and operations - but I knew that the artificial lifestyle could not last.

In the South Indian Tea Companies they started hiring Indian execs a little earlier - late 30s or early 40s.

The first non-British executives were Anglo Indians and high status Indians from the smaller princely states. Others would have been Coorg people (some were anglo Indian) or some Christians from South India.

It is difficult to explain the class & status culture. Some Brits were real pigs who treated the locals like crap. Others were truly good people though they enjoyed the higher status.

Corbet was a true Indian. He was 5th Generation Irish & I doubt he had ever been to the UK. I have never come across a single reference to say that he ever treated the locals in an inappropriate manner. Yes he left India after independence and that was a sad fact.

Many British left India in 1947. More left in 1963 after the Chinese attack in North East India and then again in 1971 after the Bangladesh war.

Corbet did interact with higher social elite but he himself was pure middle class. The family was middle class. Mother was widowed young and the family consisted of a blend of many kids and nieces and nephews. They lived off a modest property and its income. His brother was just a post master - not a top civil servant or a military official like many other Brits. He never claimed higher status either. Jim Corbet himself was a contractor - hiring contract labourers to do work on the river boats etc. - moving stuff for the government.

Anderson was probably more well off. 5th or 6th generation Scottish. His wife was an Anglo Indian. They also owned property - it was common for the Brits of the 30s to 60s to own small to medium sized tea & coffee plantations in South India. I know that Kenneth owned several plots - a few acres of land near forest areas in scattered locations where he liked to hunt. Each of them had a small hut he could stay in when hunting. I have visited one in the 70s in Masinagudi - now part of the late Mark Davidar's Chital Walk / Jungle Trails resort.

Kenneth's son Donald was an executive with the Binny Cotton Mills in Bangalore. Don never married and died a couple of years ago in pretty sad circumstances - living in a back room on a friend's home in Bangalore.

I believed that he really enjoyed hunting and shooting so much that he was really jealous of anyone else doing so.He thought he should be the only one aside from royalty that should have the right to hunt.As for him leaving I think he wanted to spend his retirement years in the company of other anglos-nothing wrong with that IMO-especially if he had no obligations to keep him in India.He seemed like a very lonely person.

That's a ridiculous characterisation of Jim Corbet.
Nakihunter has spelled it out clearly.

everybody was a 'colonial'. A great many people left India after Independance - because of the troubles, particularly over the partition. A whole lot of people lost their lives in that period. (Someone even murdered Ghandi.)
With the Corbet's already owning land in Kenya, the move is unsuprising viewed from the perspective of the times. Certainly when anticipating such volatile political changes it would have been easy to be wary of the future.

AS for him supposedly favouring another 'colonial' spot - but where else would he go anyway? Even today the bloody English look down on us antipodean colonials - forget about the late 1940's. He would never had been able to live in the UK.

He was a man of his times, as are we all. But he was a better man than many in that period.

Corbett is my childhood hero...my ancestral farms at Fatehpur Haldawani are just 7 km from his winter home at Kaladhungi. As a youth with a Greener shot gun in my hand I have been to his property many times while looking for game meat in the surrounding jungles in the 1960's. He was a brave hunter there is not an iota of doubt but what he has written in his book and the description of drama is just like any other hunter story. You can describe it as you want since no one else there to confirm or challenge that. His books were written after 20 years of the hunt. How can it be so precise description..... Saying all this I admire him for his courage , his love for the people and his consideration for preservation of the very animal he hunted.

I think for someone who obviously had keen observation and a flair for writing it's quite likely that he kept copious notes. Lots of people in the old days used to keep diaries to record their daily activities.

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Originally posted by mahmood sultan:
He was a brave hunter there is not an iota of doubt but what he has written in his book and the description of drama is just like any other hunter story. You can describe it as you want since no one else there to confirm or challenge that. His books were written after 20 years of the hunt. How can it be so precise description.....

quote:

Originally posted by mahmood sultan:
Corbett is my childhood hero...my ancestral farms at Fatehpur Haldawani are just 7 km from his winter home at Kaladhungi. As a youth with a Greener shot gun in my hand I have been to his property many times while looking for game meat in the surrounding jungles in the 1960's. He was a brave hunter there is not an iota of doubt but what he has written in his book and the description of drama is just like any other hunter story. You can describe it as you want since no one else there to confirm or challenge that. His books were written after 20 years of the hunt. How can it be so precise description..... Saying all this I admire him for his courage , his love for the people and his consideration for preservation of the very animal he hunted.

Those have to be some special memories . . . to have walked and hunted the same forests as Corbett. If I could pick one hunter from the past to spend time around the camp fire with, I think it would be Corbett.

quote:

Originally posted by MJines:

quote:

Originally posted by mahmood sultan:
Corbett is my childhood hero...my ancestral farms at Fatehpur Haldawani are just 7 km from his winter home at Kaladhungi. As a youth with a Greener shot gun in my hand I have been to his property many times while looking for game meat in the surrounding jungles in the 1960's. He was a brave hunter there is not an iota of doubt but what he has written in his book and the description of drama is just like any other hunter story. You can describe it as you want since no one else there to confirm or challenge that. His books were written after 20 years of the hunt. How can it be so precise description..... Saying all this I admire him for his courage , his love for the people and his consideration for preservation of the very animal he hunted.

Those have to be some special memories . . . to have walked and hunted the same forests as Corbett. If I could pick one hunter from the past to spend time around the camp fire with, I think it would be Corbett.

Mike, for you double gun aficionados I would have imagined Pondoro Taylor would have been the hunter of the past to sit around a campfire with. That being said I would have avoided sharing a tent with him

Roger that. I think if I was to choose an African hunter from the past to share a campfire with it might be someone like Bror Blixen . . . hunted the golden era of safari, was noted for his success and was quite the raconteur.

I agree on diaries
Back then, it was simply a part of life. I bet anything, Corbett kept extremely precise diary which I conclude from the way he wrote
Anyway, I will always treasure him as my all time favorite

I was born in South India in the mid 50s. My dad was a Forest & Wildlife official and so we saw a lot of wild country as kids.

At the age of 3 dad showed me 2 tigers but I do not remember that.

But I remember the odd occasion of a chital leg in the kitchen, sambar stag being butchered, a couple of hares on the floor, birds being plucked etc. Dad's leopard on grand dad's wall. Dad's tiger in the photo album.

Apart from the game, the memories that intrigue me are the ones of technology. Dad was university educated & a government official - which was very high status in those days even after independence. But we lived in a tiled roof house with mud brick and plaster. Scorpions fell from the roof on to the table. Rat snakes and cobras lived in the rafters hunting rats!

I still remember one house where there was no electricity - I must have been 3. Kerosene lanterns and Pertomax / Tilly lamps were common. Dad had a 5 cell Winchester torch - the only one in good shape that I saw for a long time in India.

Clothing was all cotton and some wool. Dad wore one of those colonial solar topees. In the late 60's he changed to a hat.

Canvas & rubber boots with woolen "patties" - binding around the socks and shin.

Yes they rode in post WW2 Willey's jeeps. But in the early 50s dad moved around in bullock carts, walking and sometimes on elephant back if the area had working timber elephants.

It was a different world then.

A true pity that there are no really viable hunting opportunities in India. That really is a door that has likely been closed forever. Cherish your memories.