Last elephant hunters : a HT full page feature

[thakur]

TC's article makes brilliant reading.

[TC]

Thank you Thakur. I did not write it. I planned the page and sent one of our junior reporters on this assignment after briefing him. The reporter is also a Thakur... a Bengali one


TC

[prashantsingh]

The reporter is also a Thakur... a Bengali one
TC

or should we call him Tagore?

[Safarigent]

Or thakore?

[xl_target]

TC,
Please pass on our congratulations to your reporter for presenting a well written article and for not injecting his personal opinions into the article. It is getting increasingly rare to find to find an objective story in today's written media. One reason for the slow demise of the printed newspaper? It get really tiring to have to read articles about anything, where you have to separate the writers personal biases from the facts. It is expected in an editorial but really irksome in most other areas.

Prashant,
Nice photo of a younger Prashantsing!

The young officer jokingly told me "Don't call us traitors just because we fought for the British against Tipu. The paltan will fight for our country with the same passion today as they fought for the Company."

I told him not to feel so bad."Had Tipu won we would probably have been ruled by the French instead of the British."

No one could ever call Indian soldiers traitors. They hired on as soldiers to The Company. They would have been traitors if they had betrayed their salt and turned against their officers, not the other way around. The Indian Army as a whole was viewed as the most loyal of soldiers, more loyal than any of the other native soldiers in the British Empire. Even the Mutiny was not nation wide, it was restricted just to parts of India. The POW's who took part in the Legion Freies Indien under the Third Reich were never really effective. The soldiers and officers who took part suffered from very low morale as they felt they had betrayed their salt. At that time (and even now) a man has only his word. If he goes against it, he can lose the respect of his peers and if he is an honorable man, he can lose his self respect. The INA was never really effective either.

As a nation, India can count itself very fortunate that such MEN have made up its armed forces. Through, communal strife, caste warfare, political uncertainty, etc. they have never wavered in their duty to support the lawfully elected government. Unlike many other countries created after WW2, that have had coup after coup and been taken over by their own armed forces; in India, everyone knew that there would never be a military coup as long as there was a lawfully elected government in power.

BTW, the above is not politics, it is history.

[sa_ali]

Excellent post and lovely pics, these men need to be honored and given respect for what they did, but due to all this political mess, real men are loosing out to the gangsters and criminals

[TC]

The reporter is also a Thakur... a Bengali one
TC

or should we call him Tagore?

No sir, he is a "Thakur".... His name is also Joydeep.... He joined The Statesman when I was head of the news team. The chap got baptized you could say. Got him here in HT when we were looking for young energetic guys.

TC

[TC]

TC,
Please pass on our congratulations to your reporter for presenting a well written article and for not injecting his personal opinions into the article. It is getting increasingly rare to find to find an objective story in today's written media. One reason for the slow demise of the printed newspaper? It get really tiring to have to read articles about anything, where you have to separate the writers personal biases from the facts. It is expected in an editorial but really irksome in most other areas.

Thanks XL... The fact is that my reporter knows nothing about hunting or hunters. In fact he was fed with a lot of misinformation. I planned the story and told him where to go and whom to talk to and what questions to ask. Joydeep is an honest reporter and follows guidelines like a solder. So after meeting Mr Lahiri Choudhury he returned enligtened. After he wrote the piece I edited it. That's how this page happened. You are right about one thing : old school journalism is dying. A few of us are just trying to hold the fort.

I may sound a bit biased, I have not come across a single journalist who has thorough knowledge about firearms and related issues. No wonder in my own paper I have seen a DBBL gun being described as "double bullet barrel gun" The clever ones ask me before putting in something like that...

TC

[dev]

Thank you for some lovely reading. Could you do some on the guys in Assam? Nitro Express is I think into capturing and taming elephants. Bet he'd have some hair raising tales to tell.

Warm regards,

Dev

[TC]

Thanks Dev I will keep this in mind. Though Assam is out of my jurisdiction I will try to work out something.

TC

[Nitro Express]

Hello TC,

Thanks for posting a well written article.

Let me add a bit more.

D.K Lahiri Choudhury has two very interesting books to his credit - The Great Indian Elephant Book and A Trunk Full of Tales: Seventy Years with the Indian Elephant.
The first book is a very well researched compilation of old elephant writings during the colonial rule. I actually started collecting Shikar Books after going through it.The second one is on his experiences with elephants.
He did most of his hunting with a Manton made .470 double rifle.

There is another gentleman from Calcutta who possessed a Elephant Control License – The owner of Nahoum’s the confectionery store inside New Market.He did most of his hunting in western and central Assam.He was a wizard with his 450 - 400 Jeffery Double.

The legendary father and son duo of Tutu and Bubu Imam who were shikar operators for Rowland Ward are credited to have brought down over fifty rouges in the forests of Raimona and Kuklung in western Assam. Both father and son hunted with .470 made droplock doubles made by Westley Richards. Tutu Imam also carried a .425 Westley Richards bolt action rifle to follow up injured game. Tutu Imam also wrote a book on hunting which he aptly named “Brown Hunter”.

Let me see if I can dig up something on Assamese sportsmen who were into big game hunting.

NE

[TC]

Hello TC,

Thanks for posting a well written article.

Let me add a bit more.

D.K Lahiri Choudhury has two very interesting books to his credit - The Great Indian Elephant Book and A Trunk Full of Tales: Seventy Years with the Indian Elephant.
The first book is a very well researched compilation of old elephant writings during the colonial rule. I actually started collecting Shikar Books after going through it.The second one is on his experiences with elephants.
He did most of his hunting with a Manton made .470 double rifle.

There is another gentleman from Calcutta who possessed a Elephant Control License – The owner of Nahoum’s the confectionery store inside New Market.He did most of his hunting in western and central Assam.He was a wizard with his 450 - 400 Jeffery Double.

The legendary father and son duo of Tutu and Bubu Imam who were shikar operators for Rowland Ward are credited to have brought down over fifty rouges in the forests of Raimona and Kuklung in western Assam. Both father and son hunted with .470 made droplock doubles made by Westley Richards. Tutu Imam also carried a .425 Westley Richards bolt action rifle to follow up injured game. Tutu Imam also wrote a book on hunting which he aptly named “Brown Hunter”.

Let me see if I can dig up something on Assamese sportsmen who were into big game hunting.

NE

Thanks NE, I have read D K Lahiri Choudhury's books. In fact our photographer took a fantastic photo of him glancing through the pages of A Trunk Full Of Tales. But the article was getting too big and I was so eager to take as many photographs as possible that I had to kept the bit about the books out. I guess some sacrifices have to be made to serve a greater interest.
I also know the owner of Nahoum's. But never knew he shot rogues. Thanks NE.

TC