Tucked into the north-western corner of district Lakhimpur-Kheri (UP), bordering Nepal, a dense forest sprawls in a rough rectangle covering about 500 square kilometer core and 125 square kilometer buffer area with coordinates 28.31 degree North and 80.41 degree East, engulfing a wildlife sanctuary called Dudhwa – the famous abode of its tigers, leopards, elephants and swamp deer along with other forest animals flourishing on the land and its rivulets. About half a century back, this piece of land was unknown to the outside world. It was with great deal of efforts put up by Billy Arjan Silngh – a wildlife enthusiast – that Dudhwa as a Sanctuary came into existence and developed into phases to become a National Park in 1977 and a Tiger Reserve in 1988. The stories of Dudhwa, Tiger Haven, Tara and deep Kheri forest of Tarai of the Himalayas, including its big bosses who administer it, are so intertwined that it is difficult to single out any one of them without mentioning the other. It is an interesting fact that if one is inquisitive about the real self of Arjan Singh; he can not avoid or miss to understand the purpose and mission behind Dudhwa National Park and the episodes which relate to Tiger Haven and Tara. And conversely, if one wants to go into the depth and profundity of knowledge surrounding the deep woods of Dudhwa, the name of Arjan Singh automatically appears as an inspiring and all pervading spirit of the forest and the National Park. He lived as a legend, and now that he is no more, this legend survives even with greater intensity and liveliness.
An old Bunyan tree stands in solitude at Tiger Haven – the residence of Arjan Singh – paying homage to the departed soul who used to scale its high branches through a long rope almost daily as a part of his physical exercise. The solitary rope is still swinging down like a creeper on the tree as if waiting for its hero to come back. Alas! The natives of Dudhwa (men and animals) ‘brought home the warrior dead’ fighting with the vagaries and infirmities of old age without any major ailments from Jaswantnagar, near Pallia, and as the last tribute to the departed soul ,with great honour and respect, buried his ashes beside the Tiger Haven in accordance to his Will. A rough-tough man that Arjan Singh was, he lived a life more in the lap of nature, open and free, than the confines of a living room. He had a passion to build his body like a gymnast because he knew that to stay-fit at such a remote place, without any medical help in the vicinity of the forest, was a necessity for him and it required to keep the body physically intact in the best possible way. His hands were hard like stone and those who shook hands with him might have experienced the toughness of this jungle-man. But he was soft within and so polished and cultured that it reminded of his lineage to the royal Kapurthala family (Punjab) to which he originally belonged but migrated to the erstwhile state of Balrampur(UP), a generation back.
It was an experience to walk with him inside the forest fully infested with tigers. The writer had an occasion to move inside the forest with Arjan Singh who never carried any firearms to protect himself except a small rough stick in his hand. “One should not be scarred of tigers. They don’t attack man” said Arjan Singh and added, “Humans don’t form a part of the Manu of tigers. They rarely hurt unless provoked. Walk fearlessly and be proud of being friendly with them. They are the best specimen of nature’s beauty and power”. On the way side fresh pugmarks of tiger were clearly visible indicating that it had passed through this area only minutes before. The people living at Dudhwa – forest officers and the staff - never shared Arjan Singh’s sermons like that and had ostensibly prognosticated that one day the tigers of Dudhwa would devour him. But this hero of the forest never had even bruises caused by any of the wildlife living there.
It had in real terms generated a controversy over Tara – a tigress – whom Arjan Singh reared as a pet like a foster-father. He was so passionate about her that he used to live, sleep and dream Tara. It was not certain whether she was a cocktail or real Bengal tiger breed. Whether she disturbed the genetic composition of the future tigers of Dudhwa or whether Arjan Singh succeeded or failed in experimenting his vision of rearing tigers openly in natural environment (instead of the confines of zoo) and allowing them to be released into forest to lead predator life, has now become a subject matter of deep study and research and no verdict could be passed in haste in favour or against him by a self-styled analyst especially when intentions were set wrongly from the very beginning.
According to geographical habitat theory, it happened after the Ice Age and before the Continental Drift, when the Earth was containing two main portions known as Lauresia and Gondwana and were covered mostly with forests and wild animals that tigers who originally belonged to Lauresia (now Siberia), after Continental Drift started moving downwards in search of other lands, new prey and better habitat. There was nothing like ‘pure’ Bengal tiger breed as all the tigers now living in tropics had migrated from old Lauresia or new Siberia, Eastern Russia and Korean Peninsula and, later on, came to be known by various (sub-species) names according to local habitat like Amur, Bengal, Indo-Chinese, Caspian, Malayan, South-Chinese and Sumatran tigers. These tigers also entered Ceylon (Shri Lanka) through the Indian Southern Peninsula but with rising of the sea level were cut off from the mainland and ultimately got extinct. Had they were living; they would have added another name of sub-specie like Ceylonese or Singhalese tigers. The tigers were known to be classified according to their habitat and not on the basis of genes and DNA. The tiger’s thick fur coat of skin and the brightness of colour are testimony to the fact that they migrated from their original habitat as Lauresia lying within cold latitude (now known to be as Mongolia, Eastern Russia and parts of Tundra’s) and moved towards southern coastal plains of China, South- East Asia and reached India. Bengal has had no tigers on its land originally. They all migrated from Siberia (Erstwhile Lauresia). They could not move beyond Indian sub-continent, especially to Africa, because till that Age, continents had already settled after the continental drift, creating a great void of Arabian Sea, and a part of Africa, in the shape of Indian Peninsula, was cut off and attached to Tethys Ocean which disappeared in the powerful continental thrust and replaced by the Himalayas – the newly formed mountains on the Earth. The tigers as specie were older than the continental drift and existed in Lauresia even when the land-mass of India and China was geographically not formed. The shape of the Earth containing Indian Peninsula came only after continental drift. Thus, the controversy over the ‘pure’ breed of Bengal tigers, as such, holds no good. Even DNA sample of ‘pure’ Bengal tiger showed the Siberian tiger genes (India To-day, Nov. 17, 1997). Still one feels that such theories of animal migration and habitat require a serious study and research to establish about the purity of breed or their ‘cocktail’ concept, if at all there is any.
However, the above controversy over Siberian and Bengal breed of tigers had unnecessarily brought two stalwarts, two ‘human tigers’ groaning at each other, almost like two warriors of by gone ages, coming face to face at daggers drawn. One has written a book ‘Tara – A Cocktail Tigress’ and pat came the counter to it by the other – the book entitled – ‘A Tiger’s Story’. These are the fights of words and can never establish a profound theory of ‘how to rear tigers – in captivity of Zoo or openly in natural surroundings of a forest? Crocodiles and other such animals are reared up and slipped into natural environment. This has also been done in Africa with lions and cheetals (spotted deer) but never practiced in India. Arjan Singh’s attempt was the lone example of this kind of tiger-rearing.
The story of Tara is interesting, engaging but pathetic. It ended in tragic controversy and believed to have been shot by the Field Officer who got its mounted skin as a ‘prized trophy’, a rare gesture shown on the part of the U.P. forest administration. But the animal was not Tara; it was the Median tigress proclaimed Arjan Singh who himself was with the officer (now retired) and had given a vivid description in his book ‘A Tiger’s Story’ – about how ‘false Tara’ was shot dead. A father knows better about his children than neighbours. The real Tara had developed a big, prosperous and a good family and remained alive much later than supposedly shot in a ‘false encounter’.
Arjan Singh believed that wildlife reserves were dwindling in size and population in India. They were also scattered and fragmented and a minimal number of tigers left in their isolated pockets had led to unhealthy breeding. This was the main cause of the decline of the population of tigers. This malady could be checked if tigers from reserves (and Zoos) were reared up in an open and original environment with a practice given to them for their natural prey and allowed to be slipped into forest as predators. The tigers needed as long journey from zoo to forest through rearing up process in natural environment. Arjan Singh wanted this experiment to carry out and as a wildlife enthusiast, he was in contact with the late Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi who herself had shown keen interest in protecting and promoting the wildlife in India. On her recommendation along with his untiring efforts, Arjan singh could procure a tiger cub from Twycross Zoo, England, and brought it to India to experiment with his dream project. He named the tigress as ‘Tara’ and poured love and affection on her like a foster-father. Slowly, Tara developed into an adult and with that the fame of Arjan Singh also reached the continents beyond the borders of India. One could see to believe that the Doctrine of Anthropomorphosis which separated the human from the beast had little ground to support itself. “The beast is as lovable as humans. The noble solitary tiger feeds her cubs first. The social and hungry lion swats them out of way’. This is the sociology of the animal world. They are more adaptable to their changing environments than man. The adult Tara used to stroll in the forest with Arjan Singh accompanied by a leopard and a dog – Singh’s adopted family. After attaining maturity she slipped away ultimately from her foster-father’s home to live inside the deep woods among the male tigers. Unlike Arjan Singh, who remained a bachelor , Tara got her love – a male tiger – got kissed and got a life, renewed inside deep woods and grew a family of her own little cubs. She left her proud father before completing two years. She had lived like a princess at Tiger Haven. But the presence of two tigers in the vicinity was of great attraction to her. Arjan Singh had counted the number of days – almost twenty months and ten days – she remained under his care. Two male tigers named ‘TM’ and ‘Long Toes’ became frequent visitors around Tiger Haven and Arjan Singh knew that it was high time he bade farewell to his daughter Tara. “I was fortunate enough to watch Tara’s first mating by the river in May 1981” wrote Arjan Singh, and with great satisfaction after getting completed his mission and experiment added, “Tara has had four families since then. She has been seen and photographed with her various cubs in the vicinity of Tiger Haven by tourists, until in 1992, like an old soldier, she faded away. …But the legend still lives on”.
In 1945, Arjan Singh came to Palia, a tehsil of district Lakhimpur-Kheri (UP), to settle down as a farmer after his retirement from the Army at a nearby place which he called Jasbirnagar – a private settlement. But the place was not conducive to the taste and temperament of Arjan Singh because it echoed and resounded day and night by cultivators guarding their crops from herds of nilgai on the one hand, and with the growing rate of taking over agricultural land and imposition of a ceiling on holdings on the other. He moved towards North West to find out a peaceful place and ultimately he reached near a patch of land bordering forest and instantly fell in love “if I don’t exactly stake a claim” he told himself and continued, “At least this is the piece of land where I will like to start farming all over again”. It was an area about 1200 hectares near the junction of Neora and Soheli rivers – a flat grass land – habited by cheetals (spotted deer), hog deer from one grass patch to another. There was a lake near by which hosted thousands of red crested pochards, mallards and other duck and under the over hanging narkul numerous common coot were skittering here and there. All the time the sight of nearness to the dense forest was providing an atmosphere of serenity and calmness. It was a place he settled down finally and named it as Tiger Haven.
Arjan Singh lived most of his life in the forest and among the wild animals. Rarely was he seen outside his farm house. Only on occasions with a definite purpose he could be spotted out at the district head quarters Lakhimpur-Kheri or Lucknow – the state capital. His life was an admixture of the old Rishis living in jungles and the new dynamic wildlife scholar sitting at his study with a pen and a type writer to work with the stories, the findings and experience of his life regarding wildlife preservation. Without any sense of exaggeration he may be called as the Jim Corbett of Independent India – with the rightful cause of preserving and protecting the wildlife. He was neither a theorist nor a bureaucrat to make a show or create publicity, but a devoted enthusiast of wildlife, who practiced and promoted personally the way he thought about to support his views. Arjan Singh authored several books entitled – Tiger Haven (Macmillan, 1973), Tara – A Tigress (Quarter books, 1981), Prince of Cats (Jonathan Cape, 1982), Tiger and Tiger(Jonathan cape, 1984), Eelie and the Big Cats (1987), The Legend of Man-eaters (Ravi Dayal, 1993), Tiger Book (1998), Watching India’s wildlife (2003)Apart from these, his biography has also appeared entitled “Honorary Tiger - Billy Arjan Singh”(2005). His last book ‘A Tiger’s Story ‘(2005) is an anthology , compiled from three books along with his answer to a controversy over a mutant tiger of Siberian extraction throwing light over the various facets of the dwindling population of tigers in India. Asked for how would he like to be remembered? Arjan Singh remarked, “I should be remembered as the protector of tigers in India, and the person who dedicated his most of the life for the cause of preserving and promoting the wildlife”.
Billy Arjan Singh had been conferred with a number of national and international awards: Padma Shri (1995) and Padma Bhushan (2006), World Wildlife Fund conferred on him The J.Paul Getty Award (2004). It would be a good gesture on the part of the Government of UP along with the Central Government to honour his memory by re-naming Dudhwa Park as ARJAN SINGH NATIOAL PARK DUDHWA,and also establishing an INSTITUTE OF CONSERVATION OF WILDLIFE to be located at DUDHWA. I would request Hon'ble, the Chief Minister of UP, to take personal interest in the above projects so as to fulfil the dream of Arjan Singh regarding preservation of the wildlife. This would be nation’s best tribute to the departed soul.
An old Bunyan tree stands in solitude at Tiger Haven – the residence of Arjan Singh – paying homage to the departed soul who used to scale its high branches through a long rope almost daily as a part of his physical exercise. The solitary rope is still swinging down like a creeper on the tree as if waiting for its hero to come back. Alas! The natives of Dudhwa (men and animals) ‘brought home the warrior dead’ fighting with the vagaries and infirmities of old age without any major ailments from Jaswantnagar, near Pallia, and as the last tribute to the departed soul ,with great honour and respect, buried his ashes beside the Tiger Haven in accordance to his Will. A rough-tough man that Arjan Singh was, he lived a life more in the lap of nature, open and free, than the confines of a living room. He had a passion to build his body like a gymnast because he knew that to stay-fit at such a remote place, without any medical help in the vicinity of the forest, was a necessity for him and it required to keep the body physically intact in the best possible way. His hands were hard like stone and those who shook hands with him might have experienced the toughness of this jungle-man. But he was soft within and so polished and cultured that it reminded of his lineage to the royal Kapurthala family (Punjab) to which he originally belonged but migrated to the erstwhile state of Balrampur(UP), a generation back.
It was an experience to walk with him inside the forest fully infested with tigers. The writer had an occasion to move inside the forest with Arjan Singh who never carried any firearms to protect himself except a small rough stick in his hand. “One should not be scarred of tigers. They don’t attack man” said Arjan Singh and added, “Humans don’t form a part of the Manu of tigers. They rarely hurt unless provoked. Walk fearlessly and be proud of being friendly with them. They are the best specimen of nature’s beauty and power”. On the way side fresh pugmarks of tiger were clearly visible indicating that it had passed through this area only minutes before. The people living at Dudhwa – forest officers and the staff - never shared Arjan Singh’s sermons like that and had ostensibly prognosticated that one day the tigers of Dudhwa would devour him. But this hero of the forest never had even bruises caused by any of the wildlife living there.
It had in real terms generated a controversy over Tara – a tigress – whom Arjan Singh reared as a pet like a foster-father. He was so passionate about her that he used to live, sleep and dream Tara. It was not certain whether she was a cocktail or real Bengal tiger breed. Whether she disturbed the genetic composition of the future tigers of Dudhwa or whether Arjan Singh succeeded or failed in experimenting his vision of rearing tigers openly in natural environment (instead of the confines of zoo) and allowing them to be released into forest to lead predator life, has now become a subject matter of deep study and research and no verdict could be passed in haste in favour or against him by a self-styled analyst especially when intentions were set wrongly from the very beginning.
According to geographical habitat theory, it happened after the Ice Age and before the Continental Drift, when the Earth was containing two main portions known as Lauresia and Gondwana and were covered mostly with forests and wild animals that tigers who originally belonged to Lauresia (now Siberia), after Continental Drift started moving downwards in search of other lands, new prey and better habitat. There was nothing like ‘pure’ Bengal tiger breed as all the tigers now living in tropics had migrated from old Lauresia or new Siberia, Eastern Russia and Korean Peninsula and, later on, came to be known by various (sub-species) names according to local habitat like Amur, Bengal, Indo-Chinese, Caspian, Malayan, South-Chinese and Sumatran tigers. These tigers also entered Ceylon (Shri Lanka) through the Indian Southern Peninsula but with rising of the sea level were cut off from the mainland and ultimately got extinct. Had they were living; they would have added another name of sub-specie like Ceylonese or Singhalese tigers. The tigers were known to be classified according to their habitat and not on the basis of genes and DNA. The tiger’s thick fur coat of skin and the brightness of colour are testimony to the fact that they migrated from their original habitat as Lauresia lying within cold latitude (now known to be as Mongolia, Eastern Russia and parts of Tundra’s) and moved towards southern coastal plains of China, South- East Asia and reached India. Bengal has had no tigers on its land originally. They all migrated from Siberia (Erstwhile Lauresia). They could not move beyond Indian sub-continent, especially to Africa, because till that Age, continents had already settled after the continental drift, creating a great void of Arabian Sea, and a part of Africa, in the shape of Indian Peninsula, was cut off and attached to Tethys Ocean which disappeared in the powerful continental thrust and replaced by the Himalayas – the newly formed mountains on the Earth. The tigers as specie were older than the continental drift and existed in Lauresia even when the land-mass of India and China was geographically not formed. The shape of the Earth containing Indian Peninsula came only after continental drift. Thus, the controversy over the ‘pure’ breed of Bengal tigers, as such, holds no good. Even DNA sample of ‘pure’ Bengal tiger showed the Siberian tiger genes (India To-day, Nov. 17, 1997). Still one feels that such theories of animal migration and habitat require a serious study and research to establish about the purity of breed or their ‘cocktail’ concept, if at all there is any.
However, the above controversy over Siberian and Bengal breed of tigers had unnecessarily brought two stalwarts, two ‘human tigers’ groaning at each other, almost like two warriors of by gone ages, coming face to face at daggers drawn. One has written a book ‘Tara – A Cocktail Tigress’ and pat came the counter to it by the other – the book entitled – ‘A Tiger’s Story’. These are the fights of words and can never establish a profound theory of ‘how to rear tigers – in captivity of Zoo or openly in natural surroundings of a forest? Crocodiles and other such animals are reared up and slipped into natural environment. This has also been done in Africa with lions and cheetals (spotted deer) but never practiced in India. Arjan Singh’s attempt was the lone example of this kind of tiger-rearing.
The story of Tara is interesting, engaging but pathetic. It ended in tragic controversy and believed to have been shot by the Field Officer who got its mounted skin as a ‘prized trophy’, a rare gesture shown on the part of the U.P. forest administration. But the animal was not Tara; it was the Median tigress proclaimed Arjan Singh who himself was with the officer (now retired) and had given a vivid description in his book ‘A Tiger’s Story’ – about how ‘false Tara’ was shot dead. A father knows better about his children than neighbours. The real Tara had developed a big, prosperous and a good family and remained alive much later than supposedly shot in a ‘false encounter’.
Arjan Singh believed that wildlife reserves were dwindling in size and population in India. They were also scattered and fragmented and a minimal number of tigers left in their isolated pockets had led to unhealthy breeding. This was the main cause of the decline of the population of tigers. This malady could be checked if tigers from reserves (and Zoos) were reared up in an open and original environment with a practice given to them for their natural prey and allowed to be slipped into forest as predators. The tigers needed as long journey from zoo to forest through rearing up process in natural environment. Arjan Singh wanted this experiment to carry out and as a wildlife enthusiast, he was in contact with the late Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi who herself had shown keen interest in protecting and promoting the wildlife in India. On her recommendation along with his untiring efforts, Arjan singh could procure a tiger cub from Twycross Zoo, England, and brought it to India to experiment with his dream project. He named the tigress as ‘Tara’ and poured love and affection on her like a foster-father. Slowly, Tara developed into an adult and with that the fame of Arjan Singh also reached the continents beyond the borders of India. One could see to believe that the Doctrine of Anthropomorphosis which separated the human from the beast had little ground to support itself. “The beast is as lovable as humans. The noble solitary tiger feeds her cubs first. The social and hungry lion swats them out of way’. This is the sociology of the animal world. They are more adaptable to their changing environments than man. The adult Tara used to stroll in the forest with Arjan Singh accompanied by a leopard and a dog – Singh’s adopted family. After attaining maturity she slipped away ultimately from her foster-father’s home to live inside the deep woods among the male tigers. Unlike Arjan Singh, who remained a bachelor , Tara got her love – a male tiger – got kissed and got a life, renewed inside deep woods and grew a family of her own little cubs. She left her proud father before completing two years. She had lived like a princess at Tiger Haven. But the presence of two tigers in the vicinity was of great attraction to her. Arjan Singh had counted the number of days – almost twenty months and ten days – she remained under his care. Two male tigers named ‘TM’ and ‘Long Toes’ became frequent visitors around Tiger Haven and Arjan Singh knew that it was high time he bade farewell to his daughter Tara. “I was fortunate enough to watch Tara’s first mating by the river in May 1981” wrote Arjan Singh, and with great satisfaction after getting completed his mission and experiment added, “Tara has had four families since then. She has been seen and photographed with her various cubs in the vicinity of Tiger Haven by tourists, until in 1992, like an old soldier, she faded away. …But the legend still lives on”.
In 1945, Arjan Singh came to Palia, a tehsil of district Lakhimpur-Kheri (UP), to settle down as a farmer after his retirement from the Army at a nearby place which he called Jasbirnagar – a private settlement. But the place was not conducive to the taste and temperament of Arjan Singh because it echoed and resounded day and night by cultivators guarding their crops from herds of nilgai on the one hand, and with the growing rate of taking over agricultural land and imposition of a ceiling on holdings on the other. He moved towards North West to find out a peaceful place and ultimately he reached near a patch of land bordering forest and instantly fell in love “if I don’t exactly stake a claim” he told himself and continued, “At least this is the piece of land where I will like to start farming all over again”. It was an area about 1200 hectares near the junction of Neora and Soheli rivers – a flat grass land – habited by cheetals (spotted deer), hog deer from one grass patch to another. There was a lake near by which hosted thousands of red crested pochards, mallards and other duck and under the over hanging narkul numerous common coot were skittering here and there. All the time the sight of nearness to the dense forest was providing an atmosphere of serenity and calmness. It was a place he settled down finally and named it as Tiger Haven.
Arjan Singh lived most of his life in the forest and among the wild animals. Rarely was he seen outside his farm house. Only on occasions with a definite purpose he could be spotted out at the district head quarters Lakhimpur-Kheri or Lucknow – the state capital. His life was an admixture of the old Rishis living in jungles and the new dynamic wildlife scholar sitting at his study with a pen and a type writer to work with the stories, the findings and experience of his life regarding wildlife preservation. Without any sense of exaggeration he may be called as the Jim Corbett of Independent India – with the rightful cause of preserving and protecting the wildlife. He was neither a theorist nor a bureaucrat to make a show or create publicity, but a devoted enthusiast of wildlife, who practiced and promoted personally the way he thought about to support his views. Arjan Singh authored several books entitled – Tiger Haven (Macmillan, 1973), Tara – A Tigress (Quarter books, 1981), Prince of Cats (Jonathan Cape, 1982), Tiger and Tiger(Jonathan cape, 1984), Eelie and the Big Cats (1987), The Legend of Man-eaters (Ravi Dayal, 1993), Tiger Book (1998), Watching India’s wildlife (2003)Apart from these, his biography has also appeared entitled “Honorary Tiger - Billy Arjan Singh”(2005). His last book ‘A Tiger’s Story ‘(2005) is an anthology , compiled from three books along with his answer to a controversy over a mutant tiger of Siberian extraction throwing light over the various facets of the dwindling population of tigers in India. Asked for how would he like to be remembered? Arjan Singh remarked, “I should be remembered as the protector of tigers in India, and the person who dedicated his most of the life for the cause of preserving and promoting the wildlife”.
Billy Arjan Singh had been conferred with a number of national and international awards: Padma Shri (1995) and Padma Bhushan (2006), World Wildlife Fund conferred on him The J.Paul Getty Award (2004). It would be a good gesture on the part of the Government of UP along with the Central Government to honour his memory by re-naming Dudhwa Park as ARJAN SINGH NATIOAL PARK DUDHWA,and also establishing an INSTITUTE OF CONSERVATION OF WILDLIFE to be located at DUDHWA. I would request Hon'ble, the Chief Minister of UP, to take personal interest in the above projects so as to fulfil the dream of Arjan Singh regarding preservation of the wildlife. This would be nation’s best tribute to the departed soul.
