The British Press, in rushing to the aid of the tiger and the defenceless goat in the forests of Sawaimadhopur, has demonstrated that man’s best friend is really the beast. It has now been discovered that besides the Commonwealth ‘link’ there is another bond binding the British public and the millions of India ; a love for animals. And Fleet Street is afraid that the Royal ‘shikaris’ might revive in the minds of Indian memories of the hunters of an earlier era – the British Raj. A number of tourists come to India to hunt big game and no one takes any notice of them -except perhaps a few Maharajahs who sometimes make an income from it. And no one seriously thinks that if the British monarch mounts a ‘machan’ and watches her husband take a shot at a tiger, they bring down the Commonwealth with that fatal shot. As to reviving the past, we still have a few Maharajahs who indulge in the sport and the clock of history cannot be set backwards by one tiger hunt in which Windsor joins Jaipur. The interesting thing is that animal lovers rarely think of languishing humans; multitudes of them are still languishing here as in other former colonies. But since the Royal visitors are not personally responsible for the ‘accomplishments’ of the British Raj, no one grudges them their fun.
January 25, 1961