Parul Rani & Nagendra Kumar
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee. Email: parulnet.e@gmail.com
Volume 9, Number 1, 2017 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n1.21
Received February 14, 2017; Revised April 14, 2017; Accepted April 20, 2017; Published May 7, 2017.
Abstract
The present paper attempts to link the animals’ colonization with modernity as a form of European ‘mind-set’ through a short story collection of Jim Corbett, Man Eaters of Kumaon. The focus is laid on the disfigurement of the non-human entities in the colonial anthropocentric advancement; manifested through the hunting practices in colonial India. This study analyzes: first, the hunting practices as a power mechanism of colonials to dominate native subjects: human and non-human, and traces the conflict it creates between human life and wildlife. It also studies the sporting and systematic controlling over the wild animals with the help of technological enrichment. Secondly, it investigates the ambiguous presence of Jim Corbett, primarily a hunter, vacillating between his duties for the British colonial administration and for the native people, as a sahib.
Keywords: wildlife, modernity, Jim Corbett, colonialism, colonial ideology.
