‘The term ‘man-eater’ is colonial — the ecological crisis needs new thought’

Nayanika Mathur is associate professor of anthropology at Oxford University. Speaking to Times Evoke, she discusses observing ‘crooked cats’:


As an anthropologist, I use the term ‘crooked cats’, which colloquially translates to an animal that has changed from being ‘seedha’ or simple to something different, even dangerous. When describing predatory big cats in Uttarakhand, where I did my ethnographic research, I realised I was very uncomfortable using the term ‘man-eater' because of its colonial associations. I also realised how much I — and the field of ecological conservatism —needed to get away from colonial understandings to gain a real sense of the environmental crisis. Part of my book ‘Crooked Cats’ became about finding a different way to describe such animals and their contexts — my fieldwork in the mountains helped enormously by providing the term ‘tedha’ to discuss an animal which had apparently inexplicably gone off the straight path of avoiding humans.

A TWISTING PATH: A growing number of leopards are reported to have turned predatory in Uttarakhand in recent years — but locals don’t always blame the animals, pointing instead to the extraordinary pressures of human activities. Picture courtesy: iStock





What was striking was when I’d ask people why such an animal, which had later been killed or captured, had become like this, they wouldn’t blame it — they’d point to the state, metropolitan-provincial politics , the destruction of nature, etc., but not the animal. The locals had deep and meaningful stories about why big cats were starting to attack people. To me, the term ‘tedha baagh’ conveys that empathy for these animals, often called ‘blameless’. Of course there were moments when the locals would be furious with an animal which had attacked someone — but, equally, there were times they’d speak about issues that extended well beyond the animal itself.





The Anthropocene, the epoch in which human actions are reshaping the planet, grew increasingly central to my understanding of human-animal relations — this came directly from ethnography where the massive increase in leopards becoming predatory was contextualised against the destruction of forests, depleted biodiversity, expanding infrastructure projects, the shrinking of the usual trail of big cats, etc. Interestingly, the animals weren’t seen just as victims — they were often thought of as creatures making considered choices. There are many academic debates now about whether animals have emotions, memory and agency. But these were obvious to people living in proximity to them — I found so much emotion in their stories about animals which were supposed to have memories, care deeply for their young, even be reborn and perform karmic justice to someone who’d harmed them earlier. Animals were thought of as very complex beings with feelings and the ability to act intelligently. Locals even spoke of them as rebelling against injustice.

BURNING BRIGHT? With human expansion pushing into their habitats, tigers have lost 95% of their historical range — despite some recovery in numbers, tigers face climate impacts, poachers and human-animal conflict. Picture courtesy: iStock


Significant changes are underfoot now though. We are seeing tremendous mobile and digital technology penetrating rural India. In 2006, when I did fieldwork earlier, if a ‘tedha baagh’ was seen around Gopeshwar, where I lived, it would take some time for the news to reach a nearby town. In my research now, I found videos, pictures and WhatsApp messages constantly circulated about ‘crooked cats’, both local and faraway. Our imagination of animals is being changed with this profusion of imagery, suffused with emotions that have very real effects.


Older forms of discussing animals survive too — in Uttarakhand, Jim Corbett’s stories and memorabilia are also ways for people to talk about big cats. You could sit down at a tea stall and in the cool sunshine of the hills, hear tales of ‘baaghs’ blazing their trail across the landscape. I found it intriguing to see how human impacts — the climatic loss of water sources, the shrinking of shrubland, the rise of buildings, river damming and poaching — constantly figured in these conversations and understandings of a social world where both humans and animals live.



These discoveries again brought home to me my discomfort at using the term ‘man-eater’. In my view, this has heavy colonial baggage, leading one to imagine a ‘sahib’ in his sola topi, shooting a big cat in shikar. It is also sexist — apart from men, such cats attack women (who spend hours walking across the hills for water and wood), children and other animals. Yet, we continue to use these terms — and these categories of thought — unwittingly and so, we keep telling the same stories with the same old hierarchies. We need to move away from such accounts and see ‘crooked cats’ in light of today’s climate crisis where all species, us included, are facing profound change.