and Oxford were both fond of bird watching, and admired him and valued his advice on matters of nature conservation. That he was close to our Prime Ministers was well-known, so the entire bureaucracy treated him like a Maharaja as I witnessed on my many field trips to forest areas in his company. Although he was sympathetic to the cause of Indian independence, he certainly did not share Gandhi’s vision of India as a country of village republics. Given this background his advice on nature conservation was biased, rooted in his strong prejudice that it was the common people of the country who were primarily responsible for destruction of nature.
Indian Board for Wildlife
The policies for wildlife protection in independent India began to be shaped with the constitution of Indian Board for Wildlife in 1952. It was chaired by the Mysore Maharajah with Dharam Kumar Sinh, from the royal family of Bhavnagar as the vice-chair. The members included Salim Ali, and two tea/coffee planters, R C Morris and E P Gee. E P Gee played a leading role in mooting the idea of establishing Protected Areas and passage of a Wildlife Protection Act two decades laterYil, In 1972 the Act was drafted by M K Ranjit Singh from the Royal family of Wankaner. The entire effort was thus being driven firstly by Maharajas who tended to have little sympathy for their subjects and were used to paying homage to their British rulers and secondly by British tea and coffee estate owners who treated the Indian labour on their estates as slaves.
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