The chronicles of conservation: The lion, the tiger, the cheetah and the politics | Political Pulse News,The Indian Express
It may be another 'Modi hai to mumkin hai' moment Saturday, but Nehru onwards, it's not the first time leaders have displayed a keen 'animal instinct'.
Saturday, Sep 17, 2022
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HomePolitical PulseThe chronicles of conservation: The lion, the tiger, the cheetah and the politics
The chronicles of conservation: The lion, the tiger, the cheetah and the politics
It may be another 'Modi hai to mumkin hai' moment Saturday, but Nehru onwards, it's not the first time leaders have displayed a keen 'animal instinct'.
Written by Jay Mazoomdaar
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New Delhi | Updated: September 17, 2022 7:29:12 am
Jawaharlal Nehru gifted elephant calf ‘Indira’ to the children of war-torn Japan in 1949. (File Photo)The idea of bringing back cheetahs, the only large mammal India has lost in recent history, has immense popular appeal. This was not lost on Jairam Ramesh who backed the idea as the Environment Minister in the Congress-led UPA-II government in 2009 or the BJP-led NDA-II that revived it in 2017 even after the Supreme Court had shot down the plan in 2013.
Now as the nation waits for the grand spectacle, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is all set to release the African imports in enclosures built inside Kuno National Park on September 17, his birthday.
Modi is not the first leader to recognise the value of charismatic wild species in building political capital, particularly when the animals have deep roots in cultural identities. While earlier the spin-offs of such symbolism were almost entirely diplomatic, the growing awareness of conservation among the middle class at home has in the recent years encouraged prospecting even electoral gains in it.
As a messenger of affection and goodwill, elephant calf ‘Indira’ was gifted by Jawaharlal Nehru to the children of war-torn Japan in 1949. All through the 1950s, India shipped elephants to zoos in China, the Soviet Union, USA, Germany, Turkey, Iran, Canada and the Netherlands. Nehru described the elephant as the symbol of India — “wise and patient, strong and yet, gentle” — and the gifts ostensibly helped create the idea of a newly independent nation.
Half a century later, though, Prime Minister A B Vajpayee sought a more imposing image of India in the elephant symbol. “The Indian economy is often identified with the elephant. I have no problem with the analogy. Elephants may take time to get all parts of their vast bodies moving forward in unison. But once they actually start moving, the momentum is very difficult to divert, slow down, stop or reverse. And when they move, the forest shakes,” he told the third India-EU Business Summit at Copenhagen in 2002.
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