Review of Divyabhanusinh’s The Story of India’s Cheetahs: A spotted history

Come September, it will be a year since the first batch of cheetahs — five females and three males — landed in Gwalior aboard a specially-configured Boeing 747 aircraft after a long journey from Windhoek, Namibia. Three of the first litter of four born in India also died from malnutrition and the scorching summer at Kuno National Park, where 11 of the beasts roam unrestricted — but their movements tracked via GPS — and four live in special enclosures called ‘bomas,’ which are designed to help the animals acclimatise to Indian conditions. Insightful anecdotes The Story of India’s Cheetahs is an expansive, exquisitely illustrated and citation-rich account of the cheetah’s history in India. Unlike the lion and tiger — the classical wild cats — which have been woven into the everyday life of India over millennia via folk tales, religious texts and colonial histories, the cheetah’s India story is almost entirely about its relationship to coursing — or the use of predators to track and hunt down other animals. Challenges of translocation The current translocation of cheetahs from Africa raised issues on whether these animals were suitable for India’s grasslands and terrain but Divyabhanusinh says the import of African cheetah — largely from Kenya — into India goes back to the early 20th century.