Butreaders of the genre are faced with a dichotomy inherent in the narrative: while these stories introduced many readers, including me, to the beauty of the Indian jungle, the deeply engrossing writing often masked the terrible ecological consequences of hunting, despite the regret (and the prescient calls for conservation) many writers displayed in their works.
This was a leopard that had killed 400 people. A little while ago, it had tugged on the thorns on a tree where Corbett had been waiting for it to turn up. And now, after injuring it, Corbett had gone on foot, in the dark, with a few frightened villagers holding nothing but pine torches, to hunt for it!
The genre of shikaar literature then does not provides us a full picture of the state of affairs at the time, but a blinkered individualistic view, analogous to a Cold War spy thriller purporting to explain how espionage functioned at the time.
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