Eye of the…State?: Foregrounding Land Rights in the Image of the Tiger

As the slightly-famished tiger marked her territory in a caged section of the Sanjay Gandhi National park, I realised that I was watching a tiger for the first time in my life. Uptill that childhood trip and the years since, images of the tiger—in contexts of conservation, nationalism, tourism, religion, masculinity, and art—had arrested the animal into a symbol. Truly seeing the big cat in-person, as is, embedded in her home, was surreal not simply because we were so close to a wild animal, but because layers of meaning were being shed to perceive her within and without her human-imposed iconography.

Illustration by John Tenniel from Punch Aug. 1857

Depicts the anthropomorphisation of colonial violence, entrapping the tiger within an image of subalternity

Colonial Imagery, Project Tiger & Nationalism

Historically, the symbol of the South Asian tiger (specifically, now, the Bengal tiger species in India) has traipsed along various affective stages of veneration and fear, with early stories of the tiger featuring as the Hindu deity Durga’s mount, Buddhist deities’ symbols and/or by various names as local deities, or man-eaters who local deities protect forest-dwelling tribes from (Bhagvat, 1968). Through imperial zoology, the tiger was reframed as an afeard, oriental beast: colonial-masculinist powers fetishised the tiger as a “worthy” opponent in the control of the Indian native people and environment, in Victorian hunting literature (Crane & Fletcher, 2014). Within this gaze, the visualising of the tiger through “their capture on paper” functioned just as much as a human-animal interaction as they were documents “linked to the entrapment and killing of tigers in India” (Crane & Fletcher, 2014). The tiger came to become an exoticised, classically Indian visual alongside finding popularity in religious art.

National Tiger Conservation Authority Banner and Logo

Project Tiger emerged as one of India’s most recognisable conservation efforts, with the national animal’s iconography often appearing in association with the national flag and other nationalist imagery.

From 1973, “Project Tiger” emphasised the Bengal tiger as a flagship species for Indian conservation, strengthening the charismatic national symbol and functionally applying this to support the forest ecosystems through the tiger’s ecological role as the apex predator. Bearing the yellow-orange (often saffron) & black-and-white stripes, and often against a green background, the big cat features as a popular symbol of national pride, environmental development and the ecological superiority of fortress conservation. While conducting an ethnographic study in Wayanad, Kerala, Jared D Margulies observed the state-run annual “Wildlife Walkathon”, where, one year, adivasi schoolchildren clad in NCC uniforms led a march of schoolchildren wearing handed-out t-shirts with the “face of an orange cartoon tiger”. He observes this “spectacle” to be the Forest Department’s most visible symbol of Repressive State Apparatus, a “broader class project aimed at quelling the possibility of full-scale revolt mediated through the lens of mitigating human-wildlife conflicts” (Margulies, 2018). As a state-making process that has subject communities to marginalisation and control, conservation is reframed instead as a matter of public education about human-wildlife conflict. Within this mediation, the tiger further becomes a spectacle of nature that alienates people—the general civilian public, who may be audiences in social media campaigns or grassroots communities in localised state campaigns—from their sense of place, social ties and rights (Igoe, 2010). 

Times of India Ad for #SavingOurStripes Campaign

The copy on this visual celebrates the animal’s apparent economic contribution to the nation.

Fortress Conservation: Tiger as Spectacle

The Times of India #SavingOurStripes campaign—with a primarily urban English-speaking audience—clearly delivers on a narrative of nationalism, while also providing a call to action that is entirely disconnected from tangible conservation policy, education or implementation. Solely centering the animal in conservation is a reproduction of a dominant ideology of fortress conservation (Brandon 2021), wherein certain ecological bodies are given greater rights than indigenous peoples who have been the stewards of that land ancestrally. With reference to the rigid idea of “tribals vs tigers” against co-existence-based sustainable conservation, C.R. Bijoy draws postcolonial parallels between imperial hunting laws and contemporary draconian laws that simply replace seats of power from colonists to Indian forest officers (Bijoy, 2011). The state campaign, alongside supporting environmental NGOs, ecotourism businesses and media, herein constructs a public visual of the tiger as necessitating pristine forests as though the human world and the animal/nature world are distinct binaries; further these visuals do not acknowledge that the cause for concern lies in rapid capitalistic development—with coal mines and power plants fragmenting habitats—rather than indigenous inhabitants’ livelihoods.

Screenshot of Video poster on the National Museum New Delhi and Ministry of Culture’s Instagram page

These tiger narratives are still alive in cultural memory, but out of context this cultural celebration historicises lived experience.

Whose image gets to belong to the forest?

Where is state-led tiger conservation now? And how does Project Tiger’s public-facing symbolic campaign actually translate to on-ground erasure? This year on International Tiger Day, alongside The Ministry of Environment, Forestry & Climate Change’s social media ‘Did you know?’ style posts of brief generic facts and statistics on policy with AI-generated/enhanced photographs of tigers, the Ministry of Culture had an interesting contribution. They shared a terracotta tiger from the last century, found in a region, Bastar, known for its indigenous artforms (specifically for its representations of the tiger, ex: the oft-appropriated big cats in the gond art style). This is the same region that has been facing severe displacement and loss of livelihood as a result of tiger reserves. The Gond, Baiga, Madia and Muria tribes are just some of the Bastar tribes facing displacement. While promised rehabilitation dues are lacking in both plans and implementation, harassment by forest authorities is rampant, means of livelihood remain inaccessible, and elite tourism is on the rise (Baiga Tribe Protests, n.d.). Regions that were once considered buffer zones where tribal communities can safeguard their way of life, open themselves up to rapid development under the symbol of tiger conservation. (A Vulnerable Forest Tribe That Lost out to Deer and Tiger Conservation, n.d.) Enforcement-first conservation, rather than supporting sustainable biodiversity and maintenance of safe tiger populations, “becomes a strategy for the state to consolidate its power” (Fanari, 2024). Furthermore, organisations with strong visual media, public outreach and donor bases, such as World Wide Fund India have been complicit in not just promoting this symbolic conservation but also facilitating the violence and displacement of indigenous peoples. (Survival International, n.d.) Whose visuals are we celebrating, and whose cultural heritage and livelihoods are we condemning to museum showcases?

One further visual media of interest is the 1957 filmwork by Swedish filmmaker Arne Sucksdorff with the Muria tribe of Bastar. He and his wife famously documented the relationship between an Adivasi boy, Chendru, and a tiger, to international exposure. At the time, the approach emerged from a largely western gaze and framing, without leaving a significant impact on the way indigenous rights, economic disparity, or environmental issues were discussed or perceived. Yet, the film and its subsequent lack of impact on the lives of the actors and the continued lack of mainstream visibility of indigenous narratives on human-animal interactions depicts the question of belonging (Special Report - Chendru Mandavi the “Tiger Boy”, 2013). The visual of the tiger appears to belong only in certain spaces, in certain styles and for certain audiences—limitations drawn by narratives subject to structural exclusion and systemic violence. 

Growing human-wildlife conflict forces schools to shut | Green Humour by Rohan Chakravarty

An image I came across on my feed only a few hours after completing edits on this article. 

Here’s Chakravarty’s caption from his social media post: “As the Maharashtra government ignores the findings of its own State Wildlife Board to sanction iron ore mining in Tadoba Tiger Reserve, villagers residing around the park must brace for more conflict. One of the most ignored aspects of the rising strife is the impact on education, with schools being forced to shut down as wild animals take refuge in human land and property.” (Chakravarty, 2026)

Today, cartoonists anthropomorphise tigers to satiricise the generic terms of ‘conflict’ and ‘development’ that we entangle the animal in. This new communication of absurdist subjectivity enables an outside view into the dimensions of power that play out in climate (in)justice, while imposing and problematising the image of the tiger within new socio-environmental contexts. To conclude, the tiger as a visual symbol possesses contested belongings, functions, visibilities and impacts, with ties to nationhood, colonial power, cultural identity, violence, human-animal conflict, and conservation ideologies. Its use in various media, by various creators at various levels of power, demonstrates the dynamicity of animal iconography in a socio-politically and socio-ecologically-influx world. As we continue to illustrate  conservation narratives for future generations, we need to question whose loss we are normalising. When you see a healthy forest ecosystem, who do you see?

References

A vulnerable forest tribe that lost out to deer and tiger conservation. (2023). Retrieved August 30, 2025, from https://caravanmagazine.in/environment/vulnerable-forest-tribe-wildlife-conservation

Baiga Tribe Protests against Relocation from Achanakmar Tiger Reserve in Chhattisgarh | Bilaspur,Chhattisgarh. (n.d.). Retrieved August 30, 2025, from https://www.landconflictwatch.org/conflicts/villagers-allege-they-have-not-received-the-promised-compensation-after-relocation-from-achanakmar-tiger-reserve#/

Bhagvat, D. (1968). Tribal Gods and Festivals in Central India. Asian Folklore Studies, 27(2), 27–106. https://doi.org/10.2307/1177671

BIJOY, C. R. (2011). The Great Indian Tiger Show. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(4), 36–41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27918063

Brandon, S. (2021). Selling extinction: The social media(tion) of global cheetah conservation. Geoforum, 127, 189–197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.10.016

Chakravarty, R. (2026, February 23). Green Humour for The Hindu. Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rohan-chakravarty-b688b8227_as-the-maharashtra-government-ignores-the-activity-7431538547674988544-B_8w?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAD1CY8YBzPLEzg0khXQ76vpT4pco_9GP7kg

Crane, R., & Fletcher, L. (2014). PICTURING THE INDIAN TIGER: IMPERIAL ICONOGRAPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. Victorian Literature and Culture, 42(3), 369–386. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24575887

Fanari, E. (2024). Participatory Security as Form of Control: Kaziranga National Park, India. Conservation & Society, 22(3), 125–136. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27324023

Igoe, J., 2010. The Spectacle of Nature in the Global Economy of Appearances: Anthropological engagements with the spectacular mediations of transnational conservation. Crit. Anthropol. 30 (4), 375–397. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0308275X10372468. First published date: December-23-2010. 

International, S. (n.d.). Tiger Reserve tribes. Retrieved August 30, 2025, from https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/tigerreservetribes

Margulies, J. D. (2018). The Conservation Ideological State Apparatus. Conservation and Society, 16(2), 181–192. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26393328

National Museum New Delhi. (2025, July 29). International Tiger Day Object of the Day Video Post. Nmnewdelhi Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/DMsoMp2v_6H/

Special Report - Chendru Mandavi the “Tiger Boy.” (2013, October 10). Sansad TV - Youtube. Retrieved August 30, 2025, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_92wePPmT8