Gendered negotiations: Hunting and colonialism in the late ninteenth century Nilgiris

Abstract

Shikar or game hunting In India was one of the sites on which the colonial project tried to construct and affirm the difference between Its ·superior' self and the lnferiorlsed 'native' other. In legitimising colonialism, the self was presented as risk-taking, perseverant and super-masculine; and the other was constructed as utilitarian and effeminate.2 The process of affirming this masculine feminine/ coloniser- colonised difference, however, faced much rough weather In the terrain of actual practice. Often, the supposedly effeminate native exhibited strong streaks of masculinity in hunting or at least made the coloniser's masculinity to appear fragile and unsure. Similarly, a large ·section of the European emigrants In India, especially from the lower echelons, failed to conform to the colonial notion of masculinity and hunted in the same fashion as the stereotyped native - utilltarlan and effeminate. In short, the ·boundaries between the self and the other, as constructed by the colonial discourse on hunting, was fuzzy, weak and Incomplete.