Article written by EIH researcher and writer
Devanshi Panda
“You, young man, are an intelligent, honest, vivacious fellow in this crowd of thugs and idiots. In any jungle, what is the rarest of animals—the creature that comes along only once in a generation?”
“The white tiger.”
The above excerpt from Arvind Adiga’s best-selling book is not factually wrong; the white tiger is indeed a rare beast in the wild. The colour of the white tiger’s fur is a result of a genetic mutation known as leucism. A white tiger is born when two tigers with rare recessive forms of a gene, called alleles, breed with each other. True white tigers, as Kailash Sankhala describes them in his book “Tiger! The story of the Indian Tiger”, “are rare mutants who have dark brown stripes visible at all angles against the white background; the nose and lips are mottled grey-pink and their eyes are ice-blue”. However, this magnificent beast is not from a separate species of tiger, it comes under the Panthera Tigris Tigris subspecies itself. One of the earliest records of the white tiger comes from a specimen exhibited at the Exeter Exchange in 1820. The Rewa princely state has had a long association with the white tigers; in December 1915, Maharaja Gulab Singh of Rewa captured a two-year-old white tiger cub. This tiger lived for five years and was then stuffed and presented to King George V.
The white tigers of today are believed to have a common ancestor; Mohan. If the name didn’t already give it away, Mohan was an Indian tiger. He was discovered by Maharaja Martand Singh, the last maharaja of Rewa, in the jungles of Bandhavgarh. Mohan’s mother and three siblings had been shot by the maharaja’s entourage, but Mohan would live on to make his legacy known to the world. The tiger was captured on the 27th of May 1951 and then brought to the Govindgarh palace. But the tiger escaped the confines of the palace soon after on the 30th of May. This led to “Operation Recapture”, as a result of which he was brought back to the palace, where he went on to live for over two decades. To promote the rare, wondrous white tigers, the maharaja made Mohan breed with the tigress Begum, but the experiment failed as all the cubs were normally coloured. Then, the process of in-breeding was tried out, wherein Mohan mated with his daughter Radha. It was a success as Radha gave birth to four white tigers.
This “success”, unfortunately, came at a great cost. The white tigers we know of today are those who have been bred in captivity ( in the wild, the chance for white members in tigers is as low as one in 10,000, reported an article in The Hindu), meaning that they have undergone the process of inbreeding. It is important to remember that white tigers are mainly a result of experiments, similar to project ‘Liger’, which attempts to cross a male lion with a female tigress, which can cause huge genetic mess-ups in the offspring. In-breeding is harmful not only for white tigers but for all tigers regardless of colour. It compromises their immunity severely and results in spinal deformities and defective organs. Since white tigers do not have the conventional orange coat, they are unable to camouflage well, which makes it difficult for them to hunt skilfully and, hence, survive. So the narrative often advertised by money-minded organisations that in-breeding in captivity helps in introducing the white tigers back into the wild falls flat on its own lie. This is also why the Madhya Pradesh Government’s 2016 endeavour, “World’s first white tiger safari”, was criticised, apart from the fact that it is not, in fact, the world’s first white tiger safari. A similar safari has been conducted in Odisha since 1991. In December 2013, the National Tiger Conservation Authority refused to give its nod for the reintroduction of white tigers in Madhya Pradesh, pointing out that the white tigers have no “conservation value”. Wildlife expert and retired Indian Forest Service officer PM Lad had commented, “It’s good as a decorative show-piece attracting people in zoos and nothing beyond this.”
There is no doubt that the tiger is a beautiful creature, and the white tiger’s unique features perhaps make it an even more fascinating animal to adore and study. Jim Corbett had said of the tiger that it was a“ large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage”. Perhaps respecting the tiger population and treating it like the gentleman that it truly is would help India and other nations more in tiger conservation efforts. Instead of forcing a less-than-ideal life onto the tigers, simply for the sake of aesthetics and money, it might be best to let them thrive and roar, unadulterated.
References
- Sankhala, K. (1978) Tiger! : The story of the Indian tiger : Sankhala, Kailash, 1925-1994 : Free Download, borrow, and streaming, Internet Archive. London : Collins. Available at: httpSwathi, V. (2020) ‘captive breeding of white tigers leads to genetic defects’,
- The Hindu. Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/captive-breeding-of-white-tigers-leads-to-genetic-defects/article31935072.ece (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
s://archive.org/details/tigerstoryofindi0000sank/page/156/mode/2up (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
- Deol, T. (2019) Jim Corbett – the man known for being both a Hunter and champion of Tigers, ThePrint. Available at: https://theprint.in/theprint-profile/jim-corbett-the-man-known-for-being-both-a-hunter-and-champion-of-tigers/267507/ (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
- Dixit, R. (2016) Behind ‘the World’s first white tiger safari’ in Madhya Pradesh lie false claims and corruption, Scroll.in. Scroll.in. Available at: https://scroll.in/article/806238/behind-the-worlds-first-white-tiger-safari-in-madhya-pradesh-lie-false-claims-and-corruption (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
- The truth about White Tigers (2021) WWF. World Wildlife Fund. Available at: https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/the-truth-about-white-tigers (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
- White Tiger Safari | District Rewa, Government of Madhya Pradesh | India. Available at: https://rewa.nic.in/en/tourist-place/white-tiger-safari/ (Accessed: March 2, 2023).
