In the early 20th century, if you were to scour the land in Assam on which the present-day Kaziranga National Park now stands, you’d find a dystopian sight.

British naturalist and tea planter Edward Pritchard Gee, who lived and worked in Assam, articulated his observations in his book The Wildlife of India (1964), “In the early 1930s, Kaziranga was a closed book, a sort of terra incognita (unknown land) completely left to itself by the Forest Department. I remember trying to get permission to go there in 1934, but the rather lame excuse of the British D.F.O. was, ‘No one can enter the place. It is all swamps and leeches, and even elephants cannot go there.’”

Needless to say, Kaziranga’s current avatar would surprise Gee. It’s spinning a success story across 430 sq km, playing host to two-thirds of the world’s population of endangered Indian one-horned rhinoceros, swamp deer, large elephants, and a high density of tigers.

But what today is a UNESCO-approved verdant sprawl looked quite the opposite a century ago.

The man behind the makeover is Mahi Chandra Miri, whose story will remain a page-turner in the annals of conservation history.

The life and times of Mahi Miri

A wooden signboard five kilometres east of the Bagori sub-beat forest office at the Kaziranga National Park reads in bold font, ‘Mahi Miri Tower’. An arrow directs you to a hillock, where the conservationist spent many an evening keeping watch on the forested land (in those days, its identity was that of a game sanctuary).

His vantage point offered him sweeping views of the forest; he’d be quick to notice any skulduggery; the sanctuary was notorious for poaching.

Mahi would commence his vigil at dawn, binoculars trained unwaveringly on the land beyond. And god forbid he spotted the miscreants, he’d rush on elephant back to catch them. The hillock was christened after him in the 1970s, long after he passed away in 1939 at the age of 36.

It stands tall, an ode to a hefty legacy he left behind.

His love for animals was well-known, shares his great-nephew Tridip Patir; his bonds with them were instinctive.

Born in 1903, Mahi’s penchant for nature developed in his home village, Alimur, in Assam’s Lakhimpur. His discipline came from his father, Doley Miri, a man respected by the community. His beginnings........

© The Better India