WILDLIFE AND HUNTING PRACTICES IN PRINCELY SUKET STATE (HIMACHAL PRADESH): A HISTORICAL-ARCHIVAL ANALYSIS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PRESENT-DAY CONSERVATION POLICY

Abstract

Princely Suket State, one of the smaller hill states of the Western Himalayas, maintained a distinct administrative and ecological relationship with its forests and fauna prior to its accession to the Indian Union in 1948 and subsequent merger with Mandi District, Himachal Pradesh. This paper undertakes a historical-archival analysis of wildlife and hunting (shikar) practices in Suket State, drawing primarily on the 1927 Gazetteer of the Suket State and its 1904 predecessor volume (published 1908) — the 1927 gazetteer itself incorporating material from the state's Forest Settlement and Assessment Reports — and supplemented by comparative regional gazetteers, including the 1904 (published 1908) and 1920 Gazetteers of the Mandi State, and post-independence wildlife surveys of the Western Himalayas. The study traces how royal hunting privileges, forest settlement regulations, and early game-protection customs functioned as informal precursors to modern wildlife management, and considers whether colonial-era forest reserves and administrative boundaries may offer a historical starting point for present-day protected-area planning in the Mandi region. It is proposed that the paper uses archival data on the hunting and the management of forests during the princely period as an under-utilized historical reference on assessing long-term trends in wildlife population and land-use continuity of the Western Himalaya. Findings are discussed in light of contemporary conservation challenges in Himachal Pradesh, including habitat fragmentation and human–wildlife conflict, with the aim of situating present-day policy within a longer historical trajectory rather than treating it as a purely post-independence phenomenon.