The Cincinnati Zoo in the United States achieved the rare distinction of a successful live birth of a Sumatran rhinoceros in captivity in 2001. What very few know is that this feat had already been accomplished 112 years before in India, at the Alipore Zoological Garden, the country’s oldest formally created zoo in Kolkata, under the supervision of its first Indian superintendent Ram Brahma Sanyal.
Sanyal achieved this rare success in 1889 by crossing a Northern Sumatran Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros lasiotis) and a Sumatran Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros sumatrensis). The Sumatran rhino is a critically endangered species with less than 100 animals alive in the wild today. Sanyal’s achievement was all the more momentous as he had none of the resources, technology or data that were available to the scientists at Cincinnati in 2001.
First Indian superintendent
Ram Brahma Sanyal was born in 1858 in the village of Mahula, Murshidabad district in present-day West Bengal. Though enrolled at Calcutta Medical College, his ambition to become a doctor ended abruptly when he was diagnosed with vision problems. Two of his teachers, Professors George King and John Anderson, were part of the management committee for the soon-to-be-open zoological gardens at Alipore. Unwilling to lose an exceptionally bright and enthusiastic pupil, King and Anderson recommended Sanyal’s appointment there as temporary Labour Supervisor. He was later made permanent Head Clerk but his main task remained to supervise the teams of labourers working at the site.
The zoo was opened to the public on 1 May 1876. It now needed a superintendent and Sanyal should have been the obvious choice as he had proved his worth. However, the appointment of an Indian to the highest position in the organisation was unacceptable to the colonial masters. The managing committee noted, “Babu R.B. Sanyal is unfit to have the job of management of the Garden and that it is necessary to approve a European head keeper…”
The committee was compelled to accept Sanyal in the position in 1879 after it failed to find any European with sufficient skill and proficiency to take up the responsibility.
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First to start zoo management
Deeply passionate about his work, Sanyal kept a close watch on the diet and behaviour of all the animals and treated them himself if they fell ill. When an animal died, he performed dissections to learn the cause of death. He meticulously noted his observations and experiences each evening in the ‘Daily Register’ of the Zoological Gardens, which provides fascinating details of life at the zoo.
Once, a lioness and a tiger were allowed to pass into the same compartment by accident. The tiger easily won the ensuing battle and killed the lioness. In January 1877, two full-grown Royal Bengal tigers escaped from their enclosure when the door was left open by a careless cleaner. The police closed off all roads surrounding the zoo. And Sanyal stayed awake all night in the bamboo-fenced ticket room with two other employees, watching the tigers’ movements closely. Unfortunately, he was unable to prevent both animals from being shot after the police failed to send them back to their enclosure.
Renowned wildlife and zoo conservationist Sally Walker has said that if Heini Hediger (a well-known Swiss biologist, born in the year Sanyal died) is considered to be the father of zoo biology, then Sanyal could well be considered the great-grandfather of that science. She noted that Sanyal was probably the first to practice zoo management as a holistic inter-disciplinary scientific endeavour and was certainly the first in the world to write about it.
In 1892, Sanyal published his ground-breaking work, A Handbook of the Management of Animals in Captivity in Lower Bengal, based on his detailed observations recorded in the zoo’s register for years. The impact it had on the world of zoology in general, and zoo-keeping in particular, can be gauged from the internationally acclaimed scientific journal Nature’s review of the book on 4 August 1892. It said, “Considering the number of Zoological Gardens in Europeans and their long establishment it is singular that it should have been left to the Superintendent of a Zoological Garden at Calcutta … to produce the first practical handbook on the management of animals in captivity…[…]…this volume is a remarkable production…its author deserves great credit for the pains bestowed on its composition and for much valuable information contained in it.”
Sanyal was the first to recognise the successful breeding of animals in captivity as a central objective of a zoo. He initiated a ‘collection policy’ at the zoo, which aimed to regulate the hitherto haphazard acquisition of animals. According to Sanyal’s biographer, Dilip Mittra, the policy ensured that ‘the zoo’s emphasis switched from showing off the maximum number [of] first importations to sustaining breeding groups’. He organised breeding programmes for a variety of fauna including tiger, leopard, mongoose, lemur, short-spined porcupine, and agouti.
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Beyond animal exhibit
Sanyal’s interests went beyond the diet and ailments of the animals. Sally Walker has pointed out that he was the first to write about the design of zoo enclosures. His handbook specified the dimensions of the enclosures for various animals and stressed the need to include ‘props’ (for example to climb, swing from or take shelter in) for their overall wellbeing. In Mittra’s words, Sanyal did not believe that the objective of the zoo was to simply exhibit the animals, the real goal was to demonstrate their naturalistic behaviour.
Within a few years, Sanyal had placed the Alipore Zoo at par with leading zoos across the globe. Famous visitors on Sanyal’s beat included Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita, the Czar of Russia’s eldest son, the Viceroy at the time, governor and rulers of the princely states. The exiled Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah, who was then residing at Metiabruz in Kolkata, was a regular visitor. He was on friendly terms with Sanyal and donated several animals and birds he kept as pets to the zoo.
Recognition for his untiring efforts was not slow to arrive either. He became a Corresponding Member of the Zoological Society (CMZS) by the Zoological Society of London in 1893. He toured the major zoos in Europe and also attended the fourth International Congress of Zoology in Cambridge. He was made an associate Member of the Asiatic Society in Kolkata, where he often gave lectures with live demonstrations and published articles in their journal. His guidance and advice was sought by the authorities for zoos in Bombay and Rangoon (now Yangon).
Sadly, Ram Brahma Sanyal’s name is almost completely forgotten today. As we mark 2023 as the 150th founding anniversary of the Alipore Zoological Garden, it is time we remember his pioneering achievements.
Dr Krishnokoli Hazra teaches History at the Undergraduate level in Kolkata.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)