The Lions’ Share

Rajanish Kakade/Associated Press An Asiatic lion in Gir, Gujarat, in 2012.

NEW DELHI â€" Volunteers from an Indian nature club in the state of Gujarat are threatening suicide over a recent decision of the Indian Supreme Court to relocate some Asiatic Lions from Gir, in Gujarat, to Palpur Kuno, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The endangered animals number about 400 in all.

The Asiatic Lion once ranged from India to Iran, but by the middle of the 20th century the number had dropped to less than 200, with the entire population living in the Gir forest. By 1994, after this wooded zone was declared a protected area, the figure increased to 300. But then an outbreak of canine distemper wiped out 30 percent of the lion population in the Serengeti National Park, in Tanzania, alerting Indian wildlife authorities that the entire Gir lion population of India, which was already inbred because of its small size, could easily be destroyed.

So in 1995 the government decided to find an additional home for the lions. The selected site, in Madhya Pradesh, was home to lions in the 19th century. Leopards and tigers have occasionally been sighted there, which means that it would become the only place in the world where these three great predators encounter one another in the wild.

But in 2004 the government of Gujarat refused to hand over its lions, presumably because it resisted losing a big draw for tourists. One recent television commercial advertising the state features Amitabh Bachan, a Bollywood star, sitting by a campfire, a hand gesturing at distant mountains. In a baritone voice he says of the “magnificent inhabitants of the Gir forest”: “Breathe in their presence. Breathe in these stark and pristine forests. Breathe in a bit of Gujarat.”

In keeping with that claim, the state’s controversial chief minister, Narendra Modi, has declared, “The lions are a symbol of Gujarat’s uniqueness in the world. Why should we share it when we are capable enough?”

And so the state of Madhya Pradesh petitioned the Supreme Court. It prevailed, but the decision gave no satisfaction to some of its residents: the Sahariya tribal people living in 24 villages in a forest near Palpur Kuno, Madhya Pradesh, who have been relocated to make way for the Gujarati lions. (In the Gir the lions have lived for centuries among villages of Maldhari herdsmen.) Beleaguered human tribes are being displaced in the name of relocating endangered lions.

In 2002 I visited the region around Palpur Kuno to report on deaths caused by malnutrition due to a prolonged drought. Among those badly affected were the Sahariyas who had been moved out of the forest. Their new homes were in arid plains, and the state authorities had failed to provide much of what they had promised in the name of rehabilitation, like land fit for cultivation. A decade later, other reporters find that not much has changed.

Last year, while the appeal regarding the Gir lions was pending, the national wildlife department and the state of Madhya Pradesh came up with a bizarre plan to also introduce African cheetahs, a species entirely alien to India, to the forest of Palpur Kuno â€" a plan that would have required displacing three more villages of Sahariyas.

In its recent decision, the Supreme Court permitted the relocation of the lions but rejected the proposal to bring in the cheetahs, calling that plan arbitrary. It seemed to be speaking up for the animals â€" but not for the Sahariyas.

Hartosh Singh Bal is political editor of Open Magazine and co-author of “A Certain Ambiguity.’’