The conversation around translocation of cheetahs into India has been a long-running one. In 1984, when sightings of the feline creature were few in the country, and talks about reintroducing them into the wild from Iran had begun doing the rounds, an Indian hotelier became a curious student of the subject. “Back then, Maharaja Fatehsinh Rao Gaekwad of Baroda, who was president of the World Wide Fund for Nature-India, wrote to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, questioning the wisdom of importing cheetahs. In the letter, he claimed that India never had cheetahs. But, this was surprising because Baroda had been at the forefront of taming cheetahs and going hunting with the animal,” says Divyabhanusinh, who at the time was senior vice president, North India, at the Taj Group of Hotels. The then Deputy Minister for Environment YS Digvijaysinh, who knew of Divyabhanusinh’s interest in wildlife, passed on the letter to him, seeking his thoughts. “I put together a ‘Tentative Position Paper’ on the subject of the cheetah’s range and related matter.” 

From there on, he says, things took a strange turn. The paper reached the Cat Specialist Group—Species Survival Commission of the World Conservation Union (IUCN)—which was meeting that year at the Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh. It was circulated and discussed widely. “A brief about my paper also appeared in their journal... after that, people thought that I was a cheetah expert with a doctorate on the subject.”