Kenneth Anderson (writer)
Kenneth Douglas Stewart Anderson, known primarily as Kenneth Anderson or as KDS Anderson, was a Scottish-Indian writer, nature enthusiast, conservationist, and ethical hunter who lived and worked in South India. He authored highly-regarded books based on his experiences hiking, camping, and hunting in the Indian jungles.
Anderson initially gained fame around Bangalore as an outstanding hunter of high ethics. Later, his brave and skilful hunting of menacing man-eater leopards and tigers throughout South India earned him the nickname Corbett of the South, in reference to his older North Indian counterpart Jim Corbett. In mid-20th century, alarmed and disheartened by the destruction of wildlife, he pleaded for the preservation of flora and fauna of the forests in all regions of India. As an ex-hunter expert on wild animals' behaviour, he was a trailblazer in wildlife tourism in Bangalore, and is admired as a pioneer conservationist in southern India.
Biography
Early life
Kenneth Anderson was born on 8 March 1910 in the Bolarum area of Secunderabad, in the princely state of Hyderabad in British India. He belonged to a Scottish family that had lived in India for many generations, and were originally from Glasgow. He was baptised at the Holy Trinity Church, Bolarum, and was the only child of his parents. He was often called "Jock" by his family and friends. His father, Douglas Stuart Anderson, was the eldest of four children, and was born in Calcutta but brought up in Bolarum. His mother, Lucy Ann Taylor, grew up with her two aunts in Bangalore after her mother died due to cholera, and later, her father left Madras for Belfast as his Irish regiment of the British Army left India.Douglas was an officer in the British Indian Army in the military accounts section. The family moved to Bangalore during World War I. They started living in the house of Lucy's maternal grandfather John Taylor, who, for his services to the Mysore Commission, had been gifted land in Bangalore adjacent to the Cubbon Park by Sir Mark Cubbon, the British Commissioner. Lucy became the head of the choir of St Mark's Cathedral, where they had married in 1908. Douglas used to go waterfowl hunting with his friends in the lakes and tanks around Bangalore, and influenced Kenneth regarding the outdoors.
Education
Anderson went to Bishop Cotton Boys' School, and then to St Joseph's European High School, successfully passing the Senior Cambridge examinations in 1926. He was sent to study law at Edinburgh under the guardianship of his uncle Forbes, but abandoned his studies and returned to India in 1928. He was well-versed in Kannada, the language of his hometown, and Tamil, the language of the neighbouring province. He had also picked up a little bit of Telugu, Hindi, and Urdu during his early years in Hyderabad State. He was known to be an intelligent man, and throughout his life he remained an academically inclined avid reader, not limited by subjects or topics.Career
He worked for fifteen years in the Posts & Telegraphs Department. Then in 1956 he joined the colloquial British Aircraft Factory in Bangalore as the Factory Manager for Planning, and retired only in 1972 due to illness. In the 1950s, his books made him an internationally renowned author, and he received considerable royalties thereafter. Despite his efforts, however, he did not find much success as a writer of fiction. In the 1960s, he started taking national or international clients to jungle safaris for wildlife observation, thereby becoming a frontrunner in wildlife tourism in the region. He purchased nearly 200 acres of land across Mysore State, Hyderabad State, and Madras Presidency, at more than twenty locations including Pondicherry and Ooty. Anderson's correspondence with Rayner Unwin from 1961 hints at a possible joint venture with David Attenborough of BBC, but no work ultimately materialised.Death
In 1972 Anderson was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was treated in St Martha's Hospital in Bangalore, and then in CMC Vellore for Cobalt therapy. However, he could not recover. Later, he was re-admitted to St Martha's where he died on 30 August 1974. He was buried at the Indian Christian Cemetery on Hosur Road in Bangalore.Family
Marriage
Anderson met Blossom Hyacinth Minnette Fleming at the Bowring Club on St Mark's Road in Bangalore. Her mother, Millicent Toussaint, was a Burgher from Ceylon while her father, Clifford Fleming, was a doctor originally from New South Wales, Australia, who worked first in the military and then at Cellular Jail in Andaman Islands. She was born on 20 March 1910 in Port Blair, and her family moved to India when she was ten years old. They married in April 1929 at Sorkalpet in Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu, and honeymooned in Pondicherry. They lived in the sprawling 19th-century bungalow which Anderson got from his mother, named Prospect House, a landmark of the city on the 12-acre property on Sydney Road in Bangalore.The couple separated in later life. In 1962, Kenneth Anderson moved to his other property named Bijou Cottage in Whitefield, while Blossom stayed on at Prospect House. Blossom Minnette Hyacinth Anderson died of pulmonary edema at St Philomena's Hospital on 11 March 1987, and was buried next to her husband.
Children
They had two children - a daughter named Margaret June Blossom Lucy Anderson, and a son named Donald Malcolm Stuart Anderson. June Anderson attended Bishop Cotton Girls' School, and cleared the Senior Cambridge exam in 1947. She married Jack Vivian Jones, a British Indian Army officer, and the couple initially lived in Wellington, Fatehgarh, and Ambala. Jack resigned from the military, and they moved to England in 1951, and then ultimately to Perth, Australia in 1964. She has three children - sons Don and Chris born in India, and daughter Jackie born in Basildon.Donald Anderson studied in Bishop Cotton Boys' School where he took classes of Oswald C. Edwards, the pioneer nature photographer of India. He worked for more than two decades at the Bangalore Cotton, Silk and Woolen Mills. He became a prolific hunter and angler. Later, he left hunting, and assisted the efforts of Wildlife Association of South India in saving the Cauvery Mahseer. He decided to stay in India post-independence, never married, and died at the age of 80 in Bangalore.
Outdoorsmanship
Anderson, since his childhood, was fascinated by animals of all kinds whether mammals, birds, reptiles, or insects. He acquainted himself with them, and keenly studied their behaviour. He started frequently visiting the jungles near Bangalore for hiking or overnight camping. The sport of hunting attracted him with which he was already acquainted due to his father. Post marriage, he even took his family along on many of his trips. At his home, Prospect House, he had a multitude of animals like hyena, cobras, sloth bear, geese, etc.Hunting
Anderson took to big-game hunting with his second-hand Winchester Model 1895 rifle chambered for the.405 WCF cartridge. He became a hunter extraordinaire with exceptional monitoring and tracking skills, and became famous for his jungle knowledge. His behaviour on hunting trips was highly principled and strictly adhered to the widely accepted code of hunting ethics. This led to him being recognised as an epitome of a Gentleman Shikari. Anderson used to refer to these excursions as his Hunting Escapades. For his preservation-worthy trophy kills, he used the services of Tocher and Tocher Taxidermists.Image:Tigress-Jowlagiri.jpg|thumb|Kenneth Anderson with the Tigress of Jowlagiri.
His competence and bravery in dealing with carnivora ultimately allowed him to pursue a particular high-risk activity in the public interest, that of eliminating man-eaters and rogues which were terrorising the common populace. He excelled in these undertakings, and was sought after and often desperately invited by government officials for such tasks. Anderson neutralised some of the most notorious man-eaters in recorded history, like the Leopard of Gummalapur, Sloth-bear of Mysore, Tigress of Jowlagiri, etc.
Anderson is formally credited with having shot 8 man-eating leopards, and 7 tigers from 1939 to 1966, as per government records. Though, he is known to have unofficially shot many more as he was in many instances personally invited by local people or alerted by his own network of informants, often without government's involvement or knowledge. This also means that he was able to nip several man-eaters in the bud just after the first few tiger attacks before they could kill a substantial number of human beings. In those days the man-eater attacks were not covered in newspapers or media, and Anderson's network and skills empowered him to kill them before they could garner wider notoriety.
Conservation
Anderson stopped hunting, either for sport or trophy, in the second half of his middle age as he became increasingly concerned about the destruction of wildlife and forests in India. He made an exception only for killing man-eaters, and even then he was very judicious and never acted on rumours alone. He slowly turned to wildlife conservation. Anderson publicly highlighted not only the urgent need to do so, but also the flaws and corruption in the Indian system that exacerbated the harm to wildlife. Additionally, he exhorted the sportsmen to give-up hunting and pursue hobbies like wildlife photography. As an avowed nature enthusiast, he continued his lifelong habit of frequently visiting the forests either as a wilderness wanderer or for seeking solitude. He also got his only son, Donald, to promise him to stop hunting altogether, which he did.He started a personal business of organising jungle safaris for interested parties in forests of India. He would personally steward such trips, and even promoted them for international clients in reputable magazines like the Audubon. This venture was quite successful, and made Anderson one of the earliest entrepreneurs in wildlife tourism in India.