Salim Ali

Remembering Salim Ali, one of Bombay's most famous citizens, and one of India's most celebrated scientists, on his birth anniversary:

Salim Moizuddin Abdul Ali (12 November 1896 – 20 June 1987) was an Indian ornithologist and  naturalist. Sometimes referred to as the "Birdman of India", Salim Ali was the first Indian to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and wrote several bird books that popularized ornithology in India. He became a key figure behind the Bombay Natural History Society. He was also responsible for the creation of the Bharatpur bird sanctuary (Keoladeo National Park) and for the  prevention of the destruction of what is now the Silent Valley National Park. He co-authored the landmark ten volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan.

Early Life:

Salim Ali was born into a Sulaimani Bohra family in Bombay. Both his parents died when he was very young  Along with his siblings, Ali was brought up by his maternal uncle, Amiruddin Tyabji, and childless aunt, Hamida Begum, in a middle-class household in Khetwadi, Mumbai.  Another uncle was Abbas Tyabji, a well known Indian freedom fighter. His playmates included Iskandar Mirza, a distant cousin who went on in later life to become the first President of Pakistan. 

Salim was introduced to the serious study of birds by W. S. Millard, secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) where Amiruddin was a member. Millard showed Salim around the Society's collection of stuffed birds.Millard lent Salim a few books including Eha's Common birds of Bombay, encouraged Salim to make a collection of birds and offered to train him in skinning and preservation. 

Ali soon decided to become an ornithologist, an unusual career choice, especially for an Indian in those days.  Even at around 10 years of age, he maintained a diary in which he made detailed notes about birds.

Salim went to primary school at Zenana Bible and Medical Mission High School at Girgaum. Around the age of 13 he suffered from chronic headaches, making him drop out of class frequently. He was sent to Sind to stay with an uncle who had suggested that the dry air might help. On returning after such breaks in studies, he barely managed to pass the matriculation exam of the Bombay University in 1913.

Ali then went to Tavoy, Burma to look after the family's wolfram (tungsten) mining (tungsten was used in armour plating and was valuable during the war) and timber interests there. The forests surrounding this area provided an opportunity for Ali to hone his naturalist skills. 

On his return to India in 1917, he decided to continue formal studies. He went to study commercial law and accountancy at Davar's College of Commerce but his true interest was noticed by Father Ethelbert Blatter at St. Xavier's College who persuaded Ali to study zoology. After attending morning classes at Davar's College, he then began to attend zoology classes at St. Xavier's College and was able to complete the course in zoology. Around the same time, he married Tehmina, a distant relative, in December 1918. 

Professional career: 

Ali failed to get an ornithologist's position which was open at the Zoological Survey of India due to the lack of a formal university degree. He was hired as guide lecturer in 1926 at the newly opened natural history section in the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai for the salary of Rs 350 a month. He however tired of the job after two years and took leave in 1928 to study in Germany, where he was to work under Professor Erwin Stresemann at the Berlin's Natural History Museum. Ali found Stresemann warm and helpful. In his autobiography, Ali calls Stresemann his guru. In Berlin, Ali made acquaintance with many of the major German ornithologists of the time.

On his return to India in 1930, he was not able to  find a suitable job, Salim Ali and Tehmina moved to Kihim, a coastal village near Mumbai. Here he had the opportunity to study birds at close hand. It has been  suggested that this study was in the tradition of the Mughal naturalists that Salim Ali admired and wrote about in his three part series on the Moghul emperors as naturalists. 

Around the same time he discovered an opportunity to conduct systematic bird surveys in the princely states of Hyderabad, Cochin, Travancore, Gwalior, Indore and Bhopal with the sponsorship of their rulers. He was aided and supported in these surveys by Hugh Whistler, who  also introduced Salim to Richard Meinertzhagen. Ali and  Meinertzhagen made an expedition into Afghanistan. They became good friends.

He was accompanied and supported on his early surveys by his wife, Tehmina, and was shattered when she died in 1939 following a minor surgery. After Tehmina's death in 1939, Salim Ali then  stayed with his sister Kamoo and brother-in-law. 

Ali was not very interested in the details of bird systematics and taxonomy and was more interested in studying birds in the field.  He later wrote that his interest was in the "living bird in its natural environment."

Salim Ali took some interest in bird photography along with his friend Loke Wan Tho. A wealthy Singapore businessman with a keen interest in birds, Loke helped Ali and the BNHS with financial support. Ali was also interested in the historical aspects of ornithology in India. In a series of articles, among his first publications, he examined the contributions to natural history of the Mughal emperors. 

Ali was fascinated by motorcycles from an early age and owned a Sunbeam, three  Harley-Davidsons, a Douglas, a Scott, a New Hudson and a Zenith among others at various times. On invitation to the 1950 International Ornithological Congress at Uppsala in Sweden he shipped his Sunbeam aboard the ship at Bombay. He then  biked around Europe, and finally arrived just in time for the first session at Uppsala. Word went around that he had ridden on a bike all the way from India!

In the early 1960s the national bird of India was under consideration and Salim Ali was intent that it should be the endangered Great Indian bustard, however this proposal was over-ruled in favour of the Indian peacock.

Writings: 

Salim Ali wrote numerous journal articles, chiefly in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. He also wrote a number of popular and academic books, many of which remain in print. Ali credited Tehmina, who had studied in England, for helping improve his English prose. 

Some of his literary pieces were used in a collection of English writing. A popular article that he wrote in 1930, 'Stopping by the woods on a Sunday morning', was reprinted in The Indian Expresson his birthday in 1984. His most popular work was The Book of Indian Birds, written in the style of Whistler's Popular Handbook of Birds, first published in 1941 and subsequently translated into several languages with numerous later editions. His magnum opus was however the 10 volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan, which he co-authored with Dillon Ripley. This work, which is often referred to as "the handbook", was begun in 1964 and ended in 1974.  In 1985 he wrote his autobiography, 'The Fall of a Sparrow'. 

A two-volume compilation of his letters and writings was published in 2007, edited by Tara Gandhi, one of his last students.

Awards: 

Although recognition came late, he received several honorary doctorates and numerous awards. The earliest was the "Joy Gobinda Law Gold Medal" in 1953. He received honorary doctorates from the Aligarh Muslim University (1958), Delhi University (1973) and Andhra University (1978). In 1967 he became the first non-British citizen to receive the Gold Medal of the British Ornithologists' Union. In the same year, he received the J. Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation Prize consisting of a sum of $100,000, which he used as a corpus for the Salim Ali Nature Conservation Fund. In 1969 he received the John C. Phillips memorial medal of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. The USSR Academy of Medical Sciences awarded him the Pavlovsky Centenary Memorial Medal in 1973 and in the same year he was made Commander of the Netherlands Order of the Golden Ark by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. The Indian government decorated him with a Padma Bhushan in 1958 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1976.  He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1985. Several species of birds have been named after him. 

In 1990, the Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History (SACON) was established at Coimbatore by the Government of India. Pondicherry University established the Salim Ali School of Ecology and Environmental Sciences. The government of Goa set up the Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary and the Thattakad bird sanctuary near Vembanad in Kerala also goes by his name.

The location of the BNHS headquarters in Mumbai was renamed as "Dr Salim Ali Chowk". On his 100th birth Anniversary (12 November 1996) Postal Department of Government of India released a set of two postal stamps in his honor. 

Death:

Dr. Salim Ali died in Bombay at the age of 90 on 20th June 1987, after a protracted battle with prostate cancer.