Major Khan

[gillettehunter]

We lost a great resource. Too bad.......
Bruce

 

[270Guy]

he Major, Kawshik Rahman, and the other former Indian residents of Bangladesh, wrote stories about their time hunting in India. This infuriated many Indian anti hunters who would troll them on here. Allegedly the Indian government even tried to prosecute one of our friends, costing him a great deal of money in the courts to clear his name.
For that reason, they have stopped their participation on Africa Hunting.

Just to get the record straight,India was divided into 2 parts on 15th August 1947,India and Pakistan,today's Bangladesh was East Pakistan till 1971,in 1971 with the help of Indian Armed Forces East Pakistan was Liberated and Bangladesh created.The Pakistani Administration had imposed Martial Law in East Pakistan {Bangladesh},their Army was committing all sort of atrocities there.Refugees were pouring into India by the 1000s,finally Mrs Indira Gandhi {Indian PM} acted.Indian Army under the leadership of Gen {later Field Marshal} Sam Manekshaw liberated Bangladesh,Lt General Niazi the Pakistani Military Governor surrendered to Indian Armed Forces with 90,000 Officers and Soldiers.
India and Bangladesh are 2 different countries,Indian laws are not applicable there.
Before the Wildlife Protection Act 1972-74 was introduced Big game Hunting in India was a fact of life.Indian Embassy's all over had special desks to help Hunters world over to come to India to Hunt.Permits were issued by Governments.No one can be prosecuted for stuff that was Legit.
As far as Trolling is concerned,for me personally,the Internet is free,everybody has an Opinion,people rejoice on the news of a Professional Hunter being Killed by Crocs in Africa,other Mourn his demise,its just an Opinion.Best

 

[375Fox]

I enjoyed reading his articles, but there were some accusations of plagiarism citing the specific book. You can read the final few posts of these threads and decide yourself.

The Royal Bengal Tiger Which Got A Shikaree Hanged

I wish ! My poor simpleton of a friend stopped writing fresh articles on African Hunting Forums after that incident with the 2 bloody anti hunting " trolls " who insulted him on 1 of our threads 3 months ago ( even though the " trolls " were publicly exposed and humiliated ) . I am currently...

www.africahunting.com

Cultures & Calibres: An In Depth Analysis

Most excellent Major Khan! I think this is the best article yet but, whenever I read a new article from you I always think the same.;):LOL: If I may be bold enough to ask, where is your new restaurant located? Why thank you so much for your kind words , Joe . It is my utmost privilege that you...

www.africahunting.com

 

[Wyatt Smith]

Just to get the record straight,India was divided into 2 parts on 15th August 1947,India and Pakistan,today's Bangladesh was East Pakistan till 1971,in 1971 with the help of Indian Armed Forces East Pakistan was Liberated and Bangladesh created.The Pakistani Administration had imposed Martial Law in East Pakistan {Bangladesh},their Army was committing all sort of atrocities there.Refugees were pouring into India by the 1000s,finally Mrs Indira Gandhi {Indian PM} acted.Indian Army under the leadership of Gen {later Field Marshal} Sam Manekshaw liberated Bangladesh,Lt General Niazi the Pakistani Military Governor surrendered to Indian Armed Forces with 90,000 Officers and Soldiers.
India and Bangladesh are 2 different countries,Indian laws are not applicable there.
Before the Wildlife Protection Act 1972-74 was introduced Big game Hunting in India was a fact of life.Indian Embassy's all over had special desks to help Hunters world over to come to India to Hunt.Permits were issued by Governments.No one can be prosecuted for stuff that was Legit.
As far as Trolling is concerned,for me personally,the Internet is free,everybody has an Opinion,people rejoice on the news of a Professional Hunter being Killed by Crocs in Africa,other Mourn his demise,its just an Opinion.Best

The Major was born in India and joined the Bangladesh freedom fighters(?) During the independence war. In 1972 he moved to Bangladesh permanently. The other have a similar story, and the alleged crime took place in India before they moved to Bangladesh.

 

[DieJager]

I enjoyed reading his articles, but there were some accusations of plagiarism citing the specific book. You can read the final few posts of these threads and decide yourself.

The Royal Bengal Tiger Which Got A Shikaree Hanged

I wish ! My poor simpleton of a friend stopped writing fresh articles on African Hunting Forums after that incident with the 2 bloody anti hunting " trolls " who insulted him on 1 of our threads 3 months ago ( even though the " trolls " were publicly exposed and humiliated ) . I am currently...

www.africahunting.com

Cultures & Calibres: An In Depth Analysis

Most excellent Major Khan! I think this is the best article yet but, whenever I read a new article from you I always think the same.;):LOL: If I may be bold enough to ask, where is your new restaurant located? Why thank you so much for your kind words , Joe . It is my utmost privilege that you...

www.africahunting.com

I am glad you noticed this too. I was really doubting to post something about it.

I hope it is not.

 

[sestoppelman]

I too have missed our friends learned participation here. Sad to see they may not be back and the reasons for it.

 

[baxterb]

I also enjoyed his posts. But I remember a charge that he was telling stories that were not his as his own? Was that charge from whoever was harassing him?

what a mess the internet can be.

 

[flatwater bill]

This website has lost some great members over the past two years..............FWB

 

[Sarg]

The Major, Kawshik Rahman, and the other former Indian residents of Bangladesh, wrote stories about their time hunting in India. This infuriated many Indian anti hunters who would troll them on here. Allegedly the Indian government even tried to prosecute one of our friends, costing him a great deal of money in the courts to clear his name.
For that reason, they have stopped their participation on Africa Hunting.

Oh bugger, I was afraid it was something like that, it was great to read stories of old India & the hunting that was there.
I too have been going to ask for some time what happen to them, I hope they are well & wish we could contact them still ?

Thank you for asking @KTEX & thank you for the answer @Wyatt Smith, great loss to us & unfortunately what happens if you post just a little too much on a open forum I suppose ?

 

[mark-hunter]

Our Bangladesh friends, can still read our posts here, even if not logged in.

To me, and I believe, to many others they have left remarkable trace of hunting in former India, and modern Bangladesh. They opened a new window for us!

I learned a lot from them.

I also know now, that legal hunting in Bangladesh today is still possible, even for a foreign hunter. This I did not know before.

The message they have passed on this internet platform, one of the biggest international hunting forums on world wide web, is just remarkable!

No scammer, troll or similar internet fraud can erase that. (trolls and asho#$%#es can kiss my as&#")

I wish they will become active on forum again, even if that means with new nicknames, and if necessary with lower profile. They are a group of magnificent gentlemen, and our friends in same great passion of hunting!

 

[270Guy]

The Major was born in India and joined the Bangladesh freedom fighters(?) During the independence war. In 1972 he moved to Bangladesh permanently. The other have a similar story, and the alleged crime took place in India before they moved to Bangladesh

Till 1947 it was all India,till the enforcement of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 Big game Hunting was legit in India,Hunters World over from Jack O Conners to Robert Ruark to the Iranian Royalty,etc,etc hunted in India.Till late 1950s India was the Hunting Capital of the World,everyone wanted a Tiger Hide.For most of the Big Game Hunters,Africa was a part of the Safari.The final destination was India/Nepal and South East Asia.
PS; Bangladesh was liberated in December 1971,Bangladesh also enforced the Wildlife Protection Act in 1974.

 

[270Guy]

Our Bangladesh friends, can still read our posts here, even if not logged in.

To me, and I believe, to many others they have left remarkable trace of hunting in former India, and modern Bangladesh. They opened a new window for us!

I learned a lot from them.

I also know now, that legal hunting in Bangladesh today is still possible, even for a foreign hunter. This I did not know before.

The message they have passed on this internet platform, one of the biggest international hunting forums on world wide web, is just remarkable!

No scammer, troll or similar internet fraud can erase that. (trolls and asho#$%#es can kiss my as&#")

I wish they will become active on forum again, even if that means with new nicknames, and if necessary with lower profile. They are a group of magnificent gentlemen, and our friends in same great passion of hunting!

Really not a very good time to post ones Photos with details.Our Bangladesh based friend did accomplish a lot,but not a very time to put it all Online. Anonymity is the key these days.

 

[Hunter-Habib]

I’m going to try saying this as fairly and uncontroversially as possible. Both out of respect to the former members of this forum and also to the Indian members of this forum. I also don’t want to share any of my personal opinions on this subject. I come here for recreation. Not to get into conflicts. We already have enough of those in our lives, back home. So I’ll just write facts without making any personal opinions.

I also served in the Indo-Pak war in ‘71 and I met the Major more than a few times over the years, especially when I was the DFO of the Sundarbans until ‘89. I first met him in ‘72, so I can’t comment on his life in India during before the war. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s partially true, maybe all it was a lie. I do know that he became a highly decorated officer and received three military awards for his wartime actions of extreme valor. He got shot in the face during the war and lost part of his tongue. I didn’t serve with him, so I can’t actually vouch for what happened. But by all accounts, he got wounded while trying to save his men.

I can vouch that (based on what I saw) he’s a great shot and a very competent hunter (of deer, boars, birds and leopards). He gave me advice regarding leopard hunting, which I later put to very good use on my African safaris. So I know that at the very least, he at least shot a lot of leopards in India.

I don’t know if the photos he posted here are all his own photos. So I can’t comment on that. But what I’ll say is that if a person is once caught trying to pass off another man’s hunting accomplishments on his own, then it’s understandable why some people might call into question ALL of his claims.

I can’t vouch for his skills in tiger hunting. In ‘89, he was originally one of the thirty men who accompanied a Brigadier General to hunt down a man eating Royal Bengal tiger in the Sundarbans. I loaned them our forest department launch and also forest department employees and guides, to make their expedition easier. They made two expeditions into the Sundarbans to hunt down that man eater … each time staying for ten days. They didn’t succeed and eventually I had to go back there and try my hand at it (because I had already managed to previously shoot and kill two man eating Sundarban tigers). I succeeded in killing him with my 7x57mm Mauser, and this was the last of the only four man eating Royal Bengal tigers to be legally hunted in that country after ‘71. But I wouldn’t question the Major’s credibility because of his failure to hunt down that tiger. Without going too much off topic, the reason they failed to hunt down that man eater was because they were using techniques employed for hunting Indian tigers (which would make sense, because the Major claimed to be a professional hunter in India). The techniques were useless when hunting a tiger in the Sundarbans.

The Major and I initially had a very abrasive relationship, because he was physically and verbally abusive towards my staff … something which I had zero tolerance for. Later, we buried the hatchet years later even though we never became buddies. There are some things the Major and I never saw eye to eye on.

He was always very outspoken about some of his actions during the war (which while perfectly justified and necessary, are not things one gloats about) and I always thought that these are the sort of things which one should never talk about after they’re over. People do horrible things to win a war, but after it’s over you keep quiet about it and move on with your life. The way he talked about his wartime actions (some in particular) also caused a lot of problems in his personal life (don’t ask because I won’t go there).


By the time I joined these forums, Major already stopped posting here. But I read a few of his articles and I have mixed feelings about them. They were very thrilling (and whatever he claims DOES corroborate with what I know about the pre ‘72 hunting scene in India), but he was constantly criticizing India and even wrote about some of his wartime actions on these forums. I understand his sentiment. Imagine living in a hunting haven and then going to a war and getting disfigured. After coming back, you realize that the thing which meant the world to you (hunting) is now gone. I get it. But if someone constantly writes negative things about a country in his articles ON AN OPEN FORUM ON THE INTERNET, it’s only predictable that eventually people would start getting pissed off and start harassing him here (whether or not his claims were true is besides the point). I served in a war and when I was the DFO of the Sundarbans, I made several campaigns against pirates/drug smugglers/poachers to eradicate them from the area (as per government orders). But I keep quiet about that part of my life. I came on these forums to enjoy discussing hunting and firearms. I don’t want to talk about killing people. I don’t even talk about that with my parents or children.

Now, on another topic … anti hunters and trolls are actually becoming a severe problem on this forum. A Sri Lankan fellow named Yasindoo joined here a few months ago, claiming to want to learn hunting. However, his time here was exclusively spent posting articles about how hunters destroyed Sri Lanka’s ecosystem. A few weeks ago, an Indian fellow named Raza Kazmi started messaging a few of the members on these forums, looking for the Major’s contact details. He claimed it was for “Research Purposes”. If any of you do a little google search on Raza Kazmi, then you’ll see that he’s a notorious anti hunter who always portrays us as evil in his writings. There needs to be some sort of system to stop these sort of people from entering the forums. But at the same time, we shouldn’t be unreasonable. Forum like 270Guy and Bapu are from India, and their contributions on these forums have been nothing short of positive.

Finally, I’ll add a word or two about the India-East Pakistan/Bangladesh situation. Yes, India aided East Pakistan in the war. But whether it was out of sheer benevolence or to destabilize Pakistan by causing them to lose their Eastern wing, is a subject that generates a lot of thought. A lot of Bengali people feel that India aided East Pakistan during the war, theorizing that the country would never survive as an independent nation in the long run and would eventually become part of India. Of course, they no longer want to take the headache now since the world’s become a very different place from what it was fifty years ago. I’ve seen more than a few Indians gloat on social media about how they broke off Pakistan’s Eastern wing. You can do a google search on some of India’s policies towards East Pakistan/Bangladesh (such as the Farakka Barrage Issue, their import-export policies, their trade policies, e.t.c) and reach your own conclusions as to whether India sees it’s neighbor as a friend or a neocolonial possession. I won’t give any of my personal opinions on the matter (or any political topics in general). There a political forums online for that sort of discussion. This is a hunting forum. But for those who want to know more about that topic, I simply steered them in the right direction.

As a general note, I’ll also add a bit about the hunting scene in East Pakistan/Bangladesh since I was recently there. After the passing of the Willife Conservation Act in 1973, the killing of tigers and leopards (unless man eaters) and elephants have been completely banned. Only four man eating tigers were legally killed in that part of the world after the passing of the act. And each time, the kill order for the tiger had to be issued by the Ministry of Forests. I shot three of them in ‘81, ‘88 and ‘89. One was killed via gun trap set by the Gazi brothers in ‘87. Deer, upland birds, waterfowl, rabbits and wild boars may be legally hunted there. Either on private property or on public forested area but ONLY with permission from your local forest department and police station. Unfortunately, in third world countries hunting is not a legally recognized right (unlike developed countries like America, Australia and Europe). It’s at the discretion of the local authorities on a case by case basis, as to whether you will be permitted to hunt in that area or not. If they don’t like your face and refuse to give you permission, there’s nothing you can do. Fortunately, most of the time, they’re reasonable. Bag limits are set by the local forest department (such as only two adult stags per deer species every season) and waterfowl hunting is banned between April and September since the birds breed at that time. If a foreigner wants to hunt there, their only option is if they personally know a local hunter there who will accommodate them and guide them and ket them use their personal firearms & ammunition.

I’ll conclude with a small correction. Indira Gandhi initially had no plans to ban hunting in India. This was actually the brainchild of a British jerk (one of those so-called “Conservationists”) named Guy Mountford. He was a founder member of the W.W.F and he wrote a book called “Vanishing Jungles” where he wrote a lot of anti hunting garbage about East Pakistan in 1969. He also eventually convinced Indira Gandi to implement the hunting ban in India.

Anyway, enough of this controversial topic. I’ll go post in more fun threads now.

 

[Hunt anything]

Hunter - Habib, extremely informative and educational!

 

[Wyatt Smith]

I was hoping you might chime in @Hunter-Habib. Thank you

 

[Scrumbag]

What a shame, I enjoyed our open forum and PM exchanges.

Scrummy

 

[deewayne2003]

This website has lost some great members over the past two years..............FWB

Agreed!.... Got my signed copy of Cal Pappas' book "Double Rifle Primer" in the mail just days before his passing.

Now I know why I haven't seen any Major Khan or Professor Mwala articles lately.... sad situation!

 

[freefall]

The Major, Kawshik Rahman, and the other former Indian residents of Bangladesh, wrote stories about their time hunting in India. This infuriated many Indian anti hunters who would troll them on here. Allegedly the Indian government even tried to prosecute one of our friends, costing him a great deal of money in the courts to clear his name.
For that reason, they have stopped their participation on Africa Hunting.

Coming soon to a government near you!

 

[Hunter-Habib]

Agreed!.... Got my signed copy of Cal Pappas' book "Double Rifle Primer" in the mail just days before his passing.

Now I know why I haven't seen any Major Khan or Professor Mwala articles lately.... sad situation!

Don't worry.

Professor Mawla isn't part of any controversy. He never hunted in India or even claimed to. He also made it a point not to write anything ever that would induce any arguments (definitely not about India). Also, none of his photos ever generated any accusations of plagiarism. He's a very likeable and humble guy. He shot man eating Royal Bengal tigers (as well as three normal tigers) in the Sundarbans between 1972 and 1973, before the Wildlife Conservation Act was passed in 1973. He also shot one man eating tiger in the far corner of Sylhet during a random encounter, which had come from the Indian border in 1976. He's a very good hearted fellow.

Last time I spoke to him about this, he was simply busy and hasn't had time to visit the forums much. He told me that he'll start posting again when he has some time on his schedule. He always viewed the forums as one of many casual pastimes.

I'm confident he'll be back here, someday.

 

[DieJager]

@Hunter-Habib thank you for your explanation. If they read this , I am wishing all of them the best, enjoyed all of their stories and conversations.