Salim Ali
Encyclopedia
Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali [saːlɪm əliˑ] (November 12, 1896 – July 27, 1987) was an India
n ornithologist and naturalist
. Known as the "birdman of India", Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped develop ornithology
. He became the key figure behind the Bombay Natural History Society
after 1947 and used his personal influence to garner government support for the organization, create the Bharatpur bird sanctuary (Keoladeo National Park
) and prevent the destruction of what is now the Silent Valley National Park
. He was awarded India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan
in 1976.
Muslim family of Bombay, the ninth and youngest child. His father Moizuddin died when he was one year old and his mother Zeenat-un-nissa died when he was three. The children were 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
, well known Indian freedom fighter. Salim was introduced to the serious study of birds by W. S. Millard
, secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society
(BNHS), who identified an unusually coloured sparrow that young Salim had shot for sport with his toy airgun. Millard identified it as a Yellow-throated Sparrow
, and 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. Millard also introduced young Salim to (later Sir) Norman Boyd Kinnear
, the first paid curator at the BNHS, who later provided help from the British Museum. In his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow Ali notes the Yellow-throated Sparrow event as the turning point of his life that led him into ornithology, an unusual career choice, especially for an Indian in those days. His early interest was in books on hunting in India and he became interested in sport-shooting, encouraged by the hunting interests of his foster-father Amiruddin. Shooting contests were often held in the neighbourhood in which he grew and among his playmates was Iskandar Mirza, a distant cousin who was a particularly a good marksman who went on in later life to become the first President of Pakistan.
Salim went to primary school at Zanana Bible Medical Mission Girls High School at Girgaum along with two of his sisters and later to St. Xavier's College in Bombay. 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 and on returning back after such breaks in studies, he barely managed to pass the matriculation exam of the Bombay University in 1913.
Salim Ali's early education was at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Following a difficult first year in college, he dropped out and went to Tavoy, Burma (Tenasserim) 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 (and hunting) skills. He also made acquaintance with J C Hopwood and Berthold Ribbentrop
who were with the Forest Service in Burma. On his return to India in 1917 after seven years, he decided to continue formal studies. He was to study commercial law and accountancy at Davar's College of Commerce. His true interest was however noticed by Father Ethelbert Blatter
at St. Xavier's College and was persuaded to study zoology. After attending morning classes at Davar's College, he began to attend zoology classes at St. Xavier's College and was able to complete the course in zoology. During this break in Bombay he was married to a distant relative, Tehmina in December 1918.
Ali was fascinated by motorcycles from an early age and starting with a 3.5 HP NSU
in Tavoy, he owned a Sunbeam
, Harley-Davidson
s (three models), a Douglas
, a Scott
, a New Hudson
and a Zenith
among others at various times. On invitation to the 1950 Ornithological Congress at Uppsala in Sweden he shipped his Sunbeam aboard the SS Stratheden from Bombay and biked around Europe, injuring himself in a minor mishap in France apart from having several falls on cobbled roads in Germany. When he arrived on a fully loaded bike, just in time for the first session at Uppsala, word went around that he had ridden all the way from India! He regretted not having owned a BMW.
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 and the post went instead to M. L. Roonwal. 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 a study leave in 1928 to Germany
, where he was to work under Professor Erwin Stresemann
at the Zoological Museum of Berlin University. Part of the work involved examining the specimens collected by J. K. Stanford
in Burma. Stanford being a BNHS member had communicated with Claud Ticehurst
and had suggested that he could work on his own with assistance from the BNHS. Ticehurst did not appreciate the idea of an Indian being involved in the work and resented even more, the involvement of Stresemann, a German. Ticehurst wrote letters to the BNHS suggesting that the idea of collaborating with Stresemann was an insult to Stanford. This was however not heeded by Reginald Spence and Prater who encouraged Ali to conduct the studies at Berlin with the assistance of Stresemann. In Berlin, Ali made acquaintance with many of the major German ornithologists of the time including Bernhard Rensch, Oskar Heinroth and Ernst Mayr apart from meeting other Indians in Berlin including the revolutionary Chempakaraman Pillai. Ali also gained experience in bird ringing at the Heligoland observatory.
and discovered their mating system
of sequential polygamy. Later commentators have suggested that this study was in the tradition of the Mughal naturalists that Salim Ali admired. A few months were then spent in Kotagiri where he had been invited by K M Anantan, a retired army doctor who had served in Mesopotamia during World War I. He also came in contact with Mrs Kinloch who lived at Longwood Shola and her son-in-law R C Morris
who lived in the Biligirirangan Hills. He then discovered an opportunity to conduct systematic bird surveys of the princely states that included Hyderabad, Cochin, Travancore, Gwalior, Indore and Bhopal with the sponsorship of the rulers of those states. He was aided and supported in these surveys by Hugh Whistler
who had surveyed many parts of India and had kept very careful notes. Interestingly, Whistler had initially been irritated by the unknown Indian. Whistler had in a note on The study of Indian birds mentioned that the long tail feathers of the Greater Racket-tailed Drongo
lacked webbing on the inner vane. Salim Ali wrote that such inaccuracies had been carried on from early literature and pointed out that it was incorrect on account of a twist in the rachis. Whistler was initially resentful of an unknown Indian finding fault and wrote "snooty" letters to the editors of the journal S H Prater
and Sir Reginald Spence. Subsequently Whistler re-examined his specimens and not only admitted his error but became a close friend.
Whistler also introduced Salim to Richard Meinertzhagen
and the two made an expedition into Afghanistan. Although Meinertzhagen had very critical views of him they became good friends. Salim Ali found nothing amiss in Meinertzhagen's bird works but later studies have shown many of his studies to be fraudulent. Meinertzhagen made his diary entries from their days in the field available and Salim Ali reproduces them in his autobiography:
He was accompanied and supported on his early ornithological 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 stayed with his sister Kamoo and brother-in-law. In the course of his later travels, Ali rediscovered the Kumaon
Terai
population of the Finn's Baya
but was unsuccessful in his expedition to find the Mountain Quail
(Ophrysia superciliosa), the status of which continues to remain unknown.
Ali was not very interested in the details of bird systematics and taxonomy and was more interested in studying birds in the field. Ernst Mayr
wrote to Ripley complaining that Ali failed to collect sufficient specimens : "as far as collecting is concerned I don't think he ever understood the necessity for collecting series. Maybe you can convince him of that." Ali himself wrote to Ripley complaining about bird taxonomy:
Ali later wrote that his interest was in the "living bird in its natural environment."
Salim Ali's associations with Sidney Dillon Ripley
led to many bureaucratic problems. Ripley's past as an OSS
agent led to allegations that the CIA had a hand in the bird-ringing operations in India.
Salim Ali took some interest in bird photography along with his friend Loke Wan Tho
. Loke had been introduced to Ali by JTM Gibson, a BNHS member and Lieutenant Commander of the Royal Indian Navy, who had taught English to Loke at a school in Switzerland. 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. In the 1971 Sunder Lal Hora memorial lecture and the 1978 Azad Memorial Lecture he spoke of the history and importance of bird study in India.
and managed to save the then 100-year old institution by writing to the then Prime Minister Pandit Nehru for financial help. Salim also influenced other members of his family. A cousin, Humayun Abdulali
became an ornithologist while his niece Laeeq took an interest in birds and was married to Zafar Futehally
, a distant cousin of Ali, who went on to become the honorary Secretary of the BNHS and played a major role in the development of bird study through the networking of birdwatchers in India. Ali also guided several M.Sc. and Ph. D. students, the first of whom was Vijaykumar Ambedkar, who further studied the breeding and ecology of the Baya Weaver, producing a thesis that was favourably reviewed by David Lack
.
Ali was able to provide support for the development of ornithology in India by identifying important areas where funding could be obtained. He helped in the establishment of an economic ornithology unit within the Indian Council for Agricultural Research. He was also able to obtain funding for migration studies through a project to study the Kyasanur forest disease
, an arthropod-borne virus that appeared to have similarities to a Siberian tick-borne disease. This project partly funded by the PL 480
grants of the USA however ran into political difficulties. In the late 1980s, he also guided a BNHS project that aimed to reduce bird hits at Indian airfields. He also attempted some early citizen science
projects through the birdwatchers of India who were connected by the Newsletter for Birdwatchers
.
Dr. Ali had considerable influence in conservation related issues in post-independence India especially through Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru
and Indira Gandhi
. Indira Gandhi was herself a keen birdwatcher, influenced by Ali's bird books (a copy of the "Book of Indian Birds" was gifted to her in 1942 by her father Nehru who was in Dehra Dun jail while she herself was imprisoned in Naini jail) and by the Gandhian birdwatcher Horace Alexander
. Ali influenced the designation of the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary and in decisions that saved the Silent Valley National Park
. One of Ali's later interventions at Bharatpur involved the exclusion of cattle and graziers into the sanctuary and this was to prove costly and resulted in ecological changes that led to a decline in the numbers of many species of waterbirds. Some historians have noted that the approach to conservation used by Salim Ali and the BNHS followed an undemocratic process.
Dr. Ali was a frequent visitor to The Doon School
where he was an engaging and persuasive advocate of ornithology to successive generations of pupils. As a consequence, he was considered to be part of the Dosco fraternity and became one of the very few people to be made an honorary member of The Doon School Old Boys Society
. He suggested that this fundamental religious sentiment had hindered the growth of bird study in India.
Brought up in a Muslim household, he had in his younger life been taught to recite the Koran without understanding any Arabic. In his adult life he despised what he saw as the meaningless and hypocritical practices of prayer and was put off by the "ostentatiously sanctimonious elders".
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 overruled in favour of the Indian Peafowl
.
(and in 1970 received the Sunder Lal Hora memorial Medal of the Indian National Science Academy). 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 to form the corpus of 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 Science gave 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 also nominated to the Rajya Sabha
in 1985.
Dr. Salim Ali died in 1987, at the age of 91 after a prolonged battle with prostate cancer
in Mumbai. In 1990, the Sálim 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 in Bombay was renamed to "Dr Salim Ali Chowk". In 1972, Kitti Thonglongya
discovered a misidentified specimen in the collection of the BNHS and described a new species that he called Latidens salimalii, considered one of the world's rarest bat
s, and the only species in the genus Latidens
. The subspecies of the Rock Bush Quail
(Perdicula argoondah salimalii) and the eastern population of Finn's Weaver
(Ploceus megarhynchus salimalii) were named after him by Whistler
and Abdulali
respectively. A subspecies of the Black-rumped Flameback Woodpecker (Dinopium benghalense tehminae) was named after his wife, Tehmina by Whistler and Kinnear.
. 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 Express
on his birthday in 1984. His most popular work was book The Book of Indian Birds, written in the style of Whistler's Popular Handbook of Birds and first published in 1941, it has been translated into several languages and has been through more than 12 editions. The first ten editions alone sold more than forty-six thousand copies. The first edition was reviewed by Ernst Mayr
in 1943, who commending it while noting that the illustrations were not to the standard of American bird-books. His magnum opus was however the 10 volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan written with Dillon Ripley
and often referred to as "the handbook". This work started in 1964 and ended in 1974 and a second edition was completed by others, notably J S Serrao of the BNHS, Bruce Beehler, Michel Desfayes and Pamela Rasmussen, after his death. A single volume "compact edition" of the "Handbook" was also produced and a supplementary illustrative work A Pictorial Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent with illustrations by John Henry Dick and coauthored with Dillon Ripley was published in 1983, these plates were also used in the second edition of the "Handbook".
He also produced a number of regional field guides, including "The Birds of Kerala
" (the first edition in 1953 was titled "The Birds of Travancore and Cochin
"), "The Birds of Sikkim
", "The Birds of Kutch" (later "The Birds of Gujarat"), "Indian Hill Birds" and the "Birds of the Eastern Himalayas
". Several low-cost book were produced by the National Book Trust
including "Common Birds" (1967) written with his niece Laeeq Futehally which was reprinted in several editions with translations into Hindi and other languages. In 1985 he wrote his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow. Ali also wrote about his own vision for the Bombay Natural History Society
, noting the importance of conservation related activities. In the 1986 issue of the Journal of the BNHS he noted the role that it had played, the changing interests from hunting to conservation captured in 64 volumes that were preserved in microfiche copies, and the zenith that it had reached under the exceptional editorship of S H Prater
.
A two-volume compilation of his shorter letters and writings was published in 2007, edited by Tara Gandhi, one of his last students.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n ornithologist and naturalist
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
. Known as the "birdman of India", Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped develop ornithology
Ornithology
Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...
. He became the key figure behind the Bombay Natural History Society
Bombay Natural History Society
The Bombay Natural History Society, founded on 15 September 1883, is one of the largest non-governmental organizations in India engaged in conservation and biodiversity research. It supports many research efforts through grants, and publishes the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Many...
after 1947 and used his personal influence to garner government support for the organization, create the Bharatpur bird sanctuary (Keoladeo National Park
Keoladeo National Park
The Keoladeo National Park or Keoladeo Ghana National Park formerly known as the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, India is a famous avifauna sanctuary that plays host to thousands of birds especially during the winter season. Over 230 species of birds are known to have made the...
) and prevent the destruction of what is now the Silent Valley National Park
Silent Valley National Park
Silent Valley National Park , is located in the Nilgiri Hills, Palakkad District in Kerala, South India...
. He was awarded India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan
Padma Vibhushan
The Padma Vibhushan is the second highest civilian award in the Republic of India. It consists of a medal and a citation and is awarded by the President of India. It was established on 2 January 1954. It ranks behind the Bharat Ratna and comes before the Padma Bhushan...
in 1976.
Early life
Salim Ali was born into a Sulaimani BohraSulaimani Bohra
Sulaymanis are a Musta‘lī Ismaili community that predominantly reside in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan and India. They are also called Makrami. They number between several hundred thousand and one million in Saudi Arabia alone...
Muslim family of Bombay, the ninth and youngest child. His father Moizuddin died when he was one year old and his mother Zeenat-un-nissa died when he was three. The children were 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
Abbas Tyabji
Abbas Tyabji was an Indian freedom fighter from Gujarat, who once served as the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court. Mahatma Gandhi appointed Tyabji, at age seventy-six, to replace him as leader of the Salt Satyagraha in May, 1930 after Gandhi’s arrest. Tyabji was arrested soon afterward and...
, well known Indian freedom fighter. Salim was introduced to the serious study of birds by W. S. Millard
Walter Samuel Millard
Walter Samuel Millard was a British entrepreneur and naturalist who was honorary secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society and editor of the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society from 1906 to 1920, co-author of the classic, Some Beautiful Indian Trees, and the driving force behind...
, secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society
Bombay Natural History Society
The Bombay Natural History Society, founded on 15 September 1883, is one of the largest non-governmental organizations in India engaged in conservation and biodiversity research. It supports many research efforts through grants, and publishes the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Many...
(BNHS), who identified an unusually coloured sparrow that young Salim had shot for sport with his toy airgun. Millard identified it as a Yellow-throated Sparrow
Chestnut-shouldered Petronia
The Yellow-throated Sparrow or Chestnut-shouldered Petronia is a species of sparrow found in Asia.- Description :...
, and showed Salim around the Society's collection of stuffed birds. Millard lent Salim a few books including Eha
Edward Hamilton Aitken
Edward Hamilton Aitken was a civil servant in India, better known for his humorist writings on natural history in India and as a founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society...
's Common birds of Bombay, encouraged Salim to make a collection of birds and offered to train him in skinning and preservation. Millard also introduced young Salim to (later Sir) Norman Boyd Kinnear
Norman Boyd Kinnear
Sir Norman Boyd Kinnear was a Scottish zoologist and ornithologist.Kinnear was the son of the wealthy Edinburgh architect Charles George Hood Kinnear and came from the same banking family as Sir William Jardine.While studying at Trinity College, Glenalmond, he worked as a voluntary assistant at...
, the first paid curator at the BNHS, who later provided help from the British Museum. In his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow Ali notes the Yellow-throated Sparrow event as the turning point of his life that led him into ornithology, an unusual career choice, especially for an Indian in those days. His early interest was in books on hunting in India and he became interested in sport-shooting, encouraged by the hunting interests of his foster-father Amiruddin. Shooting contests were often held in the neighbourhood in which he grew and among his playmates was Iskandar Mirza, a distant cousin who was a particularly a good marksman who went on in later life to become the first President of Pakistan.
Salim went to primary school at Zanana Bible Medical Mission Girls High School at Girgaum along with two of his sisters and later to St. Xavier's College in Bombay. Around the age of 13 he suffered from chronic headaches, making him drop out of class frequently. He was sent to Sind
Sindh
Sindh historically referred to as Ba'ab-ul-Islam , is one of the four provinces of Pakistan and historically is home to the Sindhi people. It is also locally known as the "Mehran". Though Muslims form the largest religious group in Sindh, a good number of Christians, Zoroastrians and Hindus can...
to stay with an uncle who had suggested that the dry air might help and on returning back after such breaks in studies, he barely managed to pass the matriculation exam of the Bombay University in 1913.
Burma and Germany
Berthold Ribbentrop
Berthold Ribbentrop was a pioneering forester from Germany who worked in India with Sir Dietrich Brandis and others. He is said to have inspired Rudyard Kipling's character of Muller in In the Rukh , one of the earliest of his Jungle Book stories....
who were with the Forest Service in Burma. On his return to India in 1917 after seven years, he decided to continue formal studies. He was to study commercial law and accountancy at Davar's College of Commerce. His true interest was however noticed by Father Ethelbert Blatter
Ethelbert Blatter
Ethelbert Blatter SJ was a Swiss Jesuit priest and pioneering botanist in British India. Author of five books and over sixty papers on the flora of the Indian subcontinent, he was Principal and Professor of Botany at St Xavier College, Bombay and Vice-President of the Bombay Natural History Society...
at St. Xavier's College and was persuaded to study zoology. After attending morning classes at Davar's College, he began to attend zoology classes at St. Xavier's College and was able to complete the course in zoology. During this break in Bombay he was married to a distant relative, Tehmina in December 1918.
Ali was fascinated by motorcycles from an early age and starting with a 3.5 HP NSU
NSU Motorenwerke AG
NSU Motorenwerke AG, normally just NSU, was a German manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles and pedal cycles, founded in 1873. It was acquired by Volkswagen Group in 1969...
in Tavoy, he owned a Sunbeam
Sunbeam (motorcycle)
Sunbeam was a British manufacturing marque that produced bicycles and motorcycles from 1912 to 1956. Originally independent, it was ultimately owned by BSA...
, Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson , often abbreviated H-D or Harley, is an American motorcycle manufacturer. Founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during the first decade of the 20th century, it was one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depression...
s (three models), a Douglas
Douglas (motorcycles)
Douglas was a British motorcycle manufacturer from 1907–1957 based in Kingswood, Bristol, owned by the Douglas family, and especially known for its horizontally opposed twin cylinder engined bikes and as manufacturers of speedway machines...
, a Scott
The Scott Motorcycle Company
The Scott Motorcycle Company was owned by Scott Motors Limited, Shipley, West Yorkshire, England and was a well known producer of motorcycles and light engines for industry...
, a New Hudson
New Hudson Motorcycles
New Hudson Motorcycles was a British motorcycle manufacturer. Founded in 1903 by George Patterson in Birmingham, their first motorcycle was produced in 1902 but was unsuccessful. The New Hudson range expanded between 1910 and 1915 using JAP engines, then the factory joined the war effort until 1919...
and a Zenith
Zenith Motorcycles
Zenith Motorcycles was a British motorcycle manufacturer established in Finsbury Park, London in 1904. Zenith motorcycles used engines from various suppliers, including Precision, Villiers and JAP...
among others at various times. On invitation to the 1950 Ornithological Congress at Uppsala in Sweden he shipped his Sunbeam aboard the SS Stratheden from Bombay and biked around Europe, injuring himself in a minor mishap in France apart from having several falls on cobbled roads in Germany. When he arrived on a fully loaded bike, just in time for the first session at Uppsala, word went around that he had ridden all the way from India! He regretted not having owned a BMW.
Ali failed to get an ornithologist's position which was open at the Zoological Survey of India
Zoological Survey of India
The Zoological Survey of India is a premier Indian organisation in zoological research and studies. It was established on 1 July 1916 to promote the survey, exploration and research of the fauna in the region...
due to the lack of a formal university degree and the post went instead to M. L. Roonwal. He was hired as guide lecturer in 1926 at the newly opened natural history section in the Prince of Wales Museum
Prince of Wales Museum
The Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, officially Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya ), Mumbai, India was founded in the early years of the 20th century by some prominent citizens of Bombay, with the help of the government, to commemorate the visit of the then Prince of Wales. It...
in Mumbai for the salary of Rs 350 a month. He however tired of the job after two years and took a study leave in 1928 to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, where he was to work under Professor Erwin Stresemann
Erwin Stresemann
Erwin Stresemann was a German naturalist and ornithologist.Stresemann was one of the outstanding ornithologists of the 20th century...
at the Zoological Museum of Berlin University. Part of the work involved examining the specimens collected by J. K. Stanford
J. K. Stanford
John Keith Stanford OBE MC was a British writer of the mid 20th century.He was educated at Rugby School and St. John's College, Oxford. Stanford was commissioned into the Suffolk Regiment in 1915 and was attached to the Tank Corps from 1917. He ended the First World War with the rank of...
in Burma. Stanford being a BNHS member had communicated with Claud Ticehurst
Claud Buchanan Ticehurst
Claud Buchanan Ticehurst was a British ornithologist.Born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, Ticehurst was educated first at Tonbridge School and subsequently attended St John's College, Cambridge...
and had suggested that he could work on his own with assistance from the BNHS. Ticehurst did not appreciate the idea of an Indian being involved in the work and resented even more, the involvement of Stresemann, a German. Ticehurst wrote letters to the BNHS suggesting that the idea of collaborating with Stresemann was an insult to Stanford. This was however not heeded by Reginald Spence and Prater who encouraged Ali to conduct the studies at Berlin with the assistance of Stresemann. In Berlin, Ali made acquaintance with many of the major German ornithologists of the time including Bernhard Rensch, Oskar Heinroth and Ernst Mayr apart from meeting other Indians in Berlin including the revolutionary Chempakaraman Pillai. Ali also gained experience in bird ringing at the Heligoland observatory.
Ornithology
On his return to India in 1930, he discovered that the guide lecturer position had been eliminated due to lack of funds. Unable to find a suitable job, Salim Ali and Tehmina moved to Kihim, a coastal village near Mumbai. Here he had the opportunity to study at close hand, the breeding of the Baya WeaverBaya Weaver
The Baya Weaver is a weaverbird found across South and Southeast Asia. Flocks of these birds are found in grasslands, cultivated areas, scrub and secondary growth and they are best known for their hanging retort shaped nests woven from leaves...
and discovered their mating system
Mating system
A mating system is a way in which a group is structured in relation to sexual behaviour. The precise meaning depends upon the context. With respect to higher animals, it specifies which males mate with which females, under which circumstances; recognised animal mating systems include monogamy,...
of sequential polygamy. Later commentators have suggested that this study was in the tradition of the Mughal naturalists that Salim Ali admired. A few months were then spent in Kotagiri where he had been invited by K M Anantan, a retired army doctor who had served in Mesopotamia during World War I. He also came in contact with Mrs Kinloch who lived at Longwood Shola and her son-in-law R C Morris
Ralph Camroux Morris
Colonel Ralph Camroux Morris was a British Army officer and hunter-naturalist who was born in India. His father was a Scottish planter, Randolph Camroux Morris who was the first to introduce coffee in the Biligirirangans....
who lived in the Biligirirangan Hills. He then discovered an opportunity to conduct systematic bird surveys of the princely states that included Hyderabad, Cochin, Travancore, Gwalior, Indore and Bhopal with the sponsorship of the rulers of those states. He was aided and supported in these surveys by Hugh Whistler
Hugh Whistler
Hugh Whistler , F.Z.S., M.B.O.U. was an English ornithologist who worked in India. He wrote one of the first field guides to Indian birds and documented the distributions of in numerous notes in several journals apart from describing several new subspecies.-Life and career:Whistler was born in...
who had surveyed many parts of India and had kept very careful notes. Interestingly, Whistler had initially been irritated by the unknown Indian. Whistler had in a note on The study of Indian birds mentioned that the long tail feathers of the Greater Racket-tailed Drongo
Greater Racket-tailed Drongo
The Greater Racket-tailed Drongo, Dicrurus paradiseus, is a medium-sized Asian bird which is distinctive in having elongated outer tail feathers with webbing restricted to the tips. They are placed along with other drongos in the family Dicruridae...
lacked webbing on the inner vane. Salim Ali wrote that such inaccuracies had been carried on from early literature and pointed out that it was incorrect on account of a twist in the rachis. Whistler was initially resentful of an unknown Indian finding fault and wrote "snooty" letters to the editors of the journal S H Prater
Stanley Henry Prater
Stanley Henry Prater was a British naturalist in India best known as a long-time affiliate of the Bombay Natural History Society and the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, Bombay, as curator of both institutions for the better part of three decades, and as author of the enduring classic The...
and Sir Reginald Spence. Subsequently Whistler re-examined his specimens and not only admitted his error but became a close friend.
Whistler also introduced Salim to Richard Meinertzhagen
Richard Meinertzhagen
Colonel Richard Henry Meinertzhagen CBE DSO was a British soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist.- Background and youth :Meinertzhagen was born into a socially connected, wealthy British family...
and the two made an expedition into Afghanistan. Although Meinertzhagen had very critical views of him they became good friends. Salim Ali found nothing amiss in Meinertzhagen's bird works but later studies have shown many of his studies to be fraudulent. Meinertzhagen made his diary entries from their days in the field available and Salim Ali reproduces them in his autobiography:
He was accompanied and supported on his early ornithological 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 stayed with his sister Kamoo and brother-in-law. In the course of his later travels, Ali rediscovered the Kumaon
Kumaon Division
For Kumaoni/Kumauni People see Kumauni PeopleKumaon or Kumaun is one of the two regions and administrative divisions of Uttarakhand, a mountainous state of northern India, the other being Garhwal. It includes the districts of Almora, Bageshwar, Champawat, Nainital, Pithoragarh, and Udham Singh Nagar...
Terai
Terai
The Terai is a belt of marshy grasslands, savannas, and forests located south of the outer foothills of the Himalaya, the Siwalik Hills, and north of the Indo-Gangetic Plain of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and their tributaries. The Terai belongs to the Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands ecoregion...
population of the Finn's Baya
Finn's Weaver
Finn's Weaver or Finn's Baya is a species of weaver bird found in the Ganges and Brahmaputra valleys in India and Nepal. Two races are known; the nominate from the Kumaon area and salimalii from the eastern Terai....
but was unsuccessful in his expedition to find the Mountain Quail
Himalayan Quail
The Himalayan Quail is a medium-sized quail belonging to the pheasant family. It was last reported in 1876 and is feared extinct. This species was known from only 2 locations in the western Himalayas in Uttarakhand, north-west India...
(Ophrysia superciliosa), the status of which continues to remain unknown.
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
wrote to Ripley complaining that Ali failed to collect sufficient specimens : "as far as collecting is concerned I don't think he ever understood the necessity for collecting series. Maybe you can convince him of that." Ali himself wrote to Ripley complaining about bird taxonomy:
Ali later wrote that his interest was in the "living bird in its natural environment."
Salim Ali's associations with Sidney Dillon Ripley
Sidney Dillon Ripley
Sidney Dillon Ripley was an American ornithologist and wildlife conservationist. He served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1964-1984.-Biography:...
led to many bureaucratic problems. Ripley's past as an OSS
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
agent led to allegations that the CIA had a hand in the bird-ringing operations in India.
Salim Ali took some interest in bird photography along with his friend Loke Wan Tho
Loke Wan Tho
Loke Wan Tho born in Kuala Lumpur , was a cinema magnate, ornithologist, and photographer. He was the founder of Cathay Organisation in Singapore and Malaysia, and Motion Picture and General Investments Limited in Hong Kong....
. Loke had been introduced to Ali by JTM Gibson, a BNHS member and Lieutenant Commander of the Royal Indian Navy, who had taught English to Loke at a school in Switzerland. 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. In the 1971 Sunder Lal Hora memorial lecture and the 1978 Azad Memorial Lecture he spoke of the history and importance of bird study in India.
Other contributions
Salim Ali was very influential in ensuring the survival of the BNHSBombay Natural History Society
The Bombay Natural History Society, founded on 15 September 1883, is one of the largest non-governmental organizations in India engaged in conservation and biodiversity research. It supports many research efforts through grants, and publishes the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Many...
and managed to save the then 100-year old institution by writing to the then Prime Minister Pandit Nehru for financial help. Salim also influenced other members of his family. A cousin, Humayun Abdulali
Humayun Abdulali
Humayun Abdulali was an Indian ornithologist, and a cousin of Salim Ali. He started with bird egg collection and shikar...
became an ornithologist while his niece Laeeq took an interest in birds and was married to Zafar Futehally
Zafar Futehally
Zafar Rashid Futehally is an Indian naturalist and conservationist best known for his work as the secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society and for the Newsletter for Birdwatchers a periodical that helped birdwatchers around India to communicate their observations.-Biography:Zafar Futehally...
, a distant cousin of Ali, who went on to become the honorary Secretary of the BNHS and played a major role in the development of bird study through the networking of birdwatchers in India. Ali also guided several M.Sc. and Ph. D. students, the first of whom was Vijaykumar Ambedkar, who further studied the breeding and ecology of the Baya Weaver, producing a thesis that was favourably reviewed by David Lack
David Lack
David Lambert Lack FRS, was a British evolutionary biologist who made contributions to ornithology, ecology and ethology. His book on the finches of the Galapagos Islands was a landmark work.- Early life :...
.
Ali was able to provide support for the development of ornithology in India by identifying important areas where funding could be obtained. He helped in the establishment of an economic ornithology unit within the Indian Council for Agricultural Research. He was also able to obtain funding for migration studies through a project to study the Kyasanur forest disease
Kyasanur forest disease
Kyasanur forest disease is a tick-borne viral hemorrhagic fever endemic to South Asia. The disease is caused by a virus belonging to the family flaviviridae, which also includes yellow fever and dengue fever.-History:...
, an arthropod-borne virus that appeared to have similarities to a Siberian tick-borne disease. This project partly funded by the PL 480
Food for Peace
Public Law 480 also known as Food for Peace is a funding avenue by which U.S. food can be used for overseas aid....
grants of the USA however ran into political difficulties. In the late 1980s, he also guided a BNHS project that aimed to reduce bird hits at Indian airfields. He also attempted some early citizen science
Citizen science
Citizen science is a term used for the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these activities by researchers on a primarily avocational basis...
projects through the birdwatchers of India who were connected by the Newsletter for Birdwatchers
Newsletter for Birdwatchers
Newsletter for Birdwatchers is an Indian periodical of ornithology and birdwatching founded in 1960 by Zafar Futehally, who edited it until 2003. It was initially mimeographed and distributed to a small number of subscribers each month. The editorial board in its early years included Salim Ali,...
.
Dr. Ali had considerable influence in conservation related issues in post-independence India especially through Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru , often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the...
and Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhara was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms and a fourth term . She was assassinated by Sikh extremists...
. Indira Gandhi was herself a keen birdwatcher, influenced by Ali's bird books (a copy of the "Book of Indian Birds" was gifted to her in 1942 by her father Nehru who was in Dehra Dun jail while she herself was imprisoned in Naini jail) and by the Gandhian birdwatcher Horace Alexander
Horace Alexander
Horace Gundry Alexander was an English Quaker teacher and writer, pacifist and ornithologist. He was the youngest of four sons of Joseph Gundry Alexander...
. Ali influenced the designation of the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary and in decisions that saved the Silent Valley National Park
Silent Valley National Park
Silent Valley National Park , is located in the Nilgiri Hills, Palakkad District in Kerala, South India...
. One of Ali's later interventions at Bharatpur involved the exclusion of cattle and graziers into the sanctuary and this was to prove costly and resulted in ecological changes that led to a decline in the numbers of many species of waterbirds. Some historians have noted that the approach to conservation used by Salim Ali and the BNHS followed an undemocratic process.
Dr. Ali was a frequent visitor to The Doon School
The Doon School
The Doon School is an independent school located in Dehradun in the state of Uttarakhand in India. Established in 1935, it was founded by Satish Ranjan Das. Its first Headmaster was Arthur E...
where he was an engaging and persuasive advocate of ornithology to successive generations of pupils. As a consequence, he was considered to be part of the Dosco fraternity and became one of the very few people to be made an honorary member of The Doon School Old Boys Society
Personal views
Salim Ali held many views that were contrary to the mainstream ideas of his time. A question that he was asked frequently was about the collection of bird specimens particularly in later life when he became known for his conservation related activism. Although once a fan of shikar (hunting) literature, Ali held strong views on hunting but upheld the collection of bird specimens for scientific study. He held the view that the practice of wildlife conservation needed to be practical and not grounded in philosophies like ahimsaAhimsa
Ahimsa is a term meaning to do no harm . The word is derived from the Sanskrit root hims – to strike; himsa is injury or harm, a-himsa is the opposite of this, i.e. non harming or nonviolence. It is an important tenet of the Indian religions...
. He suggested that this fundamental religious sentiment had hindered the growth of bird study in India.
Brought up in a Muslim household, he had in his younger life been taught to recite the Koran without understanding any Arabic. In his adult life he despised what he saw as the meaningless and hypocritical practices of prayer and was put off by the "ostentatiously sanctimonious elders".
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
Great Indian Bustard
The Great Indian Bustard or Indian Bustard is a bustard found in India and the adjoining regions of Pakistan. A large bird with a horizontal body and long bare legs giving it an ostrich like appearance, this bird is among the heaviest of the flying birds...
, however this proposal was overruled in favour of the Indian Peafowl
Indian Peafowl
The Indian Peafowl or Blue Peafowl is a large and brightly coloured bird of the pheasant family native to South Asia, but introduced and semi-feral in many other parts of the world...
.
Honours and memorials
Although recognition came late, he received several honorary doctorates and numerous awards. The earliest was the "Joy Gobinda Law Gold Medal" in 1953, awarded by the Asiatic Society of Bengal and was based on an appraisal of his work by Sunder Lal HoraSunder Lal Hora
Sunder Lal Hora was an Indian ichthyologist.Famous for the Satpura Hypothesis, a zoo-geographical hypothesis proposed by him that suggests that the central Indian Satpura Range of hills acted as a bridge providing for the Malayan affinity of many Indian fauna and flora in the peninsula and the...
(and in 1970 received the Sunder Lal Hora memorial Medal of the Indian National Science Academy). 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
British Ornithologists' Union
The British Ornithologists' Union aims to encourage the study of birds in Britain, Europe and elsewhere, in order to understand their biology and to aid their conservation....
. In the same year, he received the J Paul Getty Wildlife Conservation prize consisting of a sum of $ 100,000, which he used to form the corpus of 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 Science gave 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
Order of the Golden Ark
The Most Excellent Order of the Golden Ark was established by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands in 1971 as an order of merit. Although not awarded by, it is recognized by the government of the Netherlands as a legal order. It is awarded to people for major contributions to nature conservation...
by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. The Indian government decorated him with a Padma Bhushan
Padma Bhushan
The Padma Bhushan is the third highest civilian award in the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan, but comes before the Padma Shri. It is awarded by the Government of India.-History:...
in 1958 and the Padma Vibhushan
Padma Vibhushan
The Padma Vibhushan is the second highest civilian award in the Republic of India. It consists of a medal and a citation and is awarded by the President of India. It was established on 2 January 1954. It ranks behind the Bharat Ratna and comes before the Padma Bhushan...
in 1976. He was also nominated to the Rajya Sabha
Rajya Sabha
The Rajya Sabha or Council of States is the upper house of the Parliament of India. Rajya means "state," and Sabha means "assembly hall" in Sanskrit. Membership is limited to 250 members, 12 of whom are chosen by the President of India for their expertise in specific fields of art, literature,...
in 1985.
Dr. Salim Ali died in 1987, at the age of 91 after a prolonged battle with prostate cancer
Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...
in Mumbai. In 1990, the Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History
Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History
The Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History is a national centre for information, education and research in ornithology and natural history in India. It was inspired by and named in honor of Salim Ali, the leading pioneer of ornithology in India. It is an autonomous organization...
(SACON) was established at Coimbatore
Coimbatore
Coimbatore , also known as Kovai , is the second largest city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is a major commercial centre in Tamil Nadu and is known as the "Manchester of South India"....
by the Government of India
Government of India
The Government of India, officially known as the Union Government, and also known as the Central Government, was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of the union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic 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
Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary
The Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary is a bird sanctuary located on western tip of the Island of Chorao along the river Mandovi, Goa, in India. The size of the sanctuary is 1.78 km²...
and the Thattakad bird sanctuary near Vembanad in Kerala also goes by his name. The location of the BNHS in Bombay was renamed to "Dr Salim Ali Chowk". In 1972, Kitti Thonglongya
Kitti Thonglongya
Kitti Thonglongya was an eminent Thai ornithologist and mammalogist. He is probably best known for two discoveries of endangered species.-Life:...
discovered a misidentified specimen in the collection of the BNHS and described a new species that he called Latidens salimalii, considered one of the world's rarest bat
Bat
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...
s, and the only species in the genus Latidens
Latidens
Salim Ali's fruit bat is a rare megabat species in the monotypic genus Latidens.It was first collected by Angus Hutton, a planter and naturalist in the High Wavy Mountains in the western ghats of Theni district, Tamilnadu in South India in 1948.It was originally misidentified as a short-nosed...
. The subspecies of the Rock Bush Quail
Rock Bush Quail
The Rock Bush Quail is a species of quail found in parts of peninsular India. They are very similar to and overlap in range with Perdicula asiatica. They are found in small coveys and are often detected only suddenly, when they burst out into flight en masse from under vegetation....
(Perdicula argoondah salimalii) and the eastern population of Finn's Weaver
Finn's Weaver
Finn's Weaver or Finn's Baya is a species of weaver bird found in the Ganges and Brahmaputra valleys in India and Nepal. Two races are known; the nominate from the Kumaon area and salimalii from the eastern Terai....
(Ploceus megarhynchus salimalii) were named after him by Whistler
Hugh Whistler
Hugh Whistler , F.Z.S., M.B.O.U. was an English ornithologist who worked in India. He wrote one of the first field guides to Indian birds and documented the distributions of in numerous notes in several journals apart from describing several new subspecies.-Life and career:Whistler was born in...
and Abdulali
Humayun Abdulali
Humayun Abdulali was an Indian ornithologist, and a cousin of Salim Ali. He started with bird egg collection and shikar...
respectively. A subspecies of the Black-rumped Flameback Woodpecker (Dinopium benghalense tehminae) was named after his wife, Tehmina by Whistler and Kinnear.
Writings
Salim Ali wrote numerous journal articles, chiefly in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History SocietyJournal of the Bombay Natural History Society
The Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society is a natural history journal published several times a year by 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 Express
The Indian Express
The Indian Express is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. It is published in Mumbai by Indian Express Group. After Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split in 1999 among his family members into two with the southern editions taking the name The New Indian Express, while the old...
on his birthday in 1984. His most popular work was book The Book of Indian Birds, written in the style of Whistler's Popular Handbook of Birds and first published in 1941, it has been translated into several languages and has been through more than 12 editions. The first ten editions alone sold more than forty-six thousand copies. The first edition was reviewed by Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
in 1943, who commending it while noting that the illustrations were not to the standard of American bird-books. His magnum opus was however the 10 volume Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan written with Dillon Ripley
Sidney Dillon Ripley
Sidney Dillon Ripley was an American ornithologist and wildlife conservationist. He served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 1964-1984.-Biography:...
and often referred to as "the handbook". This work started in 1964 and ended in 1974 and a second edition was completed by others, notably J S Serrao of the BNHS, Bruce Beehler, Michel Desfayes and Pamela Rasmussen, after his death. A single volume "compact edition" of the "Handbook" was also produced and a supplementary illustrative work A Pictorial Guide to the Birds of the Indian Subcontinent with illustrations by John Henry Dick and coauthored with Dillon Ripley was published in 1983, these plates were also used in the second edition of the "Handbook".
He also produced a number of regional field guides, including "The Birds of Kerala
Kerala
or Keralam is an Indian state located on the Malabar coast of south-west India. It was created on 1 November 1956 by the States Reorganisation Act by combining various Malayalam speaking regions....
" (the first edition in 1953 was titled "The Birds of Travancore and Cochin
Travancore-Cochin
Travancore-Cochin or Thiru-Kochi is a former state of India . It was created on 1 July 1949 by the merger of two former princely states, the kingdoms of Travancore and Cochin....
"), "The Birds of Sikkim
Sikkim
Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayan mountains...
", "The Birds of Kutch" (later "The Birds of Gujarat"), "Indian Hill Birds" and the "Birds of the Eastern Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
". Several low-cost book were produced by the National Book Trust
National Book Trust
National Book Trust, is an Indian publishing house, founded in 1957 as an autonomous body under the Ministry of Education within the Government of India....
including "Common Birds" (1967) written with his niece Laeeq Futehally which was reprinted in several editions with translations into Hindi and other languages. In 1985 he wrote his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow. Ali also wrote about his own vision for the Bombay Natural History Society
Bombay Natural History Society
The Bombay Natural History Society, founded on 15 September 1883, is one of the largest non-governmental organizations in India engaged in conservation and biodiversity research. It supports many research efforts through grants, and publishes the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Many...
, noting the importance of conservation related activities. In the 1986 issue of the Journal of the BNHS he noted the role that it had played, the changing interests from hunting to conservation captured in 64 volumes that were preserved in microfiche copies, and the zenith that it had reached under the exceptional editorship of S H Prater
Stanley Henry Prater
Stanley Henry Prater was a British naturalist in India best known as a long-time affiliate of the Bombay Natural History Society and the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, Bombay, as curator of both institutions for the better part of three decades, and as author of the enduring classic The...
.
A two-volume compilation of his shorter letters and writings was published in 2007, edited by Tara Gandhi, one of his last students.