'Billy' Arjan Singh was a hunter who became a renowned conservationist and worked for the protection of wildlife for close to 50 years.
Aashish Chaudhary, Deepa Pardasany to make a film on conservationist Billy Arjan Singh
Mumbai - 05 Feb 2021 12:38 IST
Our Correspondent
Aashish Chaudhary and Deepa Pardasany of Hindustan Talkies have acquired the film rights to author Duff Hart-Davis’s book Honorary Tiger: The Life of Billy Arjan Singh.
Chaudhary revealed this on the microblogging site Twitter. “A very humbling acquisition indeed," he tweeted. "Hindustan Talkies, Deepa Pardasany and I are all smiles.”
A very humbling acquisition indeed. #HindustanTalkies @deepapardasany and i are all smiles.
— ASHISH CHOWDHRY (@AshishChowdhry) February 4, 2021
Cheers, @RoliBooks ✌🏻 https://t.co/NWT2R5PeQR
The book is a biography of the world-famous conservationist 'Billy' Arjan Singh and covers the last 50 years of his life spent in the conservation of wildlife, especially tigers. As a young man, Arjan Singh, a scion of the erstwhile royal house of Kapurthala in Punjab, was a passionate hunter. But he had a change of heart after realizing the impact of hunting on nature and became a conservationist.
Arjan Singh is also credited with persuading the late prime minister Indira Gandhi to create Dudhwa National Park in Uttar Pradesh in 1973. He founded the Tiger Haven in Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh in 2002 where he spent the last years of his life with animals. Arjan Singh, the recepient of many awards and honours, including the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan, died in 2010 aged 92.
Duff Hart-Davis is a British journalist, biographer and naturalist. As an author, he has fiction as well as non-fiction books to his credit.
This project will be the first film to be made by Hindustan Talkies.
