1. The document summarizes the author's observations of wildlife encountered on the campus of Banaras Hindu University over a 10 year period from 2004 to 2014. 2. When the author first arrived on campus in 2004, he observed nilgai antelope in nearby fields and large green snakes called 'Dhamin'. In 2005, he became a warden and was attracted to the campus' natural, forested environment. 3. Over the years, the author sighted coyotes, porcupines, civet cats, mongooses, green snakes, peacocks, owls, bats, kingfishers and other species on campus, which he believes have adapted to the forest-like

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The Fauna of Banaras Hindu University Campus
By
...
Ajay Pratap
Professor
Department of History
Faculty of Social Sciences
Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi - 221005
...
The year was 2004, January, when I stepped into the campus. The
greenery here was exhilarating. Commuting to and through our ‘BHU’
campus, on a new rickshaw everyday and at the pace rickshaws ply, it
was easy not to miss the fact that the nilgai (Boselaphus tragocamelus)
lurking in the fields next to the bank were actually nilgai!
Subsequently, I heard stories about the origin of the university from a
royal charter, granting it some twenty-five villages, for setting-up and
surmised that that must have been the case! That was a case of the
glorious fauna here providing unique historical data to infer backwards
the veracity of such a claim!
It is, that is the bank, actually located near our Central Registry, and as a
newcomer shuttling back and forth, between our residences at Banaras
City’s Saket Nagar, the department and the Central Registry, and
sometimes visiting newly found friends on campus, I also sighted some
rather awe-inspiring sized greenish snakes called ‘Dhamin’, but these
were large-sized enough for the rickshaw-puller to actually careen the
front-wheel!
In time, in 2005, I was invited to take-up a warden’s post at the ‘Rajaram’
Hostel and my family and I, in the most extended sense of these terms,
were thrilled to bits. In all of my wanderings to various universities all-
over the world, I was never so attracted to its natural, forested environs.
Not at Delhi University of the 1970s which sported the famous and most
historic ‘Ridge’ whose fauna must have been thin, not Pune University at
Ganeshkhind which supported a forest but with mostly semi-arid species
although with a foliage much thicker than at Delhi, not Cambridge
University, which ought to have at least sported the Snow-Leopard to

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catch the attention!
Goa, nah! MSU Baroda, nah! MJP Rohillakhand U, too busy with fallen
Jhumkas! Nah! Farooke College, Kozhikhode, nah! Mumbai University
at Kalina, nah! Kurukshetra University approachable from Pipli, nah! I
didn’t see? VKU, Arrah! Not even near its minuscule central registry?
Nah. Patna University, nah! Lucknow University, nah!
HP University at Shimla? Nah. I did not see, and the topography would
easily tire! JNU of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and the first-part of the 21th
century? A black Cobra lurking in from the rocks onto Warden
Kamtekar’s verandah! Hanh! But otherwise - NYR! Thus, and therefore,
this animal census! The moral of the story is that by cutting forests we
rob the fauna of their subsistence! But whether they lurk onto our
verandahs or not under forest-laws they are protected!
Habitat. This is a good word!
Commonsense-wise, forested or forest-like habitats support a variety of
life-forms, from simplest to very complex ones, and the process of human
colonization is necessarily inimical to the feedback cycles of a habitat.
However, it is also common-sense that where there are trees, grasses and
oodles of empty unhabited lands the food-chains commensurate with
species along the lower echelons of the faunal hierarchy will adapt and
survive to procreate as also the vice-versa but following natural laws!
Ten or so years down the line and ladder, I have seen coyotes near the
Warden’s Residences of Rajaram eye-glowing and shivering like dogs
while rooting around in the drains, in the thickets one evening near our
University’s Swimming Pools. Elsewhere, their hoots and shrill calls!
Some times also sighted near the BHU Vet’s Offices.
In our backyard, porcupines, civet cats, mongoose, the occasional green
snakes slithering silently, peacocks and pea-hens, grown really really
hefty from all the pampering, and on a steady diet of wholesome lower-
order thingys; wholesome veggies and whatever-else they support
themselves with; owls, bats, a variety of Kingfishers, nearly feral cats,
mangy-curs of all callings providing wholesome Darwinian competition
to all the species?
Symbiosis?
In these days of the internet accentuating the distance to libraries of old
books and the way back university populations, teachers and students,

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have also adapted vastly, and can become amateur enthusiasts pursuing
almost anything, from star-gazing to nature enthusiasts. We seem to have
a Mountaineering Club and I feel sure they must get oodles of nature
whenever they are hiking. But no club to celebrate nature?
(Cont’d.)
...
Thank you.
Ajay