All white tigers in the various zoos (circuses ?) across the world are the progeny of a white male tiger which was
captured in 1951 from the Bagri forests of Central India (Madhya Pradesh) by the then Maharaja of Rewa (a
former state of India). The white tigers of Rewa (India) have indeed been world famous for the better part of this
century. The existence of these charming felids in the Rewa and Mandla area at the turn of the century is
described by A.A. Dunbar Brander in his book Wild Animals in Central India (1923). The palace-diaries of Rewa
record as many as eight occasions of white tiger sightings in the first half of this century. 



The white tigers are neither albinos (in which case they would have pink eyes), nor a separate species, they have
black stripes and blue eyes and are what scientists call 'recessive mutants' - a result of mating between a tiger and
a tigress, each carrying a mutant recessive gene. The first mutant 'white' cub is believed to be the one trapped by
the Maharaja of Rewa, who found it orphaned in the jungle. He brought it back and housed it in Govindgarh, an
abandoned guest house about 12 kms from Rewa. 

Named Mohan, the cub was later mated to a normal-coloured captive tigress who produced three litters with
normal colouring, was trapped in the Rewa forest and kept as a pet by the local Maharaja, who mated it to a
normal captive tigress. She produced three normal litters. A few years later, Mohan mated with one of its
offsprings, producing the first litter of white cubs - world's 'first' litter of white cubs which were to be the
ancestors of others now in many zoos the world over. Most of these tigers were exported worldwide by the
Maharaja of Rewa and the Government of India for sizeable sums of money. Though the species did thrive in
captivity, no further sightings or evidences of their continued presence in the wilds have been recorded
thereafter. 

It is alleged that the former Maharaja Gulab Singh (father of Maharaja Martand Singh, who had captured Mohan)
had also sighted white tiger in the Bagri forests. He apparently succeeded in capturing it, and held it in captivity
for five years, before finally gifting it away to George V. It was only after this initial, historic capture that serious
attempts started being made to capture more such specimens - resulting finally in the capture of the
now-legendary 'Mohan'. 



Over the years, the Rewa white tigers have produced as many as 58 litters, out of which 114 cubs were white and
the rest had normal colouring. If one undertakes the study of the lineage of the white tigers protected in the
various zoos across the world, some of them can definitely be traced to Mohan ! 

It is said that every once in a great (?) while, a white tiger appears in the wild ( ... though it has never yet been
reported so after the initial 1951 specimen-capture from Central India). White tigers differ from the
normally-coloured ones in having blue eyes, a pink nose, and creamy white fur with brownish-black stripes. To
elaborate what I said earlier, white tigers are not albinos; their color is caused by a double recessive allele. A
Bengal tiger with two normal alleles or one normal and one white allele is colored orange. Only a double dose of
the mutant allele results in white tigers. It is in fact quite normal to found normal-coloured young ones in any
litter of a white tigress. White tigresses have often been mated with normal and white males in the zoos all over
the world. 

No one knows for sure the frequency of the occurrence of white tigers in the wilds. It is said that less than a
dozen have been seen in India in about a hundred years. No sightings have indeed been reported after the initial
few at the time of the first capture by the Maharaja in 1950s. And of these only one could be captured (1951).
Since the Royal Bengal tiger population has dropped from 40,000 to a low of 1,800 tigers, and approximately
100,000 have lived and died, it is natural to deduce that as few as one in every 10,000 tigers must be white. Such
numerical scarcity begets the exhibition charm of these prized felids. Nature's oddities and freaks have always
sparked man's imagination - and few animals have done so in such a substantial manner the way the white tigers
have done ! 

As per a status survey in the early 1980s, there are probably no more than seventy (70) white tigers in the zoos
worldwide: about 25 in India, 40 in USA, 4 in UK and probably an isolated specimen (or two) in Japan. Of these 31
were alleged to be males and 39 females. 

The white tiger collection in North American zoos, and in fact in almost all the zoos of the world, traces its
ancestry to a single white male known as Mohan, captured in 1951 in central India (quoted above). The lure of
having more white variety tigers led to the breeding of Mohan back to his daughter, who gave birth to the first
generation of captive-born white tigers in this century. One of these granddaughters, Mohini, was bred with her
uncle and half-brother, a normal-coloured male called Samson. It was through Mohini that the white tiger line
came to the United States through the National Zoo in Washington D.C., From there, two of Mohini's offspring, a
brother and sister, were bred at the Cincinnati Zoo and their daughter, Kesari, founded the Cincinnati white tiger
line. In Cincinnati, the inbreeding continued. Bhim, a white son of Kesari, was mated to his sisters Kamala and
Sumita, and so on. 

The white tiger controversy has raged for quite long now ! The tiger Species Survival Programme has continually
decried breeding white tigers because of their mixed ancestry (most have in all probability been hybridized with
members of other subspecies - of unknown lineage). And, of course, such breeding serves no apparent
(conservation) purpose - other than of inflating the stud-book entries in the zoos. However, private owners of
white tigers consider white tigers as popular exhibit that help increase zoo attendance and revenue. Quite
obviously, the same breeding-success story has been underscored in the propagation of black leopards, white
lions (?), king cheetahs, and other similar phenotypic aberrations. 

Today, white tigers are an aberration artificially bred and proliferated by a few zoos, private breeders, and circus
folks, who do this for purely economic reasons. Undeniably though, if normal-coloured tigers are the top-most
attraction in the wilds, their White brethren rule supreme in the zoos, circuses and cat-farms the world over. 

The white tiger jungles of the yesteryears are what is India's famous Bandhavgarh National Park (BNP) today. 
This park, located in the Shahdol district of the erstwhile princely State of Rewa, in the far-eastern reaches of the
Vindhyas, was originally a private forest preserve of the then Maharaja of Rewa. Though it is much smaller in
size as compared to the neighbouring Kanha national park, it is replete with a diverse variety of animal and bird
life. As early as 1947, the princely state of Rewa was merged with (the then) Vindhya Pradesh and Bandhavgarh
came under the rules and regulations of the Madhya Pradesh State. Special conservation measures were adopted
around 1968, when the area was declared a national park. Quite appropriately too, the main tourist facility at BNP
is christened the White Tiger Lodge ! 

The White Zoo tigers: a chronology of events : 
1951: 25th May: A forest labourer reported sighting a white tiger. 
1951: 27th May: Maharaja Martand Singh captured Mohan. 
1951: 26th February: A normal-coloured tigress named 'Begum' captured. 
1955: 10th April: Begum produced a normal litter of a male & two female cubs. 
1957: December: Mohan mated with 'Radha'. 
1958: 20th October: Radha produced an all-white litter of a male and three female cubs: 
christened 'Raja', 'Rani', 'Sukeshi' and 'Mohini'. Raja & Rani were gifted to the 
National Zoological Gardens, New Delhi. Sukeshi & Mohini were also later 
gifted to New Delhi Zoo. 
1968: 3rd May: 'Hari' (a white male) is born to Raja & Rani at the New Delhi Zoo. 
1970: 11th April: A white female 'Ashima' is born to Raja & Rani. 
1977: 22nd November: A white female 'Seema' is born to Hari & Ashima. 
1979: 29th August: Seema sent to Kanpur Zoo as a potential mate for normal-coloured 'Badal' 
(from the 4th generation of 'Mohan-Begum' mates. However, the project did 
not succeed, and it was sought to mate Seema with either 'Sheru' or 'Titu', both 
captured notorious man-eaters from Corbett national park area. Eventually, mating 
with Sheru was successful. 
1986: 10th August: Seema delivered a litter of three cubs ('Sajeev', 'Uttam' and 'Johar') out of which one 
(Johar) was surprisingly white ! It was considered surprising because as per the 
commonly accepted hereditary principles of Mendelian genetics, white offspring 
should not have been produced if the father (Sheru) was normally-coloured 
homozygous. This gave rise to a school of thought that there could perhaps be some 
'white' gene pool in the habitat (Corbett park) from where Sheru was captured.