As a kid he was often mocked by children playing cricket and football for playing with mud and soil, carving out art pieces. His father often scolded and thrashed him for dirtying his clothes in the process.
He often stood among the first three in drawing and painting contests, and his deep interest in painting variegated images of Mahatma Gandhi even earned him the sobriquet ‘Gandhi’.
Decades later, the same imaginative and creative insight coupled with interplay of colours and deft strokes of a paintbrush has established 46-year-old forest department guard Rohit Shukla into a painter-caricaturist-cartoonist who is on a mission to create public awareness on pressing wildlife, environment and forest issues—ultimately taking him to the Rashtrapati Bhawan and providing him an opportunity to dine with President Droupadi Murmu at breakfast.
Not only have his evocative paintings captured the fancy of President Droupadi Murmu in 2023, but the colourful creations, mostly depicting forest, wildlife and environment with associated awareness messages in Hindi, have also caught the eyes of Big B Amitabh Bachchan during a painting exhibition in Nagpur during 2019, besides winning accolades from former MP, CM and current union minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and current CM Dr Mohan Yadav.
Hailing from the Seoni district—the densely forested land which is considered to have inspired Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book—Rohit, a gifted painter of school days, holds an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) in electronics and a Master of Arts (MA) in Hindi literature. He graduated from a painter to a cartoonist between 2006 and 2008, drawing illustrations, cartoons and caricatures for Hindi dailies in Bhopal and Raipur.
His passion for being in the jungles and hard work fetched him the forest guard’s job in 2008. While on duty to protect the forests and wildlife, Rohit was selected to be among 250 master trainers for training other forest guards in 2017-2018 for the tiger enumeration exercise.
While the master trainers shared their rich experiences with new recruits through various kinds of presentations, Rohit explained to them the diversities of forests, environments and wildlife and the contemporarily burning social themes through paintings, one of which melded the tiger with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Mission.
As the moving painting got circulated in the official WhatsApp groups of the MP Forest Department, Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Rajnish Kumar Singh, who was then posted at the MP Tiger Foundation Society in Bhopal, contacted Rohit and encouraged him to draw cartoons and caricatures and fashion paintings for spreading awareness about the cause of environmental, forest and wildlife protection.
Since then, inspired by the rich flora and fauna of the forests of the South Seoni forest division, Rohit has fashioned around 1,000 paintings, cartoons and caricatures on diverse themes, including forest fires, conserving the tiger and the importance of tigers and other animals for ecology and the environment.
His creations, which are clubbed with messages in Hindi to create awareness about forest and wildlife-related issues, have particularly focused on tribal beliefs and stories, many of which narrate the tiger as their ancestor, due to which it should be conserved.
His paintings have also been showcased at group exhibitions in parts of MP and outside. “In 2019, my paintings were appreciated by Big B Amitabh Bachchan at an exhibition in Nagpur. The short interaction with him will remain etched in my memories forever,” Rohit recounted fondly.
His paintings, including the one depicting the entire biodiversity in a tiger, have found a prominent place in the last three editions of ‘Silent Conversation: From Margins to the Centre’, an annual tribal-arts exhibition organised in Delhi by Sankala Foundation in partnership with institutions like the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA).
“One of those paintings was acquired by the ambassador of the Czech Republic to India, while another painting was lapped up by Reliance Foundation. It was at one of the editions of the annual exhibition of tribal arts, which saw me get an opportunity to be among the 40 artists (mostly tribals) who dined with President Droupadi Murmu for the memorable breakfast at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. It is perhaps the most important moment of my life so far.” Rohit said.
He has also created posters for major campaigns of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and painted T-shirts for the state forest department for marking major days related to forests, the environment and wildlife species.
His creations have also been prominently used in books by the National Book Trust of India as well as NCERT.
“It will not be an exaggeration if 90% of the creations (paintings and cartoons) marking the National Forest Martyrs Day are found to have been fashioned by Rohit Shukla. He is a treasure for the MP Forest Department,” said Rohit’s mentor, IFS officer Rajnish Kumar Singh, currently posted as DFO-Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve.
Rohit, who has over the years largely used watercolours to fashion paintings, has now taken a plunge into acrylic colour paintings, and three of those paintings, including an urban tiger overseeing Bhopal from a hilltop, a painting showing a mother cheetah and five cubs at Kuno National Park and the one depicting a snow leopard, are awaiting display at the exhibition on the sidelines of the First International Big Cat Alliance Summit slated for Delhi in the coming months.
It is worth noting that his creative and forest conservation efforts have also fetched him the state government’s Van Prani Sanrakshan Puraskar in 2019 and 2025.
HIS WORKS A BIG DRAW AT EXHIBITIONS
His paintings, including the one depicting the entire biodiversity in a tiger, have found a prominent place in the last three editions of Silent Conversation: From Margins to the Centre, an annual tribal-arts exhibition organised in Delhi by Sankala Foundation in partnership with institutions like the National Tiger Conservation Authority