Sacred groves in the Indian state of Odisha continue to be protected now, as they have for hundreds of years because of cultural and spiritual values associated with them, a recent study has found. However, the forests are decreasing in size, nearly all residents interviewed by researchers said.
India is estimated to have roughly 100,000 sacred groves, the most of any country. The state of Odisha in the Eastern Ghats, a mountain range in India’s eastern coast, has more than 2,000 such groves, but they are poorly understood, the authors wrote.
So, the research team interviewed 148 people living around 10 sacred groves in the state’s Mayurbhanj district to understand how they perceive the customs, uses, rules and traditions associated with those forests.
Although the Santals, one of the largest tribal groups in India, dominate Mayurbhanj, the interviewees represented a diverse mix of “tribal or caste groups, including Santals, Gonds, Kolhas, Bhuyans, Gauda, Bathudi, Bhumij and Ho Munda,” the authors wrote. This suggests “that the sacred grove is a cultural concept that transcends not only ethnic groups but also other general communities in the district,” they added.
The interviews revealed that the villages maintain and preserve the sacred groves as a form of worship for the forest god. Rules include no cutting trees in the groves or extracting natural resources for commercial sale, the respondents said.
At the same time, the interviewees said they use 28 different species of plants from the sacred groves “for medicinal and religious purposes.” They also said they hold an annual sacred grove festival celebrating the blooming of the sacred sal trees (Shorea robusta) in the sacred groves. These ceremonies “unite the local residents and contribute to cultural identity,” the authors wrote.
Nearly all interviewees said the groves were shrinking in size because of road construction and human settlements on the fringes of the forests, among other reasons. “When we were young we had these forests spread over a large area, now we see the size has shrunk to a large extent,” a 70-year-old resident told the researchers. “We don’t want to lose it. We want the next generations to see these forests.”
The researchers concluded without the traditional cultural beliefs protecting the sacred groves, the entire forests would likely have disappeared. They added several sacred groves in Odisha are not yet fully cataloged and mapped.
Subhani Rath, the study’s lead author, told Mongabay by email that there is still more study needed of sacred groves to conserve them. “We need a robust framework for conservation of these community conserved areas, as is followed in protected areas, to save these small, yet crucial patches of vegetation dotted across varied landscapes from the brink of extinction,” she said.
Banner image: Representative image of a sacred rainforest grove surrounded by paddy fields in Coorg district, Karnataka. Image by Anand Osuri via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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