Legend has it, on an autumn day in the year 1730, a Jodhpuri woman stepped between a Kherji tree and the Kingsmen. “If a tree is saved from felling at the cost of one’s head, it should be considered a good deed,” Amrita Devi had declared before the sword decapitated her. Her daughters arose and, one by one, took her place in life and, in death. Stirred by their act of self-sacrifice, the Bishnois stepped in and thus began the bloodbath. News of this butchery reached the monarch and the carnage was promptly ceased. The Khejrali Massacre claimed 363 lives, but its saga would go down as the first act of Environmental Resistance.
The Bhisnoi & The Khejri
Centuries have passed since countless had laid down their lives for the sake of the Khejri tree and we pay tribute to the men and the women who offered the ultimate sacrifice. Today, we commemorate the Bishnois.
Strewn over the arid deserts of Western India, the community is credited to be the “oldest surviving ecologist communities.” The Bishnois adoration for all living creatures comes from the desperate need to survive in the Thar. The inhospitable terrain, with its unreliable precipitation, infertile land, boiling summer months and dust-laden winds, made the Bishnois realise long ago that to survive, one had to bank on the scanty trees that dot the horizon. The Khejris or Prosopis cineraria, form the lifeblood of this community. The Bishnoi share the desert with blackbucks, chinkaras, pheasants and partridges.
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