It was about noon and we were roughly 30 kilometres from Jodhpur. The wind was blowing, and so was the sand. Instead of driving faster to reach our destination before a full-fledged sand storm developed, our driver slowed down. I waited for a bit, and then asked him to speed up. “I can’t,” he said, gesturing towards what I thought was a herd of goats, “I don’t want to hit any deer here!” I realised to my surprise, that the ‘goats’ were actually black bucks, grazing peacefully. “Are we in a reserved forest or a national park?” I asked. “Neither,” replied the driver, “we’re in Bishnoi land. And the animals know they’re safe with the protectors of the flora and fauna of the desert.”
The sight was quite an incredible one, and we decided to stop at a camp en route run by the Bishnois in order to learn more about them. They were, we learnt, the original tree-huggers, to coin a cliché. In 1730, the King of Jodhpur ordered to cut down a forest of Khejri (Prosopis cineraria) — a desert tree which the Bishnoi consider divine — for wood to build his palace. The Bishnois hugged each tree in the forest, and 363 of them allowed themselves to be cut with the trees before the king relented. “Our community was founded by Jambaji, or Jambeshwar Bhagawan, who formed a religion of peace based on 29 (bish: Twenty; noi: Nine) principles that included compassion for all living beings, cleanliness, devotion, vegetarian diet and truthfulness,” said Kailash, a Bishnoi young lad from the nearby town Luni. Unlike the Jains, who live by similar principles, the Bishnois are a lot more militant about preserving life — a few years ago, they shot to fame when they brought an errant Salman Khan to book for shooting a black buck. “For us, they are sacred animals. We’d kill our own children before we let these animals be killed,” said Kailash, “it didn’t matter to us who Salman was — he’d killed an animal on our land, and had to be punished.”
Driving to see a Bishnoi village, I was struck by the deep sense of oneness that they have with their environment. Felling trees is against Bishnoi ethics. Instead, they use dung cakes for fuel, and wait patiently until a tree dies to obtain wood in order to make doors for their houses. We passed a small lake that had some water even though the area had seen no rain in the last few months. Looking at the barren fields all around, I asked Kailash why the villagers didn’t use water for irrigation. “It won’t be enough for the fields,” he said, “and besides, the animals won’t have any water to drink if we take it all.” The black bucks, chinkaras and blue bulls graze freely, often on standing crops that can be grown only in the four months of rain (but have to last the entire year).
Yet the Bishnois share their fields peacefully with the deer, lovingly hand-rearing their orphaned young. Walking past a village home, we were greeted somewhat boisterously by a black fawn, teetering on spindly legs. It pawed at our feet and licked our hands. “The black fawn was raised with a puppy after it was found mauled by stray dogs in the fields,” said Kailash, “and now it thinks it’s a dog!” Thanks to the Bishnois, the fawn was frolicking with the pup instead of being afraid of the species that had sought to kill it. The sight was inexplicably moving. I guess we’re no longer used to seeing such harmony in real world.
