Access denied: understanding the relationship between women and sacred forests inWestern India S HRUTI MOKAS HI and STEWA RT A. W. DIEMO NT


Abstract Sacred forests or groves are patches of forest vege- tation that are traditionally protected by local communities because of their religious or cultural significance. The eco- logical aspects of sacred forests have been the focus of most of the scholarly discourse; little scholarship has examined how local people perceive their sacred areas. This scholarly lacuna is especially pronounced with respect to women, as the majority of sacred forests have traditionally been the domain of the men. Until recently, the sacred forests tradi- tion in most regions endured with minimal participation of women, but with changing socio-economic and cultural conditions, sacred forests are declining. By examining wo- men’s perspectives regarding their relationship with their sacred forests, this research informs the scholarship on gen- der and sacred forests, and explores the rolewomen can play in forest conservation. In 2015–2017, we conducted village meetings and in-depth interviews in four villages located in and around the Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats region of Maharashtra state, India. We found that apart from rules and taboos governing the pro- tection of these sacred forests, taboos also revolve around the access and interaction of women with the sacred forests, with women having less control and decision-making power than men. Nevertheless, women expressed interest in con- tinuation of the tradition of sacred forests, and the younger generation wants some of the gendered rules to change. We recommend including women inmanagement and decision- making processes to strengthen the institution of sacred forests.


Keywords Community-based conservation, conservation, gender, India, perceptions, sacred forests, taboos, women


Introduction I


nmany societies, natural areas or landscapes are deemed sacred. Wild&McLeod (2008,p. 5) define ‘sacred natural sites’ as ‘areas of land or water having special spiritual


SHRUTI MOKASHI (Corresponding author, orcid.org/0000-0002-0043-1893)


Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Royal Enclave, Sriramapura, Jakkur Post, Bangalore 560064, Karnataka, India E-mail samokash@syr.edu


STEWART A. W. DIEMONT ( orcid.org/0000-0001-8575-6285) Department of Environmental Biology, State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, New York, USA


Received 7 April 2020. Revision requested 3 June 2020. Accepted 14 October 2020. First published online 1 September 2021.


significance to peoples and communities’. Sacred forests, also known as sacred groves, are a type of sacred natural site where patches of forest are protected and revered be- cause of their association with a deity, spirits or ancestors. In the most general and simplistic terms, sacred forests can be defined as traditional community-conserved forest patches that hold high cultural or spiritual significance for local people (Ormsby & Bhagwat, 2010). Inside the sacred forests, festivals, ceremonies and rituals are performed, and offerings are made. The size of sacred forests may range from a cluster of a few trees to thousands of hectares. They have been documented in Africa, Asia and the Mediterranean (Gadgil & Vartak, 1976; Chandran & Hughes, 2000; Sheridan & Nyamweru, 2008; Ormsby & Bhagwat, 2010; Allendorf et al., 2014). Here the term ‘sacred forest’ or ‘sacred grove’ is used for forest patches that are deemed sacred by the community and ‘forests’ refers to non-sacred forests. Sacred forests are managed and protected through a sys-


tem of taboos, norms and sanctions, thus resulting in forest conservation. Hence they have been receiving increased international attention because of their forest and biodi- versity conservation potential (Kent, 2013); this potential coupled with local community involvement makes them a powerful conservation approach (Ormsby & Bhagwat, 2010). Concerns have emerged, however, over the decline of sacred forests (Chandrakanth et al., 2004; Ormsby, 2013). They face numerous threats from development, com- mercial forestry, Sanskritization (a process in which local deities are replaced with mainstream Hindu deities, thus resulting in temple construction inside sacred forests; Bhagwat & Rutte, 2006), shift in belief systems, cultural change, pilgrimage and tourism, removal of biomass, in- vasive species, encroachment, modernization and market forces, and fragmentation and perforation (Malhotra et al., 2001; Ormsby & Bhagwat, 2010; Kandari et al., 2014). Local communities are instrumental in maintaining


these sacred forests, and so an understanding of their per- ceptions of and relationships with sacred forests is impor- tant. Although there have been numerous studies on the ecological significance, biodiversity and conservation im- portance of sacred forests (see review by Ray et al., 2014), there have been few about how sacred forests are perceived by the local communities that protect them (Ormsby, 2013). This is more pronounced with respect to women (Malhotra et al., 2001) because, although sacred forests have been hailed as a community conservation model, women remain on the sidelines of sacred forest management (Singh, 2006;


This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2021, 55(6), 827–834 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605320001179


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