830 S. Mokashi and S. A.W. Diemont
TABLE 2 Characteristics of the four study villages (names anonymized). Characteristic
Number of hamlets Approximate population Distance from sacred forest (m)
Distance from nearest other forest patch (m) Tarmac road access to sacred forest Women allowed in sacred forest
Women allowed in temple inside sacred forest
A 1
450
Approximate % who are members of scheduled tribes 95 Ownership of the sacred forests
Community land/private land 900
Adjacent No No No
B 1
450 85
Community land/private land 500 20
Yes Yes No
C 2
250 95
Maharashtra Forest Department 250 50
No Yes No
D 3
600 80
Community land
Adjacent 50
Yes Yes No
Community interaction with other forest areas
PLATE 1 A sacred forest in the Bhimashankar region, Western Ghats, Maharashtra state, India (Fig. 1). Photo: Shruti Mokashi.
water for the village. A majority had temple structures that housed the deity: some were simple, with red bricks and roof tiles, and others were domed concrete structures. The re- sponsibility of looking after the deity and performing daily rituals lay with one of the community’s families, with the men acting as the priests. This responsibility was passed between generations. Decisions regarding festival management and temple construction were taken mostly by the village men, along with the priest. Occasionally some of the traditions were altered when the village deemed it necessary, such as altering the duration of a festival, or adding new events to the festivals. Numerous taboos governed the management and protec-
tion of these sacred forests. Taboos were in place forbidding tree cutting, hunting and extraction of fuelwood from the sacred forest, use of kerosene for domestic purposes in the sacred forest, entry of women in the temple, and wearing of footwear by women in the sacred forest. The sacred forests were facing threats fromdevelopment projects, temple build- ing, pilgrimage and tourism, encroachment, and forest frag- mentation and perforation. Some of the sacred forests had already disappeared. During preliminary field visits we ob- served that sacred forestswere not present in some of the vil- lages whereDeshmukh (1999) had documented them, and in others they were in a degraded state. This indicated that the traditional sacred forest system is weakening.
The interviews revealed that women in the Bhimashankar region had a close relationship with forests and regularly ventured into forest areas to extract fuelwood and forest products, and to graze animals. Fuelwood is an important forest product, used for cooking and heating. Only some families had access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylin- ders to use as cooking fuel. Heating requirements were not met with LPG but rather with fuelwood, which was ex- tracted both by men and women. Timber was also formerly extracted for construction of houses, but there had been a reduction in this use, as people had constructed brick or concrete structures. Most of the women mentioned they extracted fruits,
wild vegetables and crabs for consumption. They collected and sold the fruits of hirda Terminalia chebula, shikakai Acacia concinna, beheda Terminalia bellirica and other commercially important forest products. Elderly and middle-aged women were knowledgeable regarding the names of wild vegetables and forest products and the ways to extract them. Somemen extracted honey from the forest, for sale.
Women and sacred forests
When asked about the sacred forests, most of the women mentioned deep reverence and faith in the deity. They indi- cated that the relationship they had with the sacred forest was because of the deity’s presence there. The women also expressed a belief that the sacred forest was the deity’s home as it ‘.. .shelters the deity’ (D12; age 29; education up to grade 6, 11 years old), and further stated that everything in the sacred forest belonged to the deity. The sacred forests were perceived by most of the women in the context of tradition and they said they followed the tradition because their elders followed it. Although the sacred forest space is revered by both men
and women, the majority of the rituals and ceremonies are controlled by men. Women went into the sacred forest
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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