A Road Runs Through It
Changing Meanings in a Sacred Grove in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i2.213Keywords:
Hinduism, adivasi religionAbstract
In many Tamil villages, sacred groves are maintained in part because of the perception of the forest as an abode of forces both dangerous and crucial to the vitality of settled life. However, one scheduled tribe community, the Malaivazhmakkal Gaunders, or ‘Mountain-dwelling farmers,’ seems to have largely dispensed with such a view. In its place is a vision of nature dominated by pragmatism and rationalism, which regards as illogical and old-fashioned the taboos that once established the sanctity of sacred groves. Various historical forces have brought about this shift in mentality. Particularly powerful vectors of change, I would argue, are the tar roads constructed over the last twenty years that now connect Malaivazhmakkal villages to regional centers. These have created new opportunities and aspirations for the younger generation. Yet these same roads, with their democratizing influence, have also weakened the taboos that have historically limited human use of the flora of the groves.
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Chandran, M.D. Subhash, and J. Donald Hughes. 1997. ‘The Sacred Groves of India: Ecology, Traditional Communities and Religious Change’, Social Compass 44.3: 413-27. doi:10.1177/003776897044003008.
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Finnis, Elizabeth. 2006. ‘Why Grow Cash Crops? Subsistence Farming and Crop Commercialization in the Kolli Hills, South India’, American Anthropologist 108.2: 363-69. doi:10.1525/aa.2006.108.2.363.
Freeman, J.R. 1999. ‘Gods, Groves and the Culture of Nature in Kerala’, Modern Asian Studies 33.2: 257-302. doi:10.1017/S0026749X99003261.
Francis, W. 1906. Madras District Gazetteers, South Arcot, vol. 1 (Madras: Superintendent, Government Press).
Frykenberg, Robert E. 1982. ‘On Roads and Riots in Tinnevelly: Radical Change and Ideology in Madras Presidency During the 19th Century’, South Asia 2: 34-52.
Gadgil, Madhav, and V.D. Vartak. 1975. ‘Sacred Groves of India: A Plea for Continued Conservation’, Journal of Bombay Natural History Society 72: 314-20.
Garcia, Claude, and J.-P. Pascal. 2006. ‘Sacred Forests of Kodagu: Ecological Value and Social Role’, in Gunnel Cederlof and K. Sivaramakrishna (eds.), Ecological Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods and Identities in South Asia (Seattle: University of Washington): 198-229.
Ghosh, Amitav. 2005. The Hungry Tide (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
Gold, Ann Grodzins, and Bhoju Ram Gujar. 1989. ‘Of Gods, Trees and Boundaries: Divine Conservation in Rajasthan’, Asian Folklore Studies 48: 211-29. doi:10.2307/1177918.
———. 2007. ‘Malaji’s Hill: Divine Sanction, Community Action’, Indian Folklife 26: 9-14.
Guha, Sumit. 1999. Ecology and Ethnicity in India, c. 1200–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). doi:10.1017/CBO9780511523946.
Haberman, David. 2006. River of Love in an Age of Pollution: The Yamuna River of Northern India (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Kalam, M.A. 2001. Sacred Groves in Kodagu District of Karnataka (South India): A Socio-Historical Study. Vol. 21, Pondy Papers in Social Sciences (Pondicherry: Institut Francais de Pondichery).
Kapadia, Karin. 1995. Siva and Her Sisters: Gender, Caste, and Class in Rural South India (Boulder, CO: Westview Press).
Kent, Eliza F. 2009. ‘Sacred Groves and Local Gods: Religion and Environmentalism in South India’, Worldviews 13: 1-39.
Kent, Eliza F., and M.P. Ramanujam. 2007. ‘Fierce Gods and Dense Forest: Sacred Groves in Coromandel’, Indian Folklife 26 (July): 14-19.
Nagarajan, Vijaya Rettakudi. 1998. ‘The Earth as Goddess Bhu Devi: Toward a Theory of “Embedded Ecologies” in Folk Hinduism’, in Lance E. Nelson (ed.), Purifying the Earthly Body of God: Religion and Ecology in Hindu India (Albany: State University of New York Press): 269-96.
Ramakrishnan, P.S., K.G. Saxena, and U.M. Chandrashekara (eds.). 1998. Conserving the Sacred for Biodiversity Management (Enfield, NH: Science Publishers Inc., 1998).
Ramanujam, M.P., and D. Kadamban. 2001. ‘Plant Biodiversity of Two Tropical Dry Evergreen Forests in the Pondicherry Region of South India and the Role of Belief Systems in Their Conservation’, Biodiversity and Conservation 10: 1203-17. doi:10.1023/A:1016637627623.
Saravanan, Velayutham. 2004. ‘Colonialism and Coffee Plantations: Decline of Environment and Tribals in Madras Presidency during the Nineteenth Century’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 41.4: 465-88. doi:10.1177/001946460404100405.
Siebert, Charles. 2006. ‘Elephant Crackup’, The New York Times Magazine (October 8). Online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html (accessed 19 June 2009).
Skaria, Ajay. 1999. Hybrid Histories: Forests, Frontiers, and Wildness in Western India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
———. 2003. ‘Being Jangli: The Politics of Wildness’, in P.J. Marshall (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? (Delhi: Oxford University Press): 293-318.
Thirunavukkarasu, S. 2006. Land Reforms and Tribal Development: A Case Study of Kalrayan Hills Tamil Nadu (Delhi: Kalpaz Publications).
Visalakshi, N. 1995. ‘Vegetation Analysis of Two Tropical Dry Evergreen Forests in Southern India’, Tropical Ecology 36.1: 117-27.
Wall, Derek. 1999. Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement (London: Routledge).
White, Jr., Lynn. 1967. ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155 (March): 1203-1207. doi:10.1126/science.155.3767.1203.
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Published
2010-07-11
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How to Cite
Kent, E. F. (2010). A Road Runs Through It: Changing Meanings in a Sacred Grove in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 4(2), 213-231. https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v4i2.213
