LUKAIYA, INDIA, October 16, 2022 (AFP): The dense forests near a small village in eastern India reverberated with chanting and the beating of drums as hundreds of villagers gathered to tie decorated threads around the trees. In an annual ritual that has been performed in Lukaiya for the past 20 years, people consecrated the trees with floral garlands and smears of vermillion and turmeric paste as they pledged to protect the forest from the axe and the saw. Held in villages across Jharkhand state, the Vriksha Raksha Bandhan festival — “vriksha” is Sanskrit for “tree” — stems from an ancient Hindu celebration of Raksha Bandhan, when sisters tie embellished bracelets called rakhi around their brothers’ wrists to symbolize love and protection. “Each of these trees has been a member of our family for many years. We dare anyone to cut down any of them,” Shakuntala Kisku, who leads an all-women brigade dedicated to protecting the forest near Lukaiya said in an interview.
The festival in Lukaiya, in Dhanbad district, started in 2005, when then-divisional forest officer Sanjeev Kumar brought together about 35 villages to revive what was at the time a stretch of barren land dotted with sparse bushes and tree stumps. “I was shocked by the indiscriminate felling of trees by the local communities,” said Kumar, who is now a chief forest conservator for Jharkhand state. Threats of fines and other punitive measures were no deterrent to people cutting down trees to sell, he said.
Kumar had heard about other villages using rituals to protect trees, including school teacher Mahadeb Mahato who, 10 years earlier, had started a similar effort in Dudhmatia as a way to revive the local forest and stop wild animals wandering into the village to look for food. By creating Vriksha Raksha Bandhan, Kumar hoped to similarly encourage the people of Lukaiya to take conservation into their own hands. Today the once-bare stretch of land is covered in 100 hectares of native trees, mainly sal and mahua, also known as honey tree. The festival has spread to more than 1,000 villages across the state, Mr Kumar said, and he has heard from environmentalists in other Indian states and places as far off as Singapore, England and Sierra Leone who are all starting their own version.
https://www.todayonline.com/world/tying-sacred-thread-indian-villagers-restore-their-forests-2016826