ABSTRACT
India today has approximately 13,720 sacred groves in at least 19 states. Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu have the maximum number of sacred groves (Malhotra et al. 2007). These groves are rich in rare and endemic species of plants and represent a tradition of conservation, management, and even sustainable development of natural resources (Ramakrishnan et al. 1998). The finest such forest of India appears to be in the Sarguja district of Chhatisgarh. Here every village has a grove of about 20 hectares.2 These groves, known as Sarana forest, traditionally have served as sanctuaries for animals. In Kerala, there are about 750 such groves, of almost one square mile, whereas orans constitute 6 percent of the land area in Uttara Kannada. In Gujarat, orans are among the highest rank in 12 categories of Community Conservation Areas (CCA) (Singh n.d.). Recently, a debate has arisen over whether these groves can play a role in environmental awareness. In this chapter, I first survey the existing literature and then present evidences from my fieldwork in Rajasthan that show the ecological role of sacred groves contrary to the intense skepticism of some scholars.
