Book review: Behind the Bishnoi's fight for wildlife and nature

The world is in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction. A landmark 2024 assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), written by 150 experts representing over 130 countries, presents some sobering statistics. Over 1 million plant and animal species are threatened by extinction—including 25% of well-studied animal and plant groups such as mammals and birds.

Biodiversity received a brief respite during the pandemic lockdown period, when Nilgai entered Noida, peacocks took over the streets of Coimbatore, and wild boars walked the streets of Barcelona. For a brief while, the Yamuna river stopped foaming in Delhi, and the waters of Bellandur lake in Bengaluru, infamous for catching fire due to its pollution, turned blue after decades. But this was a temporary respite. Once the restrictions of the pandemic were lifted, society at large returned to business as usual, and our appetite for driving economic growth in previously unexplored corners of the world led to an accelerated impact on our ecosystems and ecologies.

Also read: Book review: Zahid Rafiq's debut captures Kashmir's invisible trauma

India accounts for just about 2.4% of the land surface of the planet, but contains close to 8% of the world’s species and four of the world’s 34 biodiversity hot spots. The human population of the country has quadrupled since independence, from about 400 million in the 1940s, to 1.3 billion now (and growing), with a parallel growth in the economy. How do we retain space for more than 91,000 animal species and 45,000 plant species in a country where every inch of land is valued and fought over?

The IPBES warns us that “deep, fundamental shifts in how people view and interact with the natural world are urgently needed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and safeguard life on Earth." It is in this context that My Head for a Tree: The Extraordinary Story of the Bishnoi, the World’s First Eco-Warriors becomes so important for us to read and reflect upon.

The book is the result of an extraordinary journey by writer Martin Goodman with the Bishnoi communities, mostly based in Rajasthan, on a quest to learn and share their inspirational approach to living with and caring for nature.

On a visit to Jaipur for a literature festival, Goodman—who teaches creative writing at the University of Hull in England and has written several books on the environment—met the Bishnoi community. On that visit, he was asked by the community at a meeting to write about them. Goodman was a well-known writer and university professor who had written previous books on the relationship between people and the environment—perhaps that, he speculates, was the reason they selected him. The Bishnoi community asked him to share their story with the world outside, so that people could learn from their example and perhaps adopt some of their practices to make the world a better, kinder place for wildlife.

Goodman does so with humility, cognizant of the fact that he is not a Bishnoi, but indeed a Westerner, an outsider. Through his journeys, he is careful to centre stage the voice of the Bishnoi people, describing what he sees, but also letting the community speak for themselves to the extent that is possible given the limitations of distance—and the inevitable challenges that come from an outsider’s perspective.

The book begins with the remarkable story of the Bishnoi woman Amrita Devi, who, along with her daughters Asu, Ratni and Bhagu, and 359 other Bishnois, sacrificed their lives on 11 September 1730 to protect the trees of Khejarli village in Jodhpur from being chopped down by the Maharaja of Jodhpur’s men. In another incident in 1604, Karma and Gora—two women from the village of Ramsari in Nagaur district of Rajasthan—were beheaded when they came forward to protect the trees in their village.

Goodman poignantly asks of himself: Would I die to save a child? I’d hope so. Do I love trees? Yes. Would I die for one? Not yet. But who are the people who would? That is the story this book seeks to uncover.

In his journeys through the desert, Goodman describes a fascinating complex of livelihoods, enterprise and conservation—Bishnoi schools that double up as animal rescue centres, highway restaurants where members of the Bishnoi Tiger Force and their families keep an alert watch for poachers at night, temples and shrines within community reserves, and farmers who work with the forest department as part of the All India Wildlife Protection Bishnoi Support, similar to voluntary groups like the Tiger Force, founded in 1999, who patrol the desert to identify and chase away poachers.

Also read: Manu Gandhi's diaries shine a light on Gandhi's deepest struggles

From famous actors who were allegedly caught poaching to professional hunters, the Tiger Force has caught over 400 poachers and registered cases against them. In the process, over two dozen members of the Task Force have been killed. Yet the community continues its work.

As Goodman describes, even Pushpa, the widow of Shaitanaram Singh Bishnoi, a young man who was killed by a poacher’s gun in 2016, continues to actively do what she considers her duty by the environment. Left with two young children to raise, Pushpa rears orphaned chinkara and remains as  committed to conservation as her husband was.

Indeed, the book is filled with inspirational stories of the determined women who participate in conservation as fiercely as do the men. The narratives are illustrated by a series of remarkable photographs by Franck Vogel, which bring the landscape and its people alive.

The Bishnoi have been relatively successful in curbing poaching but larger factors of economic growth threaten their environment. Sand mining is rampant, backed by powerful political and economic interests that are hard to fight. The Khejri tree, a locally abundant species which is characteristic of the Thar desert and plays an important role in providing shade and fodder as well as in helping recharge ground water, is being cut down across the region for solar plants and other kinds of infrastructure. Electric powerlines that stretch across the dessert kill as much as 10% of the endangered Great Indian Bustard each year. And packs of feral dogs, fed by trash dumped by cities and tourists, attack vulnerable chinkaras and other wildlife. The Bishnoi cannot save the world alone—they need help. The goal of this book is to inspire conversations amongst wider communities about what each of us can do, in our own parts of the world, to initiate conversations and spark changes in mindsets.

It is important to recognise that this is not a scholarly book about conservation, or a book which tracks the Bishnoi from an anthropological or sociological perspective. The author aims to speak with the Bishnoi voice and tells the story of their protection from a Bishnoi perspective. Goodman touches on more complex and troubling themes of child marriage, inter-caste issues and vigilantism, but has clearly taken a decision not to delve into these in any depth—that is not the focus of this narrative, and it should not be judged on this basis.

The goal of the book is to bring us to this critical realisation—we have only one Earth, and we can’t give up on it. Not for ourselves, our children and grandchildren—or the birds, butterflies, tigers, rhinos, ants, spiders and other magnificent beings that call this planet, our common planet, home.

Harini Nagendra is an ecologist and author, and director of the School of Climate Change at Azim Premji University.

Also read: Rohit Chawla’s latest book is about Goa, isolation and the company of dogs