Place · tribal sacred grove · India
Kani groves, Agasthyamalai
Also known as Kani Kanikkaran groves, Kani groves, Kani groves — southern Western Ghats, Thiruvananthapuram district, southern Western Ghats
The Kani tribal community's sacred groves in the Agasthyamalai Biosphere Reserve in Thiruvananthapuram district, Kerala — the community-managed sacred forest patches of the Kani (also Kanikkar) tribe of the southern Western Ghats. The Kani (population c.26,000) maintain sacred groves ranging from 1 to 10 hectares each as ritual forests where no felling is permitted and traditional Kani rituals are performed. The Kani community gained international attention through the 1987 'Arogyappacha' discovery — the Kani shared their traditional knowledge of the Trichopus zeylanicus herb (which has stimulant and anti-fatigue properties) with the Jawaharlal Nehru Tropical Botanic Garden; the resulting commercial drug (Jeevani) led to one of the first benefit-sharing agreements between a tribal community and a pharmaceutical company under the Biodiversity Convention. The 1997 Kerala Kani Trust manages the royalties. UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2001.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 8.500, 77.200
Connections (2)
- AnalogueBaiga sacred grove, Dindori
The Baiga devgudi in Dindori and the Kani groves in the Agasthyamalai are the same institution twelve hundred kilometres apart: a forest patch that is the shrine, with no building in it and a prohibition on cutting. India's sacred groves are among the oldest continuously protected forest anywhere, and they were protected by communities the Forest Department was simultaneously evicting.
- AnalogueToda Munds, Nilgiris
The Toda munds of the Nilgiris and the Kani groves of the Agasthyamalai are two hundred and fifty kilometres apart at either end of the Western Ghats, and both are now treated as conservation systems by the same forest administration that spent a century treating them as encroachment. The Toda buffalo grazing maintains the shola-grassland mosaic that the plantations replaced.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Thiruvananthapuram district”. Colonial forest and settlement reports; Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods.
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