Place · Bishnoi martyrs' memorial · India
Khejarli
Also known as Khejarli, Khejadli, Amrita Devi, Bishnoi, Jambheshwar
The village where, in 1730, three hundred and sixty-three Bishnoi are said to have been killed protecting khejri trees from the Maharaja of Jodhpur's woodcutters, who had come to fell them for lime kilns for a new palace. Amrita Devi and her three daughters died first, embracing the trees.
- Date
- 1730
- Function
- Social reform & movement
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 26.100, 73.200
Worth knowing
The Bishnoi sect, founded by Jambheshwar in 1485, holds twenty-nine rules of which several protect trees and animals outright, and its villages are still the reason blackbuck and chinkara survive in the open desert. Abhai Singh stopped the felling and granted the Bishnoi villages protection; the Chipko movement of the 1970s cited Khejarli directly.
Connections (2)
- AnalogueKhichan
Khejarli in 1730 and Khichan since the 1970s are the same idea two and a half centuries apart: a desert community bearing a cost to protect something living. Three hundred and sixty-three Bishnoi are said to have died for khejri trees at one; the other buys tonnes of grain a year for twenty thousand cranes that fly in over the Himalaya. The Chipko movement cited Khejarli directly.
- Shared sacred geographyKarni Mata, Deshnoke
The Bishnoi rules that produced Khejarli and the Karni Mata temple at Deshnoke, where rats are fed and protected inside the sanctum, are the two most literal expressions in India of a prohibition on harming animals being enforced as land use. Blackbuck and chinkara survive in open farmland around Bishnoi villages for the same reason the rats survive in the temple.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Khejarli”. Marwar state records of the 1730 grant; Pankaj Jain, Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities (2011).
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