The Sacrifice of Human Life for Trees (7)


Early morning sky.

© Eso A. B., 2012

The story of how the Maharajah Abhay Singh of Jodhpur ordered the decapitation of 363-6 women in the forest surrounding Khejarli village has mostly likely been edited, and the story has been ‘cleaned up’ of the more bloody details. This is why, we who do not live in the locale as the Bisnois, may deconstruct the cleaned-up version and reconstruct it somewhat differently.

First, the following is the version of the story of theKhejarli forest as recorded in Wikipedia:

“The Bisnois (a religious group in India, whose members reverence nature and live in Rajasthan) narrate the story of Amrita Devi, a Bishnoi woman who, along with more than 366 other Bishnois, died saving the Khejarli trees. Nearly 2 centuries back, Maharajah Abhay Singh of Jodhpur required some woods for the construction of his new palace. So the king sent his soldiers to cut trees in the nearby region of Khejarli, where the village is filled with the large number of trees. But when Amrita Devi and local villagers come to know about it, they opposed the king's men. The malevolent feudal party told her that if she wanted the trees to be spared, she would have to give them money as bribe. She refused to acknowledge this demand and told them that she would consider it as an act of insult to her religious faith and would rather give away her life to save the green trees. This is still remembered as the great Khejarli sacrifice. Some Bishnois who were killed protecting the trees were buried in Khejerli village near Jodhpur, where a simple grave with four pillars had been erected.”

Let us look more closely at the sentence: “The malevolent feudal party told her (Amrita Devi) that if she wanted the trees to be spared, she would have to give them money as bribe.”

Let us imagine the scene with close attention: The inncer logic of the story suggests that the Maharajah’s soldiers already know that Amrita Devi has refused the Maharajah’s demand [malevolent feudal party] to cut down the Khejarli Village trees. Why send soldiers, when under normal circumstances it is wood cutters who should have been sent?

The soldiers would not have come to just talk with Amrita Devi and other villagers who have gathered to guard the forest of Khejarli. However, after the soldiers come and see the women and other villagers embrace the trees about to be felled , the soldiers’ offer to let the trees be--if the women pay them a bribe. The women and the villagers, we are told, refuse to do so. This leads us to ask: Why would the villagers refuse to give money to save the trees, but rather offer their lives instead?

Alright, maybe there is no money to be had, because it is hoarde (just like today) in the vaults of the banks.

On the other hand, there is something sinister about this blunt choice—money or your life. While the story presented to the popular mind is pictured as the decapitation of a mother and her two daughters, the story also speaks of “others”, perhaps of the male sex. If there were males, who also were decapitated, would they not have fought back or attempted to do so? After all, a forest is an excellent site for hand to hand and one to one combat. A forest does not permit military formations. When men fight in a forest, their strength is equalized and a soldier has no guarantees that he can win the fight or survive alive.

Is it not more likely that the soldiers came to rape the women rather than ask from them money? If a bribe would have saved the trees, then the women should have paid or the villagers should have held a collection. Common sense makes one think of such an alternative. In most other circumstances, it is men-soldiers who pay women for sex. Why should the women up the ante and pay with their lives?

This is what leads us to think that before the trees are cut, the women are faced with being raped. As suggested above, a forest is, among other things, a hiding place as much for wild-life as dark deeds.

It is likely that the destruction of the forest and the rape of the women was a foregone conclusion from the very beginning of the story.

The question therefore is how did the women find their way into the forest? One may suspect that the answer is that the women were kidnapped (rounded up), then carried into the forest, and then raped there. It is also lpossible that the women’s cries for help brought other villagers to help them.

To cover up their acts of  rape, the soldiers then began to ax and fell the trees, and had them fall on top of the women. Perhaps this was done to cover up their violence and save themselves from being court marshalled (if there was a military justice system). As the picture at the link shows, today the story is sentimentalized, and Amrita Devi’s daughters are portrayed as girl children rather than young maids as in other pictures.

If this reconstructed version of the story  is what happened, then the Maharajah may not be the guilty party at all. It is more likely then that the soldiers raped because they were entrapped by the prison of military discipline (law as a crime), and because this criminal law were denied the men normal contact with the community round about them. As for the Maharajah, he—like his soldiers--is trapped by the fact that the society he is born into has developed in such a way that it is necessary for him to maintain an army.

The story—as it stands or is presented to the people of India today—puts emphasis on the act of self-sacrifice over the act of violence embodied by military arms. Unfortunately, the story obscures and hides the superiority of the concept of self-sacrifice as means to peace. As for the helpless trees, our empathy over their destruction causes us to think of the saw-cross.

Women Who Died For Trees (3)

The Saw-Cross. FOR SALE HERE.

© Eso A. B., 2012

 

The Wealth Virus clusters, whence come the dreams of becoming rich, often turn into nightmares. The following is a nightmare that comes of a dream to have money. The dreams currently dreamt in Russia leads to the nightmarish result shown in the following video .

When the pot of gold at the end of a rainbows is not discovered to be where imagined, human beings turn to less romantic sayings in order to suppport their unfulfilled dreams, for example: “Money grows on trees”. This last in due time transports the dreamer over the rain’s golden dew to the edge of a forest with an axe and saw in hand.

The axe and saw mark the beginning of violence against tree. The invention of the circular saw nthed the violence. Just as a man riding a horse with saber in hand is nthed by a tank .

With the cutting of trees, the values of violence prone princes and kings began to interfere with the values of a forest people. Noteworthy features of forests, trees and ferns, never before much noticed, suddenly began to be mentioned by story tellers and writers. There arose stories about trees, roots, mushrooms, animals, wells, and swamps not much taken note of before. For example, the ol’ rabbit hole that Alice fell into and discover her wonder world became an entrance to another realm. Perhaps the story had already been known, but not taken much note of before, because it was such an obvious day to day feature.

Which ever feature of the forest interests us, its appearance in fairy tales provides evidence that when our planet was still covered with forests, human beings had identified with trees for a long time already. It was not only that a linden tree stood for a woman, and an oak for a man, but at festival time a birch was brought into the house and was thought of as a young. Only in our own time do we hear brutish urban bureaucrats call birch trees weeds that need not be spared when land is cleared for a building project..

One famous story that associates human beings with trees is from India. It is about the Bishnois of India. 366 Bishnois were killed by the soldiers of Maharajah Abhay Singh of Jodhpur in an event known as The Khejarli Massacre in 1730. Today the Bishnois remember the event in a September festival. The stories about the Maharajah’s gruesome deed come with minor variations. Ths following version tells us, that it was only 363 women who were decapitated.

That most of the victims at Kherjarli should be women, suggests that it was women who particularly identified themselves with trees as Latvian people of long ago had done. The suggestion of the involvement of women with trees is corraborated by the story from the Bible, the one about apple tree from which Eve held in her hands an apple.

The apple is a symbol of temptation and desire. By putting the apple into the hands of Eve, the ancient writers hinted that women were and Eve certainly was associated with apple trees. Of course, when tempted and desiring, we sooner associate a woman with a kiss, whereas an apple suggests a bite. The possibility of juxtaposing a kiss with a bite and women with felled trees, appears to confirm the poetic aspects of dreams of a time that followed a time when the setting sun gave the forests a haircut with the shears of her rays.

As strange as it may seem, a meme presents to me an image of the “Kiss of Judas".

Why is betrayal done with a kiss? Does it have something with a “knowing” kiss?

“Yes”, certainly, however, since this “knowing” occurs between two males, it raises—for many—questions. I suppose it is this very question (of homosexuality) that that presents one with a potentially atheistic interpretation. Judas may kiss as a whore kisses (for thirty pieces of silver), which is why whores are reputed not to kiss.

Sometimes dreams repeat themselves. In the instance of my self, “the wealth virus”, when associated with desire for a particular woman I may be tempted to have a sexual relationship, may be frustrated by lack of money (which may make a certain woman unapproachable). Then, my desire does not turn into a kiss, but may turn into anxiety and the pervert itself into the buzz of a chainsaw.

One thing that urban people forget is that their sex is more virtual  than it is real. Virtual sex is like a passing image, which is why modern business thinks of selling men plastic dolls as sexual partners.

However, in earlier times, sex was associated with “knowing”. When two people slept with each other, they got to “know” each other. Sex therefore was thought of as a bonding agent. There were no “one night stands” then.

The one night stand probably also has a lot to do with “silent sex” or undemonstrative sex . One may hear an “ooh ooh”, yet a man may never know if his woman partner did come off or n o. I wonder how Janis Jopplin did it?