A Road Runs Through It

Abstract

In many Tamil villages, sacred groves are maintained in part because of the perception of the forest as an abode of forces both dangerous and crucial to the vitality of settled life. However, one scheduled tribe community, the Malaivazhmakkal Gounders, or 'Mountain-dwelling farmers', seems to have largely dispensed with such a view. In its place is a vision of nature dominated by pragmatism and rationalism, which regards as illogical and old-fashioned the taboos that once established the sanctity of sacred groves. Various historical forces have brought about this shift in mentality. Particularly powerful vectors of change, I would argue, are the tar roads constructed over the last twenty years that now connect Malaivazhmakkal villages to regional centers. These have created new opportunities and aspirations for the younger generation. Yet these same roads, with their democratizing influence, have also weakened the taboos that have . historically limited human use of the flora of the groves.

Everyday Buddhism and Environmental Decisions in the World’s Highest Ecosystem

“…In support of previous studies of how changes in indigenous placebased religious traditions influence environmental behavior (e.g., Kent 2010;Watson and Kochore 2012;Haberman 2006), I show that the decline in agropastoralism and a concurrent increase in a tourist-based economy were causing Sherpa religious beliefs and practices to change in a number of ways, including which deities and spirits they revered and what powers they attributed to them, how they conceived of the relationship between human and non-human beings, and which envi ronmental taboos they observed. Additionally, factors including tourism, declining agropastoral practice, a nationalized education curriculum, boarding school education, and experiences in urban contexts and abroad emerged as pervasive drivers of change in place-based religious tradi tions, causing intergenerational and other differences.…”

How “green” can religions be? Tensions about religious environmentalism

“…An important variable is the degree to which these communities remain culturally and economically intact. As indigenous communities increasingly exchange with their social environment and are subject to the pressures of neo-liberal capitalism, traditional lifestyles and knowledge systems change, leading these communities to diverge from their original nature-based lifestyles (Gabbert 2018 ; Kent 2010 ).…”

The Changing Landscape of Sacred Groves in Kerala (India): A Critical View on the Role of Religion in Nature Conservation

“…Much has been written in a critical vein about religiously inspired environmental discourses and the religious environmentalist paradigm in India [5,10,15,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. However, others, especially those who take a "romanticist", "religionist" or "chauvinist-nationalist" stance, are inclined to saying that Hinduism is the crucial factor for protecting and conserving the biodiversity of the sacred groves [13,33,34].…”