Sacred serpents and the discourse on conservation: Interrogating interspecies dynamics in rural Bardhaman

Abstract

Built on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural Bardhaman, West Bengal, India, the article argues for the centrality of animals’ non‐human agency as sacred beings involved in interactive experiences with humans, amidst changing climatic conditions. For the people of Musharu, the sacredness of their village deity is embedded in their practical ways of living and inhabiting with special varieties of cobras as exemplars of sacred nature. The article also draws attention to how the survival of these local cobras is adversely affected due to monsoonal vulnerability. The article addresses three critical concerns. It situates the human–snake interaction within wider discourse of post‐humanist debates, highlighting the elusive nature of the ‘wild’ and the animalist agency it enables. It captures alternative versions of conservation that the human–animal–divine nexus in Musharu creates. The third concerns the reproduction of rural community consciousness and indigeneity that this interaction brings about. It concludes with the understanding that Musharu's human–animal inhabitation reveals the contextual nature of ‘wilderness’ reframes the Indigenous status emerging out of human–non‐human associations and rethinks the role of local cultures in global wildlife conservation discourses.