Sacred Trees, Sacred Deer, Sacred Duty to Protect: Exploring Relationships between Humans and Nonhumans in the Bishnoi Community

Abstract

This thesis explores relationships between humans and nonhumans in the Bishnoi community. The Bishnoi are a small Vaishnavite community most densely located in Rajasthan. They are well known in North-West India for defending and protecting the environment; sometimes even sacrificing their own lives to save trees or wild animals. This thesis is informed by the author’s short-term ethnographic study in the winter of 2013. The author combines symbolic and interpretive anthropology with multispecies ethnography in order to explore issues of relatedness, exchange and embodied experience between humans and nonhumans in the Bishnoi community. This research elaborates on central themes that emerged from the fieldwork, including themes of embeddedness, duty, dharma, sacrifice, nonviolence, purity, impurity, and contemporary challenges. This research attempts to treat nonhumans as agents and participants in Bishnoi life, active in their physical and perceptual engagement with the world, and details the centrality of the nonhuman in the constitution of Bishnoi communities and identities.