How did the people of khejarli take care of their environment!

Hello Lakshya!

You might have heard the real story of a famous movement led by Amrita Devi Bishnoi.

In order to know how the people of Khejarli village saved their environment, let's look back to that story.

This happened in around 1731 AD in Khejarli village near Jodhpur, Rajasthan. The Jodhpur King of that period - Abhay Singh, wanted to expand his fort. For this purpose, he needed Khejri trees as lime was prepared by using those trees at that time. So, he ordered his minister to cut down all the Khejri trees available nearby the King's palace.

In the vicinity of Khejarli village, a large number of Khejri trees were there. When the minister arrived in the area along with the royal force and started cutting down the trees mercilessly, this news spread like a forest fire in the closely located villages.

Meanwhile, the people of Bishnoi community got this news. They were quite determined to fight for protecting the Khejri trees and to oppose this act against our mother nature till their last breathe. So, members of Bishnoi community of nearly 84 villages gathered and under the leadership of Amrita Devi, they held the trees tightly with their arms and they didn't agreed to leave at any cost.

The King's minister took help of the army and tried driving away the protestors forcefully, A fierce clash of self-defense and military forces took place subsequently in which about 363 Bishnois sacrificed their lives for protecting the trees. When the news reached the King, he had to give up and finally bow down in front of this mass movement.

So, this was their affection for their environment! Nowadays, we can hardly even think of taking such courageous steps and sacrificing our lives for protecting our trees. Nothing matters more than our own needs.

If we will become a little more responsible human being and take some crucial steps regarding this by planting new trees and protecting the existing ones, issues like Global Warming will eventually no longer be such a serious problem to us.

I hope you have got your answer here.

Hi Lakdhay Shukla

In this village 363 Bishnois sacrificed their lives in 1730 AD while protecting green Khejri that are

considered sacred by the community. The incident was a forebear of the 20th-century Chipko

Movement.

Khejarli was the location of a forebear of the Chipko movement. In September 1730, a royal party led by

Giridhar Bhandari, a minister of the maharajah of Marwar, received the village with the intention of

felling some Khejri trees that were sacred to the villagers.

The trees were to be burned to supply lime for the development of a replacement palace. A local

woman called Amrita Devi Bishnoi protested against the tree-felling because such acts were prohibited

by the Bishnoi's religion. The feudal party said that they would only cease if she paid them a bribe, which

she refused to do because she saw that as ignominious and an insult to her faith. She said that she

would rather give away her life to save the trees.

For total complete details check the link below.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khejarli