THE GOD THAT LIVES IN THE FOREST

Whether the temple sustained the forests around it or the forests welcome the temple within them has long been a raging debate. But, it is also true that there are instances where the  forests have completely degenerated or disappeared around some of these temples.

 I had the opportunity to visit the temple Sorimuthayan with the Atree team who has been working in the KMTR region for quite a  while now. The festival that attracts a crowd of whooping 5lakh  pilgrims (tourists) for almost a period of 10 days leaves  tell-tale signs of post festival debris and other effects that would  take the forests a long time to recover from. The festival has  been celebrated by the villages that were under the Singampatti  Raja for around 150 years now. What was a earlier a crowd of  5000 has now blown out into 5 lakh attendees, with more and more  villages adopting Sorimuthayan as their family God. Families camp  inside the forests clearing the forest cover to put temporary  tents for a period of 10 days bringing along with them food  packets wrapped inside plastic bags, and a variety of other  items that gets discarded inside the forest.

  Sorimuthayan temple during the festival

The amount of  plastics littering is phenomenal, even after the Atree team with  the help of local students physically checked the tourists for  plastic bags the number of plastic bags that still sneaked in  was quite high. However the bigger concern isn't the garbage or  the forest clearing, the major concern arose with the act of  sacrificing thousands of goats at the temple altar, the  resulting blood and flesh that flows into the river literally  changes the composition of water, also with 5 lakh pilgrims urinating in open on the rocks upstream converts the entire  premises as one open air public toilet rather than a holy place!

The irony is the pilgrims not only live for these 10 days in  this mind numbing rush of people and stomach churning atmosphere  but take bath downstream after defecating upstream! With every year the magnitude of people visiting the temple and the the Dam sites within the Mundanthurai Tiger reserve has gone up exponentially.

 Euphorbia Susanholmesiae

 The tragedy of this festival is that a very rare cacti, Euphorbia Susanholmesiae cactus, endemic and found only in this region grows on the rocky terrain surrounding the temple. The incoming horde of tourists have trampled the plant and today only a few survive. Despite the repeated fencing and warning boards the pilgrims have no regard and have stripped down the fence and the plant altogether at many places. With such a large number of people, policing is not only tough but next to impossible. The pilgrims every year clear more and more of the undergrowth of the forest surrounding the temple, penetrating more deeper causing irreparable damage to the replenishing of the flora-fauna in this region. Check out the details of the work by Atree in this region here - http://www.atree.org/Smk

 Samiyeri Lake

Dabguli is a small settlement close to Urigam in Tamil Nadu  within the Uganiyam Reserve Forests. the people here are mainly  fishermen surviving on the money they make from fishing in  Cauvery.  Every year during the temple festival a large number of people from the surrounding villages visit the temple and litter the place with plastic. Several such temple sites in the Melagiris exist, like the one close to the Samiyeri lake in Aiyur reserve forests attracts a large crowd of  people who perform sacrificial rites, tent along this lake which is the source of water for the elephants. Here we see not only a possible littering of forests but also possible Man-Animal conflict.

Ulvi Caves

As a kid i have been Ulvi Jatra which is famous for its Chennabasavanna Temple. The jatras are held here during Shivaratri, Makarasankranti, Basavajayanthi and Maghapurnima during which innumerable people, locals and others visit the caves. Rest assured the devotees carry a variety of food packets in plastics and without second thoughts litter the place. Also, the impact of tourist and pilgrims across the year is tremendous since the caves have always been known to the den of some of the big cats like Black panther and Tiger.

My concern is not just these few days in a year when the devotees throng these temples in large numbers, the concern is also the permit that is sanctioned to anybody to trespass into our last few remaining wildlife sanctuaries and reserves under the pretext of visiting the temple. Unlike the tourists the pilgrims are under no obligation to the FD or the wildlife. 

The current generation that has drifted from the core ideas of conservation, of worshiping the many mysteries of nature and simply praying because the ancestors did that way,  molding every custom to fit their wants, cannot be entrusted on  being responsible for the few remaining patches of our forests. What  lacks in the common mindset has to be complimented with more scientific analysis of the current situation and a comprehensive solution must be arrived at. Then again, no solution will satisfy every concerned stakeholder. There has been and  always be someone who must bear the larger burden and no longer can this be shifted to the forest of this country.

[The opinion in this blog is is personal. Other than the Sorimuthayan temple the other temple instances do not have any reliable scientific data but  are merely my personal experience of having been a witness to these festivals at the temples or from the account of people who have been a witness to them]