Posts tagged Bishnois

Cuisine from the arid earth

By Neena Bhandari

Guda Bishnoiyan & Khejarli villages (Rajasthan), India, 04.03.2012 (WFS/The Hindu): Traditional western Rajasthani delicacies are fast becoming a gourmet’s delight in India and abroad. In fact, no Marwari feast is complete without the ‘exotic’ Sangari, cooked as a dry vegetable or with gravy. This fruit of the versatile Khejari (Prosopis cineraria) tree, indigenous to the vast Thar Desert, has provided nutrition and nourishment to the local communities for generations.

As the sun rises on the eastern skyline, Chunni Bishnoi, 65, begins milking her three buffaloes and three cows in the outer courtyard of her `pucca house’, shaded by the thorny Khejari trees that grow thick and green in the villages of Guda Bishnoiyan, 22 km, and Khejarli, 26 km south-east of Jodhpur in the western Indian state of Rajasthan.

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When it comes to poaching, no one should be above the law

By Neena Bhandari

As humans and animals vie for space, a lot can be learnt from the Bishnois and other rural communities in India, which have for generations co-existed with the wildlife forming an integral part of the ecosystem. When in 1998 five Bollywood film stars from Mumbai went hunting in the forests on the outskirts of the historic city of Jodhpur in the western Indian state of Rajasthan and killed two black bucks and a chinkara (Indian Gazelle), they had expected to bag trophies not trouble.

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