Today
Jakarta
- 32 °C
Other Publications
'Curse' of the trees
The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 11/03/2006 11:29 AM | Opinion
I read in The Jakarta Post about some banyan tree that were cut down. It reminded me of another true story, which occurred in India about seven decades back.
Meghalaya is a state in India which receives on average more that 1,000 cm of rainfall, confined to five to six months. It has lush green forests and the tribal people considered the forests sacred. They did not cut and destroy it and believed that it belonged to the gods and a curse would fall if it was cut.
When the British arrived there, they could see the economic potential of the rich teak forest. Contractors and workers were brought to cut the trees and in years the whole area was deforested, and when the rains came all the topsoil washed away in a couple of years.
A teak tree takes 100 years to mature. Since there was no soil, there was no vegetation. The hard weathered rocks did not allow infiltration and percolation of the rainwater and the underground water table lowered drastically. All the streams dried up during the off-season, and during the rainy season the streams were so silted they could not be used. Now the area has become the wettest desert. Sometimes the people have to walk 10 to 15 kilometers to get drinking water. The ""curse"" has fallen on them.
The scientific concepts associated with this may not have been known to the early men, but they could observe cause and effect. In many Southeast Asian countries, snake (naga) worshiping is a part of the culture. Some old relics related to this may be found in Indonesia also. The reasons are simple. In an agrarian society, rodents can play havoc with the stored grains. Snakes eat rodents, thus control the rodent population and save the stored grains. Hence they were declared holy and people knew that the snakes should be protected.
Few people realize that a large banyan tree can help prevent droughts. If indiscriminate tree felling is undertaken in Jakarta or any place, it will cause dwindling rainfall, drought, famine, forest fires, loss of fertile soil and floods. It can also adversely affect coastal marine life and coral reefs, affecting farmers and fishermen.
Therefore, every effort should be made to create awareness among the people so that the so-called ""curse of the holy tree"" does not fall on them.
MEERA BAHUKHANDI
Jakarta
