When 300 Bishnois sacrificed their lives to save trees from a maharaja

“Sar santey roonkh rahe to bhi sasto jaan (a chopped head is cheaper than a chopped tree),” were the last words uttered by Amrita Devi, who kept hugging a khejri tree. Her embrace of the tree didn’t loosen as a soldier’s axe swung towards her. A single blow of the axe took her life, yet, Amrita Devi stood taller than ever.
It was 1730, Amrita Devi, a member of the Bishnoi community, sacrificed her life by hugging a khejri tree — a vital lifeline for the people of Rajasthan’s Thar Desert — while a soldier of the Maharaja of Jodhpur was determined to chop it down. She wasn’t alone.
To save the trees from being chopped down on the Maharaja’s orders, around 363 men, women and children laid their lives hugging the trees. The king of Jodhpur needed the wood to help build his palace.
The incident where the Bishnoi community upheld their ecological ideals and displayed the lengths they could go to, later came to be known as the Khejarli massacre. Experts believe that it inspired the Chipko movement of the 1970s, which came almost 245 years later.
The Bishnoi community’s enduring love for nature has been brought back into public discourse after gangster Lawrence Bishnoi gang claimed to have killed Baba Siddique because of his links to actor Salman Khan. The Lawrence Bishnoi gang has repeatedly been threatening Salman Khan over his alleged involvement in the infamous blackbuck poaching case of 1998.
The community’s affection and commitment to flora and fauna has also been highlighted in its prolonged legal battle against Salman’s alleged killing of the two blackbucks.
The blackbuck is sacred to the Bishnoi sect, and the incident caused widespread outrage in1998 and continues to the day.
However, this is far from the first time the Bishnois have gained attention for defending wildlife.
Around 300 years ago, the lesser-known yet monumental Khejarli massacre cemented the Bishnois as the guardians of environmental conservation in India. This is the story of 363 Bishnoi men, women, and children who sacrificed their lives to save khejri trees from being cut down by Maharaja Abhay Singh’s soldiers.
The Bishnoi community, predominantly based in southern Rajasthan, follow a unique form of environmental conservation interwoven with their religious beliefs. The community was founded by Guru Maharaj Jambaji in 1485, who provided 29 rules for his followers to live by, the most significant of which were prohibitions against cutting down green trees and killing animals.
His teachings followed a period of extreme drought when the survival of humans and animals seemed uncertain. Seeing how the lack of trees led to the death of animals, Jambaji envisioned a life where both flora and fauna would be supreme, noted American author Roger S Gottlieb in his book, This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment
The khejri tree, according to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), is drought-resistant and has soil-enriching properties. Its ability to survive in harsh desert conditions makes it indispensable to the local ecosystem, providing food and fodder while improving soil fertility. Thus, the khejri tree, dotted across the arid landscape of Thar, holds a particularly revered status in Bishnoi tradition.
They see the tree not just as a resource, but as a divine gift that needs to be protected at all costs. And it was a grove of the khejri trees that the Maharaja of Jodhpur had ordered to be chopped.

Khejri (Prosopis cineraria) plays a big role in the economy of the Indian desert. The leguminous tree is found growing in arid and semi-arid parts of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, and Delhi. (Image: ICAR-Central Institute for Arid Horticulture, Bikaner)

The massacre of 1730 took place in a Bishnoi village which later came to be known as Khejarli after the khejri tree, around 25 kilometres from Jodhpur. The maharaja tasked one of his ministers, Giridhar Bhandari, to undertake the operation.
“Some 350 years ago the king of Jodhpur needed wood to fuel his lime kilns, which were being deployed to build a new palace, and for this purpose he attempted to fell a grove of Khejari trees in a nearby village,” write historian Ramchandra Guha and ecologist Madhav Gadgil in their book, This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India.
The Maharaja’s soldiers identified a Bishnoi village, on the banks of the River Luni where khejri trees grew in abundance. As the maharaja’s troops marched into the village with the royal order, what they encountered was not mere opposition.
They saw an extraordinary act of defiance.
Amrita Devi and her two daughters hugged khejri trees to prevent them from being chopped. The soldiers, carrying out a royal decree, were in no mood to tolerate resistance. They killed Amrita Devi and her daughters.
“Sar santey roonkh rahe to bhi sasto jaan, (a chopped head is cheaper than a chopped tree),” the last words of Amrita Devi, echoed far and wide.
However, like a mother tree gives rise to saplings, Devi inspired hundreds of protesters, who rushed to embrace the khejri trees.

An undated painting depicting the Khejarli massacre of 1730. (Image: Kisan Tak/India Today)

As the news spread to nearby Bishnoi villages, “men, women and children from 83 villages stepped forward, embraced the trees and let themselves be axed to death one after the other,” noted social scientist Bobby Luthra Sinha in her research paper, Bishnois of Western Rajasthan: A Culture of Nature Conservation.
As soldiers would try chopping down a tree, a Bishnoi would rush to hug its trunk.
Despite seeing the growing toll, the Bishnois refused to relent. By the time the massacre ended, 363 people — men, women, and children — had been killed, each one offering their life to protect the trees.
The news of bloodshed and unwavering defiance reached Maharaja Abhay Singh, and compelled him to reconsider his decision.
“He halted the logging and declared the Khejarli region a preserve, and off limits for logging and hunting. He issued a royal decree engraved on a tambra patra (a letter engraved on a copper plate) prohibiting the felling of trees in the Bishnoi areas,” wrote Luthra Sinha.
“The Bishnois as well as non-Bishnois refer to the tambra-patra declaration as a victory of people’s efforts at conservation,” Luthra Sinha added.

A Bishnoi temple was built at the Khejarli massacre site near Khejarli Village, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. (Image: Kushal Bishnoi/Wikimedia)

The Khejarli massacre is remembered as one of the first large-scale environmental movements in history, a non-violent protest where lives were sacrificed for the sake of nature. The courage and conviction of the Bishnoi community did not go unnoticed, and their act of defiance became a symbol of environmental stewardship in India.
The incident then served as inspiration for the Chipko movement in the 1970s, where villagers in Uttarakhand famously hugged trees to prevent them from being felled.
Today, the Bishnois continue to uphold their environmental ethics with the same passion, as reflected in their protest at the alleged killing of blackbucks by Salman Khan. Every year, the Bishnoi community commemorates the sacrifice of their ancestors in Khejarli with a fair.