When Amrita Devi Bishnoi Hugged a Tree Till Death To Save It
It only takes a moment for a mother to instantly run to step between her child and danger.
This maternal instinct comes almost naturally to most mothers. But will the same instinct get ignited the moment danger hurls at a tree?
For a woman, the answer was yes.
In a small village in Rajasthan, more than two hundred years before Chipko became a movement, a woman named Amrita Devi wrapped her arms around a tree and refused to let go, even as the axes were raised.
But this instinct cost her, and a hundred others who followed her, their breaths and this story lives forgotten and unknown today.
A Village Full of Sacred Trees
Khejarli was, and still is, a Bishnoi village near Jodhpur, named after the Khejri trees that grew all around it.
For the Bishnoi community, these trees were more than just wood. Their faith, founded by Guru Jambheshwar in the 15th century, laid down clear rules against cutting green trees or harming animals, rules the community still lives by today. To them, a Khejri tree was not a resource waiting to be used. It was something closer to family, planted, watered, and watched over across generations of the same household.
In September 1730, that belief was put to the test when soldiers of the Jodhpur king arrived in Khejarli with a very different plan for those trees.
The Morning the Axes Arrived
As per local stories, Maharaja Abhay Singh of Jodhpur needed wood for a new palace, but some believe that it was meant to fuel the lime kilns used for its construction. His minister, Giridhar Bhandari, was sent to Khejarli with a group of soldiers to cut down the village’s Khejri trees, without much thought for what they meant to the people living among them.
When Amrita Devi saw the men raising their axes, she stepped forward and refused to let them touch the trees. The soldiers offered a way out, a bribe, in exchange for leaving the trees alone. Amrita Devi turned it down, calling it an insult to everything she believed in.
She wrapped her arms around a tree and said she would rather die than watch it fall. The soldiers did not stop and cut through her right where she stood. Her three young daughters, Asu, Ratni, and Bhagu, who had followed her out that morning, did not run. They hugged trees of their own and met the same end, one after the other, in front of the men who had just killed their mother.
One Life for Every Tree
News of what happened at Khejarli spread fast to nearby Bishnoi villages, carried by anyone who had seen it or heard of it firsthand.
People from nearby villages began making their way to Khejarli, where they came together and made a decision that is still difficult to fully comprehend. For every tree the king’s men tried to cut down, a Bishnoi stepped forward, putting their own life in the way to protect it.
Men, women, and children came forward one after another, embracing the trees marked for cutting, refusing to move even as the axes came down on them. Word spread from village to village faster than the soldiers could work, yet nobody arrived to stop it in time. By the time news finally reached the king and the killing was called off, 363 Bishnois had died protecting trees that were never theirs alone to save.
A Sacrifice That Outlived the Massacre
When Maharaja Abhay Singh came to know what had happened, he was shaken. He apologised to the Bishnois and ordered a ban on tree cutting and hunting in the area, a protection that has continued ever since.
Centuries later, Chipko echoed the same courage, but Amrita Devi never meant to start a movement. She only wanted to save a tree, and gave tree-hugging its first, most painful meaning.
