Kavu and Theyyam : Interfacing Religion, Biodiversity and Conservation

In cities from the Global South, intangible cultural heritage can become an effective catalyst for city design and urban planning. Compared to cities in the Global North, those in the Global South have lesser regulatory and administrative stringency, and are therefore limited in their ability to direct city making through top-down planning methods alone. In these cities, the presence of vast informal economies and indigenous communities, and the resilience of age-old cultural traditions and patterns present direct counterpoints to policies and master plans as the dominant instruments guiding the urban future.

For instance, in India, religious events and sacred festivals are a dominant aspect of the urban context. Hundreds of informal sacred gatherings at various scales occur on a weekly or monthly basis across the country’s geography. These cultural phenomena can be strategically empowered to intersect and engage with urgent practical challenges such as social marginalisation, economic inequity and ecological destruction. They can be harnessed as bottom-up and grassroots forces to help generate consequential urban change and grapple with issues that formal planning cannot. This essay contributes to this notion 
by gleaning into the potential of the Theyyam — an indigenous religious ritual from South India — as a catalyst for ecological conservation and biodiversity protection.   

Kavu

In the Hindu Indian traditions, the idea of divinity is embodied simultaneously in the natural and man-made geography. A place of worship often extends beyond the building into the surrounding geological and ecological elements defining a larger sacred place. A Hindu shrine or temple is invariably part of a larger natural territory — be it a modest space around a tree or a clearing within a forest — that serves as a communal congregation space. In such spaces, numerous elaborate sacred rituals celebrate the presence of the divine, keep sacred lores and legends alive and help to pass on this knowledge to the community.

The kavu (sacred groves) of North Kerala are a case in point. These rainforest fragments once formed part of large rural holdings and estates, morphing with incremental urbanisation into patches of tropical trees and vegetation. Thanks to Kerala’s monsoons that help replenish these urban groves each year, the kavu are rich biodiversity hotspots abundant in flora and fauna. In 2015, Professor P. O. Nameer, head of the Centre for Wildlife Studies (India), along with K.M. Jyothi explored 15 sacred groves in the Kannur and Kasaragod districts in Kerala, and documented as many as 107 bird species belonging to 48 families, among which 25 percent of the bird species were forest birds and 17 were migratory birds. Per M. Jayarajan of the Kerala Research Programme, there are an estimated 2,000 kavu in Kerala alone today.

Intangible cultural heritage can become an effective catalyst for city design and urban planning

What sets the kavu apart from other urban nature fragments is their perceived sacred value. Each kavu is associated with a ‘presiding deity’, and there are over 1,000 deities attributed to such sacred groves in the states of Kerala and Karnataka. Poojas (worship rituals) are conducted to safeguard their future. Their flora and fauna — birds, snakes, wild mammals — are worshipped as manifestations of divinity. Hunting and logging are usually strictly prohibited. Numerous man-made rainwater ponds providing a water source for the forest animals also serve as places of worship. Select trees within the groves are the settings for shrines, and indigenous communities associated with these groves have, over time, evolved elaborate traditions of storytelling, music, art and festivals, all directly associated with the perceived sacredness of the place. The kavu are simultaneously self-sustaining biomes and communal microcosms. Their biological dimensions are inseparable from their imparted sacred values, representing a deep nature-culture relationship rooted in the sacred.

Theyyam

The kavu are the setting for Theyyam, a sacred dance form celebrating the belief that the presiding deities from the groves can be summoned to perform using a human body. ‘Theyyam’, derived from the Malayalam word ‘Daivam’ (meaning God), refers literally to a mythologised ancestor or local Hindu deity, but is used more broadly to refer to the performance itself. Today, there are more than 450 types of documented Theyyams ranging from spirit-worship, ancestor-worship, hero-worship, tree-worship, animal-worship, serpent-worship, goddess-worship etc. The Theyyam season begins on the 10th day of the Malayalam month of Thulam (usually October), lasting up to seven months till the middle of Edavam (typically between May and June).

The kavu are simultaneously self-sustaining biomes and communal microcosms

The Theyyam dance is typically performed in an open-to-sky space in front of a family shrine, though some performances related to ancestor-worship occur within houses. There is no stage, curtain or formal seating. Devotees stand or sit informally around a sacred tree within the kavu clearing creating a temporal open-to-sky theatre. Almost all performers are men, and most performances occur in the dark, between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m.

The inaugural part of a Theyyam ritual known as Vellattam is performed without make-up or costume. The performer, accompanied by drummers, recites a ritual song narrating associated myths and legends, and invoking a specific deity. He then returns to the preparation room and, after a short interval, appears in front of the shrine with elaborate make-up and costumes symbolising his union with the deity. Following certain rituals, an elaborate headdress is placed on his head, and a shield and sword are given to him. The performer then dances, circumambulating around the shrine. The performance of Theyyam is as much about sacred symbolism as an awakening of human senses — from the deep red colours of the costumes and the deafening drumbeats to the smell of burning camphor that pervades the event setting.

Integrating Biodiversity, Heritage and Conservation

The kavu and Theyyam, taken together, represent a unique combination of natural and cultural heritage. But current urbanisation trends do not necessarily see it this way, and today, the protection of these groves is being seriously compromised. With increasing urbanisation, several kavu have diminished in size, and sacred insignia once distributed throughout the groves have been shifted into temples, requiring larger buildings that take up more space. Meanwhile, illegal biomass harvest, encroachments and trespassing are causing deterioration along with reduced regeneration. The kavu’s varied ownership patterns also pose a challenge. Some groves are owned by single or multiple families, others by local administrative authorities, rendering both private and public ownership structures that complicate jurisdictional authority over their upkeep and future. The deterioration of the kavu is now presenting a direct existential threat to the Theyyam ritual, with many performers giving up their art form and traditional lifestyle.

While top-down planning instruments such as stricter regulations, local-area plans and conservation policies can help in this regard, their efficacy only goes so far within the ambiguous administrative realities of the local South Indian context. This is where the significance of religion — as an urban planning catalyst — comes to the forefront. The perceived weight of religious places in Indian society cannot be underestimated. Communities across India may not be necessarily driven to maintaining and conserving public or private places, but their dedication to revering sacred domains is a whole other subject.

The perceived weight of religious places in Indian society cannot be underestimated

This suggests a number of potential planning strategies: 
1) As biodiversity areas endowed with sacred meaning, kavu, public or private, could be imparted a Special Area status within the local zoning designations, allowing them tax breaks and other subsidies to empower, incentivise and enable their conservation and protection; 

2) As settings for annual Theyyam events, kavu could be designated as eco- and cultural-tourism places, offering them financial resources from local tourism authorities and also helping them plan for tourists by building required facilities such as toilets and retail in a responsible manner; 

3) As religious places, kavu could be seen as privatised ‘public’ spaces, and local and State authorities could partner with their owners towards their daily and weekly maintenance; 

4) Finally, as ecological pockets, the kavu could be meticulously mapped and documented as ‘no-touch zones’ as part of a Regional Plan, to enable and safeguard their conservation, not as isolated groves, but as a larger ecological continuum, and as wildlife corridors, enabling planners and ecologists to better understand how to regenerate the spaces that physically connect them.

Interfacing religious ritual with urban planning and biodiversity conservation can be a potent and effective alternative to bridge existing gaps in city design within India today. The broader challenges and issues related to the kavu and Theyyam discussed in this essay are also prevalent in several other parts of the country. What we need are initiatives that simultaneously ignite bottom-up and top-down aspects of Indian city making. We need to document, study and increase awareness about the beauty and cultural significance of such ritual practices while also identifying their promise and potential as instruments for city planning. And we need to build bridges between the formal planning processes already in place, with numerous grassroots patterns that are already alive and active. In the contemporary Indian context, where religion, myth, legend, folklore and sacred rituals present a blatant and vivid counterpoint to post-industrial expressions of urbanity, the urban future can never emerge from modern methods and approaches alone.

Further Reading:

• Chandrashekara U. M., Joseph S. P. & Sreejith A.; Ecological and Socio-cultural Dimensions of Sacred Groves in Northern Kerela; Man in India; 82 (3&4): 323-340 (2002)

• Gadgil, M. and Vartak, V.D.; Sacred groves of India: A plea for continued conservation, Journal of Bombay Natural History Society, 72: 314-320 (1975)

• M. Jayarajan, Sacred Groves of North Malabar; Kerala Research Programme on Local Level Development, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram (2009)