Accepted Panels

Bali Jatra is the name of an agrarian fertility ritual which may have been conducted in this or slightly other forms, in many parts of India, for a long time. Today, it is present in middle India, from parts of Bastar in Chhattisgarh towards the Eastern Ghats in Andhra Pradesh, and covering districts in the south of Odisha. Here, it gains popularity as a regional event, mostly carried out by Mali communities who are gardeners. The rites run for several weeks in order to promote health and fertility, of crops and of the people and they are seen as a protection against misfortune. The ecological and spiritual knowledge of the community is transferred orally by trained women, called Gurumai. Through their recitation of the Bali Jatra epic, the pantheon of the Mali is evoked and subsequently enacted by people of the community. The paper discusses the societal impact of the ritual and will give an outlook of how this ritual might alter due to climate change resulting in different crops or social transformations. In a further step, it explores how the wealth of the ecological knowledge of the Mali could contribute to topics of local biodiversity and sustainability discourses.