Forests of the Forest Goddess
Across the Khasi and Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya, indigenous communities maintain sacred groves known locally as Law Kyntang — patches of old-growth forest protected for centuries under strict customary taboos forbidding logging, hunting or removal of any material from within their boundaries. These groves are traditionally understood as the dwelling place of local deities and ancestral spirits, with violation of grove sanctity believed to bring serious misfortune.
Mawphlang Sacred Grove, the most visited and well-documented of these forests, preserves plant species found nowhere else in the surrounding deforested landscape, standing as living proof of the conservation power of sustained indigenous spiritual practice. Ecologists increasingly study Meghalaya's sacred groves as exemplary models of community-based forest conservation, while for the Khasi and Jaintia peoples themselves, they remain first and foremost living sacred spaces tied to the divine feminine and ancestral memory.
