Bagh Aur Baiga

 

Long ago, when the world was still forming, the Great Spirit of the Forest gave birth to a pair of twins. 

One emerged striped—he was the Tiger. The other was bare-skinned, with eyes like stars:  The Baiga.

The spirit whispered: "You share the same blood. One guards the woods; the other cares for people and their balance with the Earth." From then, Baigas and Tigers walked as kin, bound by a promise.

Even now, the Baigas regard the tiger as elder brother, protector, unseen spirit. Every pugmark, every roar is a message, and the stripes—the script of the forest, written so the land remembers its story.

Once, a young boy named Jhamu walked with his grandfather through the forest at dusk. The air was heavy with the scent of mahua, and from far away came the low rumble of a tiger’s roar. The boy’s heart pounded with fear, but the old man placed a steady hand on his shoulder.

“Do not be afraid,” the elder said. “That is not the call of danger; it is the voice of your family. The tiger reminds us to tread softly, to never take more than we need. If we honour him, he will keep the forest alive for us, as he has since the beginning.”

From that night on, the boy no longer feared the tiger. He dreamt of him, striped and shining, walking by his side as a guardian.

The Baiga tribes’ lives, simple yet sacred, echo the old promise of never hurting the tiger. To harm him would be to wound their own lineage, to break the sacred bond.  They gather honey without stripping the hive, they clear soil without wounding the earth, and they move through the jungle as if moving through the heart of a temple.

And so, when the tiger pads silently through the forest, it is not just a creature of the wild on the prowl. It is the Baigas’ ancestor returning to walk beside them. Fierce as fire, eternal as the earth.

This is the Baigas’ gift to the world: the wisdom that we are never separate from the wild. We are born of it, bound to it, and only by protecting it can we protect ourselves.