Area
20,000 ha
TEK COMMUNITIES
Garo
ELEVATION
180 -1500 m asl
Material
a.ba Cotton
SPECIES
Gossypium arboreum race cernuum
KEY BIODIVERSITY AREA
Balpakram, Nokrek
Wildlife sanctuary / national park
Balpakram, Nokrek
MAN AND BIOSPHERE
Nokrek
The Garo Hills landscape is situated within the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot. The landscape is governed by the Garo community through their traditional law niam, which structures land use, agricultural practice and forest stewardship through an interconnected framework of matrilineal kinship, cosmological beliefs and ecological ethics. Their agricultural practices are closely interlinked with seasons, spiritual traditions and culture, with numerous rituals and celebrations marking different stages of the farming cycle.
The landscape comprises 2 Key Biodiversity Areas, 2 National Parks, and 1 UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve. These areas together form the core of the Garo Hills Conservation Area, which is on India's Tentative List for UNESCO World Heritage Status.
Balpakram National Park is a sacred landscape at the centre of the indigenous belief system of the Garo. In traditional cosmology, the souls of the Garo dead first travel to the Balpakram plateau before proceeding to the afterlife, making it the permanent abode of human souls and the site of nearly fifty documented locations connected to specific myths and oral traditions. Cultural taboos against over-extraction and territorial boundaries maintained through oral law together functioned as a de facto conservation regime long before the park's statutory designation in 1987.
Nokrek National Park, established in 1986 and recognised under the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Programme in 2009, is the hydrological origin of the major river systems of the Garo Hills. Within its boundaries lies the mother germplasm of Citrus indica - the wild progenitor of cultivated citrus worldwide - leading to the demarcation of the National Citrus Gene Sanctuary, the only protected area in the world established specifically for the in-situ conservation of wild citrus genetic resources. The Garo name for the species, Me·mang Narang, translates as the orange of the spirits, locating this botanical resource within the same cosmological framework that governs the landscape.
The A·ba Cha·a system is an indigenous regenerative swidden practice in which more than thirty crop varieties are grown together in a single hill plot without industrial inputs, structured by a twelve-month cycle of farming and ritual observance. It starts with A·ba O·pata, the plot selection ritual, and ends with Wangala, the post-harvest thanksgiving to the creator deity Misi Saljong, whose conclusion marks the beginning of the next farming cycle.
Cotton (kil) occupies the crest of the hill; rice is planted at the foot, where moisture is retained - a spatial ordering that reflects a refined indigenous knowledge of hill topography. Cotton in this system is not a commodity: it is invoked in sacred chant, carried as a funeral offering for the deceased to cultivate in the afterworld, and was historically the primary medium of inter-ethnic exchange with plains communities.
The A.ba Cotton - Gossypium arboreum race cernuum is a short staple indigenous fibre which is ginned using a traditional tool, the Kelka, then hand-opened, hand-carded and entirely handspun using a drop spindle Takuri. The spinning tradition survives with a single known practitioner. A revival of the full processing ecosystem is underway.
