'Iyu Ena' of Arunachal Pradesh's Idu Mishmi community helps protect wildlife

Taboos or superstitions may not be bad always. At least not the ones concerning wild animals prevalent among the Idu Mishmi community in Arunachal Pradesh.

The Idu Mishims, one of the 26 indigenous communities in Arunachal Pradesh, have something called 'Iyu Ena' under which there are restrictions on the killing of wild animals. This has not only significantly reduced the consumption of wild animals' meat but also helped in the protection of biodiversity, including that of the endangered tiger population, says a research conducted by two anthropologists Sahil Nijhawan and Achili Mihu.

The researchers, who lived with the Idu Mishmi people in the Dibang Valley district for years and documented their practices, found that the restrictions observed during the hunting of large animals were very strict, particularly for the hunters and the ones that consume the meat.

According to their research report, there were restrictions on washing clothes for a full lunar cycle, attending and eating foodstuff from funerals, attending weddings and childbirth ceremonies, sexual contacts, sharing utensils and other household objects with women, mixing meat with onion, among others.

"Interestingly, all women of the household stop weaving yarn as soon as men hunt. These restrictions impact all aspects of daily life," said the research report, titled 'Relations of Blood: Hunting Taboos and Wildlife Conservation in the Idu Mishmi of Northeast India'. The paper was published in the Journal of Ethnobiology recently.

Dibang Valley, where the Idu Mishmis live, is home to a newly identified population of genetically distinct tigers, flourishing populations of animals found nowhere else like the Mishmi takin, red goral, Gongshan muntjac, the newly described Mishmi hills hoolock gibbon, 500 species of birds and thousands of plant species.

But what makes Dibang Valley truly unique is the cultural connection between the Idu Mishmi people and the biodiversity.

The authors said that 'Iyu Ena' was different for different animals, categorised by the Idu Mishmi culture.

The first category includes all felines, from the largest tiger to the smallest leopard cat, most species of eagles and owls, and the hoolock gibbon. "These animals are considered dangerous and carriers of great powers. Their hunting is strictly forbidden, and their meat is typically not consumed," they said.

The second category includes large herbivores such as the unique Mishmi takin, Himalayan serow, wild pig, muntjac, red goral, and Himalayan black bear. The Idu people believe that these animals belong to the spirit of the high mountains. They can be hunted but only after paying a symbolic price to their spirit master and observing a very strict ena.

The restrictions are so severe that Idu women do not eat the meat of any animal in the first and the second category.

The third category includes smaller animals such as rodents, squirrels, porcupines, birds, fish, and insects, most of which are eaten by men and women alike without taboo.

"Such practices play important socio-cultural and existential roles and are often not directly motivated to conserve wildlife. It is important not to reduce Idu taboos to mere conservation instruments but to understand them as an integral and interconnected part of the overall culture," Nijhawan said.

Achili Mihu said, “In India, wildlife conservation is typically associated either with the forest department or conservation NGOs. But we have seen how Idu Mishmi cultural taboos have conserved endangered wildlife without government regulations."