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The Supreme Court’s recent acceptance of an elevation-based definition of the Aravalli hills – restricting legal protection to landforms rising more than 100 metres above local relief – marks a decisive rupture in India’s environmental jurisprudence. Presented as a neutral, scientific clarification, the ruling reportedly effectively removes legal safeguards from nearly 90% of the Aravalli system in Rajasthan.

What is being redefined is not merely a geological formation, but the ecological backbone of north-western India and the basis of life for millions of Adivasi, pastoralist and agrarian communities.

The Aravallis are among the oldest mountain systems in the world. They function as groundwater recharge zones, climate regulators and ecological buffers against the eastward march of the Thar desert. To reduce such a living system to a single metric of elevation is to misunderstand ecology itself. More critically, it signals a shift in the role of law – from restraining extractive impulses to actively enabling them.

Popular political discourse on Rajasthan often obsesses over pre-eighteenth century conflicts between local kingdoms and Turkic or Timurid powers. Historically, however, the region has also been a theatre of conflict between agrarian–pastoral–tribal societies and urban–mercantile interests, particularly from the late medieval period.

Rajasthan’s ecological consciousness is neither modern nor imported. As early as the fifteenth century, Guru Jambeshwar – revered as Guru Jambhoji and born into the Parmar Rajput farming community – articulated a moral framework that placed the protection of trees, wildlife and water at the centre of social duty. His teachings emerged from the lived realities of arid-zone pastoral and agrarian life, where restraint was essential for collective survival.

Also read: Environment Ministry Announces Ban on New Mining Leases in Aravallis – But It’s Not New

This ethic was not confined to a single tradition. Meghrishi, regarded as the founding sage of the Meghwal community, articulated a philosophy of labour, land and restraint that bound artisanal and agrarian livelihoods to sustainable resource use – a legacy still visible among Meghwals, Jingars, Regars and other Dalit communities of the region. Harbuji Sankhla, revered as a panchpir and protector figure across western Rajasthan, survives in oral traditions as a guardian of cattle, grasslands and village commons, symbolising the moral economy that tied warrior-pastoral societies to ecological stewardship.

This tradition found its most tragic expression in........

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