Waghoba
Typically carved in or out of stone or wood, the idol is occasionally decorated with vermilion paint and can be accompanied with corresponding religious symbols, like the cobra, the sun, and the moon.
In Maharashtra's Thane district, some villages perform the rituals once a year on Kartik Barshi, which occurs twelve days after Diwali, according to the Hindu calendar.
Small offerings of rice and meat (probably wild pig) are put on banana leaves in a specific arrangement around the statue.
Afterwards, as per their navas (vows to perform services for a god in return for a boon), some families behead roosters to offer their heads to the deity.
The ritual ends with the priest praying for the well-being and safety of the villagers[2] Tribes, including the Bhaina, Bharia, Bhatra, Dangis, Gond, Gosain, Kol, Korku, Koshti, Velip, and Warli, are stout worshipers of Waghoba or Bagheshwar.
On the day of Diwali, they invite the tiger to drink the gruel that they place for him behind their houses while simultaneously warning others not to stir.
If a tiger is killed within the limits of the village, a Kathotia Kol will throw away all his earthen pots in mourning and shave his head and feed a few men of his sept. Gond – A man who has been killed by a tiger or a cobra may receive a general veneration with the object of appeasing his spirit and transforming him into a village god.
People sharing space with the leopards also noted that they are broadly scared of humans; however, they possess individual characteristics like boldness and shyness.
Every leopard with territory near human settlement unfailingly comes close the houses in search of easy domestic prey.
Research has shown that several communities sharing space with these animals often regard them as "protectors", "owners", "family" or "vehicle of the gods."
[6] Garos of Meghalaya, Gonds of Madhya Pradesh and Tulunadus of South Kanara district of Karnataka look upon the tiger as a protector.
[13] Most of these beliefs and practices are based in superstition[14] but the interviews of the people who share space with the large cats and have temples in their area, reveal that they also have a sound knowledge of the animals' biology and the precautions that need to be taken to protect themselves from the leopard.
Generally, there is a huge focus on the economic aspect of the "conflict" and the media also highlights such events in a sensational way.
[15] The recent studies that look into the social and cultural aspects of the interactions[16][17][18] teach us to go beyond the economic facets and explore the other kind of relationships existing between human and other carnivores, including the large cats.
Today, because of various reasons, large carnivores are bound to increase their ranges into human dominated landscapes but conservationist and managers are unable to deal with the human dimension of the issue due to the negative narrative in the ecological sciences about human-large cat interactions.
As the aim of conservation is to promote coexistence, we need to look beyond the negative aspect of the human-animal interactions and try to understand co-adaptation strategies that humans have developed over the centuries to survive and flourish with the large cats.
