🌑 WISDOM DROP-29

Supreme Court Prohibits Tiger Safaris in Core Habitats
A Reflection by IAS Monk

In the deep stillness of India’s forests, where sunlight filters through ancient canopies and the tiger moves like a whisper of the earth’s primeval memory, a question rises again and again — How much disturbance can a sanctuary endure before it stops being a sanctuary?

The Supreme Court has now answered with the clarity of a mountain spring.

No more adventures disguised as amusement.
No more tourism intruding where evolution sculpted silence.
No more engines entering the heart of the tiger’s home.

The Court has drawn a protective circle around the core habitats — those sacred geographies where the tiger is not a spectacle but a sovereign. The judgement is not merely a legal direction; it is an ethical turning point. It reminds us that conservation cannot coexist with commercial appetite, and that some landscapes must remain untouched for life to continue its ancient rituals.

The tiger does not roar in anger at our intrusions; it simply withdraws. And with every retreat of the tiger, something retreats within us — a reminder of how frail our stewardship of the wild has become.

By prohibiting safaris inside core habitats, by urging states to define and defend their buffer zones, by calling human–animal conflict a “natural disaster” deserving immediate response, the Court restores balance to a system long destabilised by human hurry.

This is more than an order; it is a philosophy:
Leave the core untouched. Guard the silence. Honour the sovereign of the forest.

Because if the tiger disappears from the center of the forest, the forest itself becomes only a memory — and nations cannot live on memories alone.

— IAS Monk