Year: 2025
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: The ethnobotanical heritage of West Bengal is a great witness to the resilience of indigenous people, who have seen numerous plant species in the state become essential companions of the mind, spreading across the state’s ecological spectrum, from the meadows of Darjeeling to the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans. Through this chapter, communities such as the Lepcha, Santhal, Lodha and Namasudra across West Bengal have been followed in their use of more than 250 psychotropic plants such as Bacopa monnieri for cognitive clarity and Avicennia marina for eco-trauma worship, rejuvenating prana flow, dosha balance, and mental peace during cyclones, migrations and urban malaise. Key insights highlight relational healing, plants are empowered by the kaviraj chants and trance states of ojha or gunin healers and Sohrai collective practices, in which community attendance multiplies neuro-cultural interfaces that transcend traditional pharmacology. Research validates strong fidelity to regional favourites like Rhododendron for mountain fear protection and Shalparni for doubt protection, but reveals weaknesses in inter-regional syntheses and gendered transmission, with women holding the greatest number of epistemologies, while climate change threatens mangrove remedies. Decolonial perspectives refocus well-being on pluriversal resistance: fear as ecological knowledge, not DSM illness; rituals as psychic supports, not superstition. Integrate while respecting opportunities: Brahmi-CBT combinations increase BDNF; Tulsi apps in Digital India; gardens of AYUSH expanding the reach of psychiatrists, but with safeguards against NDPS restrictions on bhang, appropriation and a breakdown of biodiversity. Ethnobotany thus comes as a polycrisis antidote: cheap, culturally compatible, and strong. The privilege of the subaltern voices in hybrid models brings about epistemic equity, which celebrates relational ontologies in fractured times. A new trend will involve participatory RCTs, GIS-neuroplasticity mappings and blockchain-preserved repositories to ensure that the green legacy of West Bengal endures for generations. The reclamation of these pathways enlightens all the ancient’s mental peace to equal horizons.
Author: Rituparna Basak
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W7142629193
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