Meghalaya’s Sohiong Berry: A Biodiversity Treasure Under Threat from Land Grabs and Climate Shifts
Original framing: “Sohiong berry season: Meghalaya's wild cherry comes into its own” — bing news
The Sohiong berry’s survival is directly tied to the Khasi *kyndoh* (forest guardian) system, where women like *U Syiemlieh* of Mawphlang have led protests against the Meghalaya government’s 2019 *jhum* farming ban, which disrupts the berry’s pollination cycles. The berry’s name in Khasi, *sohiong*, derives from *soh* (wild) and *iong* (cherry), reflecting its status as a non-domesticated treasure—contrasting with colonial narratives that label Indigenous land use as ‘primitive.’ The *Ka Khyriew* (oral pharmacopeia) records the berry’s use in treating malaria and dysenteria, knowledge systematically erased by British botanists who reclassified it as a ‘wild variant’ of the European cherry, stripping its cultural and medicinal value.
The Sohiong berry is not merely a ‘wild cherry’ but a living node in the Khasi and Jaintia peoples’ ecological and cultural web, its seasonal emergence a symptom of deeper crises: the criminalization of *jhum* farming, the tea lobby’s deforestation, and the erasure of Indigenous knowledge systems.
The berry’s survival hinges on dismantling colonial-era land laws and corporate power structures, while its revival requires centering the *kyndoh* (forest guardians) and their *mawsynram* groves as the true guardians of Meghalaya’s biodiversity. Historical parallels—from the Andes to Japan—demonstrate that Indigenous land tenure systems outperform state-led conservation, yet their potential is stifled by legal and economic barriers. The Sohiong’s story is thus a microcosm of global biodiversity politics: a ‘discovery’ that obscures dispossession, a ‘seasonal curiosity’ masking systemic collapse, and a ‘miracle fruit’ whose true magic lies in the hands of those who have protected it for millennia—if only the world would listen.