Chipko movement

The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan (literally "to stick" in Hindi) is a social-ecological movement

that practised the Gandhian methods of satyagraha and non-violent resistance, through the act of hugging
trees to protect them from falling. The modern Chipko movement started in the early 1970s in
the Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand,[1] with growing awareness towards rapid deforestation. The
landmark event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of peasant women in Reni
village, Hemwalghati, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, acted to prevent the cutting of trees and
reclaim their traditional forest rights that were threatened by the contractor system of the state Forest
Department. Their actions inspired hundreds of such actions at the grassroots level throughout the region.
By the 1980s the movement had spread throughout India and led to formulation of people-sensitive forest
policies, which put a stop to the open felling of trees in regions as far reaching as Vindhyas and
the Western Ghats.[2]The first recorded event of Chipko however, took place in village Khejarli, Jodhpur
district, in 1730 AD, when 363 Bishnois, led by Amrita Devisacrificed their lives while protecting
green Khejri trees, considered sacred by the community, by hugging them, and braved the axes of loggers
sent by the local ruler,[3] today it is seen an inspiration and a precursor for Chipko movement of Garhwal. [4]
[5]
The Chipko movement, though primarily a livelihood movement rather than a forest conservation
movement, went on to become a rallying point for many future environmentalists, environmental protests
and movements the world over and created a precedent for non-violent protest. [6][7] It occurred at a time
when there was hardly any environmental movement in the developing world, and its success meant that
the world immediately took notice of this non-violent Tree hugging movement, which was to inspire in
time many such eco-groups by helping to slow down the rapid deforestation, expose vested interests,
increase ecological awareness, and demonstrate the viability of people power. Above all, it stirred up the
existing civil society in India, which began to address the issues of tribal and marginalized people. So much
so that, a quarter of a century later, India Today mentioned the people behind the "forest satyagraha" of the
Chipko movement as amongst "100 people who shaped India".[8] Today, beyond the eco-socialism hue, it is
being seen increasingly as an ecofeminism movement. Although many of its leaders were men, women
were not only its backbone, but also its mainstay, because they were the ones most affected by the
rampant deforestation,[citation needed], which led to a lack of firewood and fodder as well as water for drinking
and irrigation. Over the years they also became primary stakeholders in a majority of the afforestation work
that happened under the Chipko movement.[2][3][9][10]

The Himalayan region had always been exploited for its natural wealth, be it minerals or timber, including
under British rule. The end of the nineteenth century saw the implementation of new approaches in
forestry, coupled with reservation of forests for commercial forestry, causing disruption in the age-old
symbiotic relationship between the natural environment and the rural peasant, both
in Kumaon and Garhwal. The few peasant protests that arose during this period were crushed severely.
Notable protests in 20th century, were that of 1906, followed by the 1921 protest which was linked with
the independence movement imbued with Gandhian ideologies,.[11] The 1940s was again marked by a
series of protests in Tehri Garhwal region.[12]

In the post-independence period, when waves of a resurgent India were hitting even the far reaches of
India, the landscape of the upper Himalayan region was only slowly changing, and remained largely
inaccessible. But all this was to change soon, when an important event in the environmental history of the
Garhwal region occurred in the India-China War of 1962, in which India faced heavy losses. Though the
region was not involved in the war directly, the government, cautioned by its losses and war casualties,
took rapid steps to secure its borders, set up army bases, and build road networks deep into the upper
reaches of Garhwal on India’s border with Chinese-ruled Tibet, an area which was until now all but cut off
from the rest of the nation. However, with the construction of roads and subsequent developments came
mining projects for limestone, magnesium, and potassium. Timber merchants and commercial foresters
now had access to land hitherto.[11]

Soon, the forest cover started deteriorating at an alarming rate, resulting in hardships for those involved in
labour-intensive fodder and firewood collection. This also led to a deterioration in the soil conditions, and
soil erosion in the area as the water sources dried up in the hills. Water shortages became widespread.
Subsequently, communities gave up raising livestock, which added to the problems of malnutrition in the
region. This crisis was heightened by the fact that forest conservation policies, like the Indian Forest Act,
1927, traditionally restricted the access of local communities to the forests, resulting in scarce farmlands in
an over- populated and extremely poor area, despite all of its natural wealth. Thus the sharp decline in the
local agrarian economy lead to a migration of people into the plains in search of jobs, leaving behind
several de-populated villages in the 1960s.[6][13][14]

Gradually a rising awareness of the ecological crisis, which came from an immediate loss of livelihood
caused by it, resulted in the growth of political activism in the region. The year 1964 saw the establishment
of Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh (DGSS) (“Dasholi Society for Village Self-Rule” ), set up
by Gandhian social worker, Chandi Prasad Bhatt in Gopeshwar, and inspired by Jayaprakash Narayan and
the Sarvodaya movement, with an aim to set up small industries using the resources of the forest. Their
first project was a small workshop making farm tools for local use. Its name was later changed to Dasholi
Gram Swarajya Sangh (DGSS) from the original Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal (DGSM) in the 1980s.
Here they had to face restrictive forest policies, a hangover of colonial era still prevalent, as well as the
"contractor system", in which these pieces of forest land were commodified and auctioned to big
contractors, usually from the plains, who brought along their own skilled and semi-skilled laborers, leaving
only the menial jobs like hauling rocks for the hill people, and paying them next to nothing. On the other
hand, the hill regions saw an influx of more people from the outside, which only added to the already
strained ecological balance.[14]

Hastened by increasing hardships, the Garhwal Himalayas soon became the centre for a rising ecological
awareness of how reckless deforestation had denuded much of the forest cover, resulting in the
devastating Alaknanda River floods of July 1970, when a major landslide blocked the river and effected an
area starting from Hanumanchatti, near Badrinath to 350 km downstream till Haridwar, further numerous
villages, bridges and roads were washed away. Thereafter, incidences of landslides and
land subsidence became common in an area which was experiencing a rapid increase in civil engineering
projects.[15][16]

“ ”
Soon villagers, especially women, started organizing themselves under several smaller groups, taking up
local causes with the authorities, and standing up against commercial logging operations that threatened
their livelihoods. In October 1971, the Sangh workers held a demonstration in Gopeshwar to protest
against the policies of the Forest Department. More rallies and marches were held in late 1972, but to little
effect, until a decision to take direct action was taken. The first such occasion occurred when the Forest
Department turned down the Sangh’s annual request for ten ash trees for its farm tools workshop, and
instead awarded a contract for 300 trees to Simon Company, a sporting goods manufacturer in distant
Allahabad, to make tennis rackets. In March, 1973, the lumbermen arrived at Gopeshwar, and after a
couple of weeks, they were confronted at village Mandal on April 24, 1973, where about hundred villagers
and DGSS workers were beating drums and shouting slogans, thus forcing the contractors and their
lumbermen to retreat. This was the first confrontation of the movement, The contract was eventually
cancelled and awarded to the Sangh instead. By now, the issue had grown beyond the mere procurement
of an annual quota of three ash trees, and encompassed a growing concern over commercial logging and
the government's forest policy, which the villagers saw as unfavourable towards them. The Sangh also
decided to resort to tree-hugging, or Chipko, as a means of non-violent protest.

But the struggle was far from over, as the same company was awarded more ash trees, in the Phata forest,
80 km away from Gopeshwar. Here again, due to local opposition, starting on June 20, 1973, the
contractors retreated after a stand-off that lasted a few days. Thereafter, the villagers of Phata and Tarsali
formed a vigil group and watched over the trees till December, when they had another successful stand-off,
when the activists reached the site in time. The lumberermen retreated leaving behind the five ash trees
felled.

The final flash point began a few months later, when the government announced an auction scheduled in
January, 1974, for 2,500 trees near Reni village, overlooking the Alaknanda River. Bhatt set out for the
villages in the Reni area, and incited the villagers, who decided to protest against the actions of the
government by hugging the trees. Over the next few weeks, rallies and meetings continued in the Reni
area.[18]

On March 26, 1974, the day the lumbermen were to cut the trees, the men of the Reni village and DGSS
workers were in Chamoli, diverted by state government and contractors to a fictional compensation
payment site, while back home labourers arrived by the truckload to start logging operations. [6] A locap girl,
on seeing them, rushed to inform Gaura Devi, the head of the village Mahila Mangal Dal, at Reni village
(Laata was her ancestral home and Reni adopted home). Gaura Devi led 27 of the village women to the
site and confronted the loggers. When all talking failed, and instead the loggers started to shout and abuse
the women, threatening them with guns, the women resorted to hugging the trees to stop the them from
being felled. This went on into late hours. The women kept an all-night vigil guarding their trees from the
cutters till a few of them relented and left the village. The next day, when the men and leaders returned, the
news of the movement spread to the neighbouring Laata and others villages including Henwalghati, and
more people joined in. Eventually only after a four-day stand-off, the contractors left. [17][18]Cite error:
Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag; see the help page

Subsequently, over the next five years the movement spread to many districts in the region, and within a
decade throughout the Uttarakhand Himalayas. Larger issues of ecological and economic exploitation of
the region were raised. The villagers demanded that no forest-exploiting contracts should be given to
outsiders and local communities should have effective control over natural resources like land, water, and
forests. They wanted the government to provide low-cost materials to small industries and ensure
development of the region without disturbing the ecological balance. The movement took up economic
issues of landless forest workers and asked for guarantees of minimum wage. Globally Chipko
demonstrated how environment causes, up until then considered an activity of the rich, were a matter of life
and death for the poor, who were all too often the first ones to be devastated by an environmental tragedy.
Several scholarly studies were made in the aftermath of the movement. [6] In 1977, in another area, women
tied sacred threads, Rakhi[disambiguation needed], around trees earmarked for felling in a Hindu tradition which
signifies a bond between brother and sisters. [19]

Women’s participation in the Chipko agitation was a very novel aspect of the movement. The forest
contractors of the region usually doubled up as suppliers of alcohol to men. Women held sustained
agitations against the habit of alcoholism and broadened the agenda of the movement to cover other social
issues. The movement achieved a victory when the government issued a ban on felling of trees in the
Himalayan regions for fifteen years in 1980 by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, until the green cover was
fully restored.[20] One of the prominent Chipko leaders, Gandhian Sunderlal Bahuguna, took a 5,000-
kilometre trans-Himalaya foot march in 1981–83, spreading the Chipko message to a far greater area.
[21]
 Gradually, women set up cooperatives to guard local forests, and also organized fodder production at
rates conducive to local environment. Next, they joined in land rotation schemes for fodder collection,
helped replant degraded land, and established and ran nurseries stocked with species they selected. [22]

Surviving participants of the first all-woman Chipko action at Reni village in 1974 on left jen wadas, reassembled thirty
years later.
One of Chipko's most salient features was the mass participation of female villagers. [23] As the backbone of
Uttarakhand's agrarian economy, women were most directly affected by environmental degradation
and deforestation, and thus related to the issues most easily. How much this participation impacted or
derived from the ideology of Chipko has been fiercely debated in academic circles. [24]

Despite this, both female and male activists did play pivotal roles in the movement including Gaura Devi,
Sudesha Devi, Bachni Devi, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Sundarlal Bahuguna, Govind Singh Rawat, Dhoom
Singh Negi, Shamsher Singh Bisht and Ghanasyam Raturi, the Chipko poet, whose songs echo throughout
the Himalayas.[21] Out of which, Chandi Prasad Bhatt was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1982,
[25]
 and Sundarlal Bahuguna was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1987,[26]and Padma Vibhushan in
2009.

[edit]Legacy

In Tehri district, Chipko activists would go on to protest limestone mining in the Doon Valley (Dehra Dun) in
the 1980s, as the movement spread through the Dehradun district, which had earlier seen devastation of its
forest cover leading to heavy loss of flora and fauna. Finally quarrying was banned after years of agitation
by Chipko activists, followed by a vast public drive for afforestation, which turned around the valley, just in
time. Also in the 1980s, activists like Bahuguna protested against construction of the Tehri dam on
the Bhagirathi River, which went on for the next two decades, before founding the Beej Bachao Andolan,
the Save the Seeds movement, that continues to the present day.

Over time, as a United Nations Environment Programme report mentioned, Chipko activists started
"working a socio-economic revolution by winning control of their forest resources from the hands of a
distant bureaucracy which is only concerned with the selling of forestland for making urban-oriented
products.".[2][21] The Chipko movement became a benchmark for socio-ecological movements in other forest
areas of Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar; in September 1983, Chipko inspired a similar, Appiko
movement in Karnataka state of India, wher tree felling in the Western Ghats and Vindhyas was stopped.
[21]
 In Kumaon region, Chipko took on a more radical tone, combining with the general movement for a
separateUttarakhand state, which was eventually achieved in 2000. [17][21][27]

In recent years, the movement not only inspired numerous people to work on practical programmes of
water management, energy conservation, afforestation, and recycling, but also encouraged scholars to
start studying issues of environmental degradation and methods of conservation in the Himalayas and
throughout India.[28]

On March 26, 2004, Reni, Laata, and other villages of the Niti Valley celebrated the 30th anniversary of the
Chipko Movement, where all the surviving original participants united. The celebrations started at Laata,
the ancestral home of Gaura Devi, where Pushpa Devi, wife of late Chipko Leader Govind Singh Rawat,
Dhoom Singh Negi, Chipko leader of Henwalghati,Tehri Garhwal, and others were celebrated. From here a
procession went to Reni, the neighbouring village, where the actual Chipko action took place on March 26,
1974