Chipko Movement

Chipko movement, also called Chipko andolan, nonviolent social and
ecological movement by rural villagers, particularly women, in India in the

1970s, aimed at protecting trees and forests slated for government-
backed logging. The movement originated in the Himalayan region
of Uttarakhand (then part of Uttar Pradesh) in 1973 and quickly spread
throughout the Indian Himalayas. The Hindi word chipko means “to hug” or
“to cling to” and reflects the demonstrators’ primary tactic of embracing
trees to impede loggers.
Background
With the conclusion of the Sino-Indian border conflict in 1963, the Indian
state of Uttar Pradesh experienced growth in development, especially in the
rural Himalayan regions. The interior roads built for the conflict attracted
many foreign-based logging companies that sought access to the region’s
vast forest resources. Although the rural villagers depended heavily on the
forests for subsistence—both directly, for food and fuel, and indirectly, for
services such as water purification and soil stabilization—government policy
prevented the villagers from managing the lands and denied them access to
the lumber. Many of the commercial logging endeavours were mismanaged,
and the clear-cut forests led to lower agricultural yields, erosion, depleted
water resources, and increased flooding throughout much of the
surrounding areas.
The movement
In 1964 environmentalist and Gandhian social activist Chandi Prasad Bhatt
founded a cooperative organization, Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh (later
renamed Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal [DGSM]), to foster small industries
for rural villagers, using local resources. When industrial logging was linked
to the severe monsoon floods that killed more than 200 people in the region
in 1970, DGSM became a force of opposition against the large-scale
industry. The first Chipko protest occurred near the village of Mandal in the
upper Alaknanda valley in April 1973. The villagers, having been denied
access to a small number of trees with which to build agricultural tools,
were outraged when the government allotted a much larger plot to a
sporting goods manufacturer. When their appeals were denied, Chandi
Prasad Bhatt led villagers into the forest and embraced the trees to prevent
logging. After many days of those protests, the government canceled the
company’s logging permit and granted the original allotment requested by
DGSM.
With the success in Mandal, DGSM workers and Sunderlal Bahuguna, a

local environmentalist, began to share Chipko’s tactics with people in other
villages throughout the region. One of the next major protests occurred in
1974 near the village of Reni, where more than 2,000 trees were scheduled
to be felled. Following a large student-led demonstration, the government
summoned the men of the surrounding villages to a nearby city for
compensation, ostensibly to allow the loggers to proceed without
confrontation. However, they were met with the women of the village, led
by Gaura Devi, who refused to move out of the forest and eventually forced
the loggers to withdraw. The action in Reni prompted the state government
to establish a committee to investigate deforestation in the Alaknanda valley
and ultimately led to a 10-year ban on commercial logging in the area.
The Chipko movement thus began to emerge as a peasant and women’s

movement for forest rights, though the various protests were largely
decentralized and autonomous. In addition to the characteristic “tree
hugging,” Chipko protesters utilized a number of other techniques
grounded in Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha (nonviolent
resistance). For example, Bahuguna famously fasted for two weeks in 1974
to protest forest policy. In 1978, in the Advani forest in the Tehri Garhwal
district, Chipko activist Dhoom Singh Negi fasted to protest the auctioning
of the forest, while local women tied sacred threads around the trees and
read from the Bhagavadgita. In other areas, chir pines (Pinus roxburghii)
that had been tapped for resin were bandaged to protest their exploitation.
In Pulna village in the Bhyundar valley in 1978, the women confiscated the
loggers’ tools and left receipts for them to be claimed if they withdrew from
the forest. It is estimated that between 1972 and 1979, more than 150
villages were involved with the Chipko movement, resulting in 12 major
protests and many minor confrontations in Uttarakhand. The movement’s
major success came in 1980, when an appeal from Bahuguna to Indian
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi resulted in a 15-year ban on commercial
felling in the Uttarakhand Himalayas. Similar bans were enacted
in Himachal Pradesh and the former Uttaranchal.
Lasting impacts
As the movement continued, protests became more project-oriented and
expanded to include the entire ecology of the region, ultimately becoming
the “Save Himalaya” movement. Between 1981 and 1983, Bahuguna
marched 5,000 km (3,100 miles) across the Himalayas to bring the
movement to prominence. Throughout the 1980s many protests were
focused on the Tehri dam on the Bhagirathi River and various mining
operations, resulting in the closure of at least one limestone quarry.
Similarly, a massive reforestation effort led to the planting of more than one
million trees in the region. In 2004 Chipko protests resumed in response to
the lifting of the logging ban in Himachal Pradesh but were unsuccessful in
its reenactment.

Chipko Movement

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Chipko movement, also called Chipko andolan, nonviolent social and

ecological movement by rural villagers, particularly women, in India in the

With the success in Mandal, DGSM workers and Sunderlal Bahuguna, a

The Chipko movement thus began to emerge as a peasant and women’s

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