Writing history, especially contemporary history, is always a challenge on account of the multiple versions of the same occurrences. Even the dates are contested. But, in general, the ‘printed word’ takes precedence over oral accounts, and Google reinforces popular perceptions by creating graphics to mark important milestones. This is how 26 March has come to be accepted as the anniversary of the Chipko movement—because a ‘doodle’ marking its 45th anniversary appeared on this date in 2018.
Netizens were informed that this was an ‘eco-feminist movement’ in which women formed the nucleus, as they were most directly affected by the lack of firewood and drinking water caused by deforestation. This popular characterisation is true, but only partially.
While acknowledging the central role of women, it is equally important to understand the sequence of events that led Chipko activist Gaura Devi to march with the women and girls of Reni village to the nearby forest on 26 March 1974. Their goal was to stop lumbermen from Symonds Sports Company from cutting the trees allotted to them by the Forest Department—but that’s not where the movement started.
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Many chapters of Chipko
Fortunately for us, the Chipko movement has its own James Boswell in Shekhar Pathak, who has not only been an active participant in the movement, but is also a professionally trained historian, researcher, chronicler, intrepid traveller, folklorist, geographer, geologist, photographer, and a powerful speaker who backs his assertions with empirical evidence.
The English translation of his book Hari Bhari Ummeed—The Chipko Movement: A People’s History—places all available facts in perspective, captures the context of the times, and examines the role of the principal actors, including the Union and state governments, as well as the forest and revenue departments. It also discusses the long-term implications and the current status of the movement. Owing to its success, Chipko has spawned a multiplicity of organisations, ecological movements, legislations, and public awards. No wonder, then, that the book received the 2022 Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Award from the New India Foundation.
But this column is not about the book. It is about the events leading up to the Chipko moment, and its key ideological proponents—Chandi Prasad Bhatt of the Dasholi Gram Swaraj Sangh; Sunderlal Bahuguna, who undertook a 5,000 km journey from Jammu & Kashmir to Arunachal between 1980 and 1982; and Vandana Shiva, who has brought her own eco-feminist perspective to the movement. Fortunately, the three of them have refrained from being openly critical of each other. Each has set up their own distinct organisation and received accolades and recognition from both governmental and non-governmental bodies.
Let me also state upfront that my views are more aligned with those of Chandi Prasad Bhatt, whom I have known personally since 1987. That year, a group of us—then probationers in the IAS—were inspired by his lecture at LBSNAA and decided to travel to Chamoli to visit the Dasholi Gram Swaraj Sangh. We wanted to see for ourselves the site of the Gandhian struggle where Gaura Devi and the 24 women from her hamlet of Reni had stopped the lumbermen of Symonds Company from felling trees they had been officially authorised to cut by the Forest Department.
So, in a very small way, I’ve been a witness to the angalwaltha (the Garhwali word for ‘embrace’) movement in the Garhwal Himalayas, whereby protestors protected trees by surrounding them and linking hands, physically preventing the loggers from touching the plants.
However, the Hindi word ‘Chipko’, which has now become synonymous with the movement, meaning “to stick” or “to hug”, actually owes its origin not to the lofty Himalayan ranges, but to the desert dunes of Rajasthan.
Roots of the movement
Back in 1730, a group of 363 Bishnois from 84 villages, led by Amrita Devi, laid down their lives to protect a grove of khejri trees that were to be cut down on the orders of the Maharaja of Jodhpur, who wanted timber for his new palace. However, when the Maharaja got to know of this savage act ordered by his minister, he banned tree-cutting in Jodhpur for perpetuity.
But across India, trees have continued to occupy a fraught space in the development story
Although some colonial-era forestry laws were relaxed in the aftermath of the Kumaon and Garhwal peasant movements of the 1920s, forestry was not topmost on the agenda of governance in UP. Even though its first chief minister Govind Ballabh Pant was from Kumaon.
Instead, the state’s main focus was on zamindari abolition and land reform, buttressed by the pan-India padayatra of Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Gandhi’s favourite disciple. Bhave toured the country on foot for the eradication of untouchability, the redistribution of land, and the promotion of village industries based on local raw materials.
This was the context in which Chandi Prasad Bhatt established the Dasholi Gram Swaraj Mandal in 1964 (now Dasholi Gram Swaraj Sangh, or Dasholi Society for Village Self-Rule), 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.
Much to their chagrin, they faced restrictive forest policies—a hangover from the colonial era still as well as the ‘contractor system’, in which forest land was ‘commodified’ and ‘auctioned’ to big contractors, usually from the plains. These contractors brought along their own logging equipment and skilled and semi-skilled workers, thereby depriving the highlanders of any livelihood options.
In popular perception, this wanton destruction of the forest was responsible for the devastation caused by the flooding of the Alaknanda in July 1970. A landslide blocked the river and affected an area starting from Hanuman Chatti near Badrinath, to 320 kilometres (200 miles) downstream till Haridwar. Washed away were numerous villages, bridges, and roads, leaving in their trail untold misery and deprivation. Thereafter, incidents of landslides and land subsidence became common in an area experiencing a rapid increase in civil engineering projects.
Meanwhile, over the next two years, the DGSS workers held a demonstration in Gopeshwar to protest against the policies of the Forest Department. But the last straw that broke the camel’s back was when the Forest Department turned down the Sangh’s annual request for ten ash trees for its farm tools workshop, but awarded a contract for 300 trees to Symonds, a sporting goods manufacturer in distant Allahabad (now Prayagraj), to make tennis racquets.
In March 1973, the lumbermen arrived at Gopeshwar, but they were confronted at the village of Mandal on 24 April, where about a hundred villagers and DGSS workers were beating drums and shouting slogans, thus forcing the contractors and their henchmen to retreat. Many, therefore, regard this as the first real success of the movement, as the contract was cancelled in light of public pressure. Chipko had begun.
The women fight back
A few months later, in March 1974, the Forest Department—under the guise of providing compensation for land acquired in 1963 for border infrastructure after the Chinese invasion—invited Bhatt and his colleagues to Gopeshwar for discussions. The contractors were informed that the men had left and only women and children remained in the village.
It was thus, in the absence of their menfolk, that the women of Reni village, led by Gaura Devi—who, as Shekhar Pathak says, “were as unaware of Marx and Lenin as they were of the philosophy of Sarvodaya”—confronted the lumbermen, who had not expected any resistance.
The bold and determined stand taken by Gaura Devi and her companions on 26 March—holding off the contractors until the men returned—became the iconic image of Chipko. Although they came to leadership by default, by the time our group visited Dasholi in 1987, they were certainly at par with the men, if not ahead. They led discussions on proposed development interventions and debated whether the village needed a pucca road or a bridle path.
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Ripple effects
It was perhaps fortuitous that the Chief Minister of UP at the time, HN Bahuguna, was also from Garhwal. He immediately appointed a committee to look into the matter and agreed with the villagers’ demands. Imagine the counterfactual: what if the CM had not been a highlander, and the confrontation had taken an uglier turn? Rarely has credit been given to Bahuguna for adopting the approach of conciliation over confrontation.
A ten-year ban was imposed on cutting trees in and around Reni’s forests. As the movement spread to other districts and garnered popular support, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced a complete ban on the felling of trees in the Himalayan region, as well as on limestone quarrying, in 1980. An Eco Task Force was established to restore the ecological balance, and the hills of Mussoorie got a green cover again.
(To be continued)
This is the first in a three-part series on the Chipko movement, the anniversary of which falls on 26 March.
Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Until recently, he was director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal.