Chipko movement

Villagers surrounding a tree to stop it from being felled

The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan (literally "to cling" 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 being felled. 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 Devi sacrificed 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]}

In 1987 the Chipko Movement was awarded the Right Livelihood Award ^[11]

Trees are for Hugging

History

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 th od 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,.^[12] The 1940s was again marked by a series of protests in Tehri Garhwal region.^[13]

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.^[12]

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][14][15]

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.^[15]

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.^[16][17]

“	"Maatu hamru, paani hamru, hamra hi chhan yi baun bhi... Pitron na lagai baun, hamunahi ta bachon bhi" Soil ours, water ours, ours are these forests. Our forefathers raised them, it’s we who must protect them. -- Old Chipko Song (Garhwali language)[18]	”

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 marche

Aftermath

The news soon reached the state capital. where then state Chief Minister, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, set up a committee to look into the matter, which eventually ruled in favour of the villagers. This became a turning point in the history of eco-development struggles in the region and around the world.

The struggle soon spread across many parts of the region, and such spontaneous stand-offs between the local community and timber merchants occurred at several locations, with hill women demonstrating their new-found power as non-violent activists. As the movement gathered shape under its leaders, the name Chipko Movement was attached to their activities. According to Chipko historians, the term originally used by Bhatt was the word "angalwaltha" in the Garhwali language for "embrace", which later was adapted to the Hindi word, Chipko, which means to stick.^[19]

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.^[20]

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.^[21] 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.^[22] 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.^[23]

Participants

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.^[24] 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.^[25]

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.^[22] Out of which, Chandi Prasad Bhatt was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1982,^[26] and Sundarlal Bahuguna was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2009.

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][22] 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, where tree felling in the Western Ghats and Vindhyas was stopped.^[22] In Kumaon region, Chipko took on a more radical tone, combining with the general movement for a separate Uttarakhand state, which was eventually achieved in 2000.^[18][22][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.^[29]

Bibliography

• Anupam Mishra, Satyendra Tripathi: Chipko movement: Uttarakhand women's bid to save forest wealth. Pub. by People's Action, 1978.
• J. Bandopadhyay and Vandana Shiva: Chipko: India's Civilisational Response to the Forest Crisis. Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage. Pub. by INTACH, 1986.
• J. Bandopadhyay and Vandana Shiva: "The Chipko Movement Against Limestone Quarrying In Doon Valley" in: Lokayan Bulletin, 5 : 3, 1987, pp. 19–25 online
• Thomas Weber, Hugging the trees: the story of the Chipko movement, Viking, 1988.
• Somen Chakraborty: A Critique of Social Movements in India: Experiences of Chipko, Uttarakhand, and Fishworkers' Movement, Published by Indian Social Institute, 1999. ISBN 81-87218-06-1.
• Guha, Ramachandra: The Unquiet woods : ecological change and peasant resistance in the Himalaya, Berkeley, Calif. [etc.] : University of California Press, Expanded edition 2000.^{[citation needed]}
• Rangan, Haripriya : Of Myths and movements : rewriting Chipko into Himalayan history, London [etc.]: Verso, 2000. ISBN 1-85984-305-0. Excerpts

See also

Sustainable development portal

• Rainforest Alliancesess
• Conservation ethic
• Conservation movement
• Sustainable development
• Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance

References

1. ^ Then in Uttar Pradesh state.
2. ^ ^{a b c} The Chipko Movement Politics in the developing world: a concise introduction, by Jeffrey Haynes. Published by Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. ISBN 0-631-22556-0. Page 229.
3. ^ ^{a b} The women of Chipko Staying alive: women, ecology, and development, by Vandana Shiva, Published by Zed Books, 1988. ISBN 0-86232-823-3. Page 67.
4. ^ Bhishnois: Defenders of the Environment This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, by Roger S. Gottlieb. Published by Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-91233-4. Page 159 .
5. ^ Khejarli - Chipko Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, by Alex Tickell. Published by Routledge, 2007. ISBN 0-415-35843-4. Page 34.
6. ^ ^{a b c} Box 5: Women defend the trees Global Environment Outlook, GEO Year Book 2004/5, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
7. ^ Hijacking Chipko Political ecology: a critical introduction, by Paul Robbins. Published by Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. ISBN 1-4051-0266-7. Page 194.
8. ^ 100 people who shaped India - Chipko Movement India Today .
9. ^ Chipko Movement The Future of the Environment: The Social Dimensions of Conservation and Ecological Alternatives, by David C. Pitt. Published by Routledge, 1988. ISBN 0-415-00455-1. Page 112.
10. ^ Studying Chipko Movement Women and environment in the Third World: alliance for the future, by Irene Dankelman, Joan Davidson. Published by Earthscan, 1988. ISBN 1-85383-003-8. Page 129.
11. ^ Chipko Right Livelihood Award Official website.
12. ^ ^{a b} Chipko Andolan Gandhi in his time and ours: the global legacy of his ideas, by David Hardiman. Published by C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2003. ISBN 1-85065-712-2. Page 221.
13. ^ Green development:reformism or radicalism? Green development: environment and sustainability in the Third World, by William Mark Adams. Published by Routledge, 2001. ISBN 0-415-14765-4. Page 375.
14. ^ Starting.. Of myths and movements: rewriting Chipko into Himalayan history, by Haripriya Rangan. Published by Verso, 2000. ISBN 1-85984-305-0. Page 4-5.
15. ^ ^{a b} “Hug the Trees!” - Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Gaura Devi, and the Chipko Movement By Mark Shepard. Gandhi Today: A Report on Mahatma Gandhi’s Successors, Simple Productions, Arcata, California, 1987, reprinted by Seven Locks Press, Washington, D.C., 1987.
16. ^ Ecological crisis Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit, by Vandana Shiva. Published by Pluto Press, 2002. ISBN 0-7453-1837-1. Page 3.
17. ^ Landslides and Floods Pauri district website.
18. ^ ^{a b} Chipko! - Hill conservationists Tehelka, September 11, 2004.
19. ^ A Gandhian in Garhwal The Hindu, Sunday, June 2, 2002.
20. ^ The Chipko Movement: India’s Call to Save Their Forests womeninworldhistory.com.
21. ^ Bahuguna, the sentinel of Himalayas by Harihar Swarup, The Tribune, July 8, 2007.
22. ^ ^{a b c d e} Chipko Movement - India International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). December 2007.
23. ^ India: the Chipko movement Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
24. ^ Mishra, A., & Tripathi, (1978). Chipko movement: Uttaranchal women's bid to save forest wealth. New Delhi: People's Action/Gandhi Book House.
25. ^ Aryal, M. (1994, January/February). Axing Chipko. Himal, 8-23.
26. ^ Citation for the 1982 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership Ramon Magsaysay Award website.
27. ^ From Chipko to Uttaranchal: Haripriya Ranjan Liberation ecologies: environment, development, social movements, by Richard Peet, Michael Watts. Published by Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-13362-9. Page 205-206.
28. ^ Chipko ..the first modern Indian environmentalist, and also to being the greatest... Ramchandra Guha, The Telegraph, September 4, 2004.
29. ^ Chipko 30th Anniversary The Nanda Devi Campaign.

• Chapter 4 - Hugs the Tree Gandhi today: a report on Mahatma Gandhi's successors, by Mark Shepard. Published by Shepard Publications, 1987. ISBN 0-938497-04-9.
• Chapter 4 - The Chipko movement Ecology and the Politics of Survival: Conflicts Over Natural Resources in India, by Vandana Shiva. United Nations University Press. Sage Publications. 1991. ISBN 0-80309672-1.

External links

• Standing up for trees: Women's role in the Chipko Movement at FAO (United Nations)
• Chipko Heritage
• The Chipko movement and women