By Shatakshi Gawade and Bhavya Iyer
It’s a dire scene. Cracks reach from end to end across walls and ceilings of dwellings. People flee their ancestral homes, belongings strapped to their backs. The year (2023) that the alarm was sounded on the imminent sinking of Joshimath, a Himalayan town and gateway to many treks and religious destinations in Uttarakhand, is also the same year that the Chipko Andolan turns 50.
The Chipko Andolan succeeded in mobilising hill communities, especially women and students, in the 1970s to save the Himalayan forests from extractive companies, contractors and governments, and protecting their source of livelihood and sustenance. The Chipko Andolan was essentially an economic struggle, with inherent ecological consequences, which are encapsulated in the lines by activist Kunwar Prasun: Kya hai jungle ke upkaar, mitti paani aur bayaar; mitti paani aur bayaar, zinda rehne ke aadhaar (What do forests give our lives: soil, water and air; soil, water and air are what keep us alive).
The Andolan is historic for several reasons. Led by social-political workers, women and students, it resulted in positive change for local communities, and it inspired environmental activists globally, including a group of Swedish activists in 1987, and Japanese citizens in 2008, all of whom protested tree felling by nonviolent methods such as tree-hugging. The movement wasn’t a sudden upsurge of people, it was a slow awakening, seeping through the valleys and forests, finally upwelling into mass community action across the hillslopes of Uttarakhand, resulting in positive change.
First the British, then the Maharaja, and then subsequent Acts increasingly restricted access of local communities to the forests. The trees of Uttarakhand, from sal and chir pine to deodar, are of high economic value. Sal was first used for making railway sleepers – two million sleepers were extracted by 1878. The forests were later auctioned to paper mills, plywood factories, for resin extraction and others, often at much lower prices than available for locals. The discontent felt by people at this wholesale destruction of forest tracts, while they were prevented from collecting forest produce, slowly began coming together by the end of the 19th Century. This turned into organised protests and demands for forest rights, demands which were raised during the Indian Freedom Struggle in Uttarakhand, too. These conditions, along with devastating floods, one of them along the Alaknanda in 1970, galvanised people to join the Chipko Andolan.
The expression of the word ‘Chipko’ was heard first on March 27, 1973 from an agitated Chandi Prasad Bhatt, a Gandhian environmentalist and social activist, when Symonds Company loggers arrived in Gopeshwar. The first marked Chipko action was taken on April 24 at Mandal when ash trees were given to a company to make sports goods; these had been denied to the local Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal for making agricultural implements. The activists rose in defiance, declaring that they would never let the trees be cut, and that they would stick to the trees (Chipko). This nonviolent act defeated the loggers, the trees were saved, and the first Chipko inspired others to rise for their forests. Along with Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Govind Singh Rawat, Gaura Devi, Sunderlal Bahuguna, Ghanshyam Sailani, Shamsher Bisht, Dhoom Singh Negi, Sudesha Devi Man Singh Rawat and many others drove this resistance in the 1970s and 80s.
Sunderlal Bahuguna (centre) , along with several other activists, drove the resistance for forest rights. Photo: Public domain.
Picture this – it was an early morning in the remote Himalayan village of Reni in 1974, when most male villagers had gone to the district headquarters of Chamoli to collect the 14-years-delayed compensation for land they had given up to the Army after the Chinese attack of 1962. Only women, seniors and children were in the village when labourers were smuggled into the forest to chop trees. Gaura Devi gathered 21 women and seven girls and marched up the mountain to save their forests, which they considered their maika (parents’ home). They firmly told the men to leave their forest alone. The women’s quiet, nonviolent resistance in the face of a group of unknown, rowdy, drunk labourers shook the men, who were forced to leave the forest. When the men of the village returned, along with other activists such as Chandi Prasad Bhatt, they saw “the women who – ignorant of Marx and Lenin, and almost equally of Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave – had unexpectedly finished the spadework that had been done by male leaders,” writes author and historian Dr. Shekhar Pathak in The Chipko Movement: A People’s History.
After the historic Chipko at Reni, the movement continued spreading to other parts of Uttarakhand. The pressure of tourists on the Valley of Flowers and the extraction of wood for the Badrinath temple were impacting the forests. The villagers of Bhyundhar (Chamoli) successfully drove away the labourers with their agitation. In Almora district, 6,000 trees in the Chancharidhaar forest were saved from Star Paper Mills, and were given to the locals to make their homes and for use in cremation grounds. People used slogans such as ‘Pedon par cut jayenge, apne red bachaenge’ (Cut us before the trees, we will save our trees), which made labourers recede in shame.
Gaura Devi’s son, Chander Singh Rana, now 78, talks about the persisting connection between the forest and the people. We still depend on the forest for medicinal herbs, and the most fresh vegetables. He says, “The Chipko Andolan taught us that we must save what nature has given us. The movement was born because there was so much oppression [of people’s rights]. Gaura Devi, though she was unlettered, was part of the movement so that the wealth of the forests could be saved for future generations.” Activist Shiv Nayal, who was a college student and journalist for a local newspaper in the late 70s, remembers the month and a half they staked out the Chancharidhaar forest with Bipin Tripathi and associates, despite the fear of bears. They spent the nights in the forest; they feared the contractors would strike then. “The time was such that people used to talk about forest issues constantly. It was inevitable that the youth would join the Andolan,” he reminisces. He adds that the movement became what it was on account of the involvement of women such as Gaura Devi. “Women truly understood the need for the forest, and saved their wealth for future generations. The women were able to rope in their neighbours, children, which took time, but spread and peaked.” After that, different expressions of Chipko emerged at Vayali (Uttarkashi), Nainital, Advani and Badiyargarh (both in Tehri), Janoti Palri and Dhyari (both in Almora), Dungari Paintoli (Chamoli) and several other places with unique success through public participation.
In the late 70s, the Chipko Andolan united Garhwal and Kumaon, the two divisions of the state, like no other cause had before. The Chipko Andolan successfully armed villagers, especially women, in taking the lead in saving their forests. The social awareness and binding from the Chipko Andolan also trickled into an alcohol ban campaign and the campaign for the formation of a separate Uttarakhand. The Chipko Andolan did not end with the famous hugging-of-trees protest – it began with it. The next steps of the movement, as laid out by Sarla Behn, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Sunderlal Bahuguna, Shamsher Bisht and others were towards making local communities self-sufficient when it came to forest dependence – greening of the hills by planting trees, which also helped with slope stabilisation; growing fodder plants for livestock, building check-dams, and more. The movement recognised the importance of a healthy environment for the livelihoods and prosperity of people living in the hills.
Chandi Prasad Bhatt, now 89, was one of the drivers of the Chipko Andolan and worked towards making locals more self-sufficient.. Photo: Public domain.
In the ensuing years, Chipko influenced the implementation of the Forest Conservation Act 1980, which disallowed the use of forests for non-forest purposes. The centralisation of power and its problems for local communities were realised only later. The Chipko Andolan inspired several movements within Uttarakhand such as the Beej Bachao Andolan (Save Seeds Campaign), Maiti Andolan (Tree Planting Campaign), Chetna Andolan, Van Panchayat Sangharsh Morcha, anti-mining and Nadi Bachao Andolan (Save Rivers campaign).
When it comes to the motivations of the Chipko Andolan, what is often forgotten is that a key demand of the movement was the acknowledgement of the rights of local communities to use the forests. Even today, the rights of communities to forests is hotly contested. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, often referred to as the Forest Rights Act (FRA), attempts to right historical injustices meted out to forest dwelling communities who, for wildlife conservation or ‘development’, were uprooted from ancestral lands and denied land rights in forest areas. However, implementation of this Act is often patchy, with claimants facing yards of bureaucratic red tape. Meanwhile, large swathes of forest are lost to ill-thought out ‘development’ and infrastructure projects.
Uttarakhand’s forests, covering 45.44 per cent of the geographical area, are home to sloth bear, leopard, tiger, chital, sambar and hundreds of avian, reptilian and amphibian species. Forests were, and still are, an integral part of the lives of Uttarakhandi people – cattle rearing, farming, material for building homes, water mills, locally run forest industries, all depend on the jungles in the people’s backyards. They are also a source for herbs to treat illnesses, honey, fuelwood, and other natural resources. Even casual conversations with pahadi people reveal the deep connection and love they have for their mountain homes and the forests they depend on. Himalayan forests also provide critical ecosystem services – the trees and grasses bind the soil, preventing landslides and erosion; they help recharge groundwater, and of course they are important carbon sinks.
Across the world, forest regions are plagued by persisting tussles over who owns the forest and who gets to use resources from it, and how they can be conserved for posterity. Andy White, an expert in land and resource rights, and Alejandra Martin, social movements and climate justice expert, write that increasingly, economic development and environmental protection agendas are converging all over the world. Experts are now acknowledging that the “traditional management practices of Indigenous peoples can be positive for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem maintenance”. In Ecuador, community ownership of forests has worked as a disincentive to converting forests. In Uttarakhand too, communities have developed ways of using the forest sustainably. Dr. Pathak writes that economy and ecology are two sides of the same coin in rural Uttarakhand.
Joshimath, today the gateway to many religious destinations and treks in the Himalaya, is built on old moraine. Unregulated construction and tunneling are causing the town to sink. Photo: Public domain.
The Himalaya is frequently referred to as the Third Pole, and the source of water for nearly two billion people in the Indian subcontinent. The region is also a stage for geo-political manoeuvering, being of grave strategic importance for India, Pakistan, China, Nepal and Bhutan. This has translated into an urgency for development in the form of road construction and dam building in parts of the Himalaya, particularly near border regions, such as in Ladakh, Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh.
At a time when forests and their conservation are clearly seen as barriers to development, with legislations being passed through to amend the laws protecting our forests – as in the case of the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023 and references to the Chipko movement being removed from the NCERT curriculum – simultaneously, more people than ever are standing up for their rights to clean and safe environments and the need to safeguard our wilds. The time is ripe for a new movement along the lines of the Chipko Andolan.
Acknowledgement: The history and understanding of Chipko is based on Dr. Shekhar Pathak’s seminal book The Chipko Movement: A People’s History.
Shatakshi Gawade and Bhavya Iyer are Assistant Editors at Sanctuary Asia.
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