Chipko movement

The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan is a movement that practiced

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, Then in Uttar

Pradesh 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. Today, it is seen as an

inspiration and a precursor for Chipko movement of Garhwal.

The Chipko movement though primarily a livelihood protection 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.[4][5] 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 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". 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, 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. In 1987 the Chipko Movement was

awarded the Right Livelihood Award CHIPKO MOVEMENT.

ISSUE

Deforestation is a severe problem in northern India and local people have

banded together to preventcommercial timber harvesting. These people have

adopted a unique strategy in recognizing trees asvaluable, living beings. The

Chipko movement adherents are known literally as "tree huggers."

It was 1973, and the first movement happened spontaneously in a village in

the Himalayas. Since then, the Chipko Movement, groups of activists protecting

their trees, has spread across Uttar Pradesh and India itself. An active protest, the

Chipko Movement put themselves between their beloved trees and the axe

threatening to cut them down.

Surviving participants of the first all-woman

Chipko action at Reni village in 1974 on left

jen wadas, reassembled thirty years later. From

1973, the movement grew rapidly, and in 1980

it succeeded in persuading Indira Gandhi

to  pass a fifteen year old ban on felling in the

Himalayan states. What’s more, although in

2004 one district Himachal Pradesh lifted this ban,

in 2005 it was still in place in most districts.

He is one of the most prominent leaders of the

Chipko movement. An activist and philosopher,

between 1981 and 1983 he travelled 5000km

across the Himalayas spreading the message of

the Chipkos to those he met. In 1989 he began

a series of hunger strikes in protest to dam

building in the Himalayas, and the Chipko

Movement became the Save the Himalaya

Movement.

One of the best things about the Chipko Movement was the way it spread to

women. In Chamoli district in 1974, a group of women protected 2500 trees from

being auctioned off by the government by standing by them. Chipko empowered

women to change their world.We’ve all heard about tree huggers, but this is one

time when this method really worked! It just goes to show that, if you feel strongly

about something, if you want to protect it, you can. A Chipko proverb says:

‘ Embrace the trees and

Save them from being felled;

The property of our hills,

Save them from being looted.’

And it’s true. If you love something, you can fight to save it too, just like the

Chipko movement.

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 the 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, The 1940s was again marked by a series of protests in Tehri Garhwal

region.

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.

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 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.

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 affected 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 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.

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.[4] A local 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 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.

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.

Subsequently, over the next five years the movement spread too 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. In 1977, in another area, women tied

sacred threads, Raksha Bandhan, around trees earmarked for felling in a Hindu

tradition which signifies a bond between brother and sisters.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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. Out of which, Chandi Prasad Bhatt was awarded the Ramon

Magsaysay Award in 1982, and Sundarlal Bahuguna was awarded the Padma

Vibhushan in 2009.

The Chipko movement and women

The Chipko Movement in the Uttarakhand region of the Himalayas is often

treated as a women's movement to protect the forest ecology of the Uttarakhand

from the axes of the contractors. But the reasons behind women's participation are

more economic than ecological. In fact, the economic and ecological interests of

Uttarakhand are so interwoven that it is difficult to promote one without promoting

other. In this paper an attempt would be made to explain the reasons behind

women's active participation in the Movement and their place within the

Movement.

The Chipko Movement began in 1971 as a movement by local people under

the leadership of Dashauli Gram Swarajya Sangh (DGSS) to assert then rights over

the forest produce. Initially demonstrations were organized in different parts of

Uttarakhand demanding abolition of the contractual system of exploiting the

forest-wealth, priority to the local forest-based industries in the dispersal o forest-

wealth and association of local voluntary organizations and local people in the

management of the forests.

In 1982 , in spite of these demonstrations, the DGSS (now DGSM, M for

Mandal) was refused, by the Forest Department, on ecological grounds, the

permission to cut 12 Ash trees to manufacture agricultural implements. At the

same time, an Allahabad based firm was allotted 32 Ash trees from the same forest

to manufacture sports goods. On hearing this news, Chandi Prasad Bhatt threatened

to hug the trees to protect them from being felled rather than let them be taken

away by this company. Till this time, however, the women were absent.

In 1974, inspite of DGSS's protests, about 2500 trees of Reni forest were

auctioned by the Forest Department. The DGSS planned to launch the Chipko

Movement there. However, the local bureaucracy played the trick and managed to

make the area devoid of local men as well as activists of the DGSS. To the utter

surprise of everybody, 27 women of Reni village successfully prevented about 60

men from going to the forest to fell the marked trees. This was the first major

success of the Chipko Movement. It is after this incident that attempts were made

to project it as a women's movement. After this incident, the Reni Investigation

Committee was set up by the U.P. Government and on its recommendations 1200

sq. km. Of river catchment area were banned from commercial exploitation. After

Reni, in 1975, the women of Gopeshwar, in 1978, of Bhyudar Valley (threshold of

Valley of Flower), of Dongary-Paitoli in 1980, took the lead in protecting their

forests. In Dongari and Paitoli, the women opposed their men's decision to give a

60 acre Oak forest to construct a horticulture farm. They also demanded their right

to be associated in the management of the forest. Their plea was that it is the

woman who collects fuel, fodder, water, etc. The question of the forest is a life and

death question for her. Hence, she should have a say in any decision about the

forest. Now they are not only active in protecting the forests but are also in

afforesting the bare hill-slopes.

Afforestation Programmes General Awakening

Since 1976, the IGSS started afforesting such which had become vulnerable

to landslides. Initially this was also an all male programme. Sometimes local

village women participated on some ornamental programme on the last day of the

afforestation camp. However, the idea of increasing the association of women got

momentum after 1978. In the beginning, the local women were assigned the

responsibility of looking after the trees planted in their villages. While planting

trees their suggestions were sought about the species to be planted. To solve the

fodder problem, grass imported from Kashmir was planted.

As the afforestation programme attempted to solve the problem of fuel and

fodder, the women welcomed it. They looked after the trees so much so that the

survival rate is between 60-80 percent. In these afforestation camps, information

about different aspects of local life is exchanged with the villagers. Their basic

problems including the specific problems faced by women are discussed and ways

of solving these problems are evolved.

Because both the protection and afforestation programmes reflect the needs

and aspirations of women, the women have spontaneously responded to the Chipko

call and became the effective links of the movement. In fact recently, due to the

awakening generated during the afforestation camps, women have started Mangal

Dals in many villages have become very active. In our village, the women stood

for elections for village head. Previously, the women used to be passive listeners in

the camps too. In one of the recent camps, July-Aug 1982, women with breast-

feeding children walked about 18 kilometers to participate in the afforestation

camp there. The women, who till recently were mere limbs of the movement, have

now risen to leadership roles.

Success of the Chipko Movement

• Ban on cutting the trees for the 15 years in the forests of Uttar Pradesh in

1980.

• Later on the ban was imposed in Himachal Pardesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan,

Bihar, Western Ghats and Vindhayas.

• More than 1,00,000 trees have been saved from excavation.

• It generated pressure for a natural resource policy which is more sensitive to

people's needs and ecological requirements.

• Afterward environmental awareness increased dramatically in India.

• New methods of forest farming have been developed, both to conserve the

forests and create employment.

• By 1981, over a million trees had been planted through their efforts.

• Villagers paid special attention in care of the trees and forest trees are being

used judiciously.

• The forest department has opened some nursery in villages and supplies free

seedlings to the forest.

• This method often slowed the work and brought attention the government’s

actions.

• The Chipko is still working to protect the trees today through the same

nonviolent methods.

• The chipko movement is teaching the people better land use ,nursery

management and reforestation methods.

Conclusion:

As a diverse movement with diverse experiences, strategies, and

motivations, Chipko inspired environmentalists both nationally and globally and

contributed substantially to the emerging philosophies of eco-feminism and deep

ecology and fields of community-based conservation and sustainable mountain

development.

Reference:

chipko movement - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipko_movement The Chipko movement-

http://edugreen.teri.res.in/explore/forestry/chipko.htm Chipko Movement, India :

http://www.iisd.org/50comm/commdb/desc/d07.htm The Chipko Movement (1987, India)- http://www.rightlivelihood.org/chipko.html

The Chipko movement and women -- By Gopa Joshi - http://www.pucl.org/from-archives/Gender/chipko.htm