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Transcript of Chipko Movement
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