Prakriti Resurgent

The Chipko movement of India's Himalayan foothills has gained enormous fame throughout the world's environmentalist circles for its successful efforts against deforestation. Chipko, which means literally "to embrace", has spread to many other parts of India and has drawn worldwide attention for its ingenious methods of civil disobedience including clinging to trees.

Women have played a prominent if not pivotal role in the struggle. Dependent on fuel wood for household needs, women throughout the subcontinent have seen wood collection become increasingly difficult over the last several decades. The lengthier forage time has stressed many village women to the point of physical exhaustion and incurred enormous hardship in their already difficult lives. The retreat of India's forest cover has been particularly acute in the Himalayan region where it is also necessary for stemming landslides, waterborne soil erosion, and flooding. As such, hill women have borne the brunt of this modern assault on their natural resources and livelihoods. Environmental degradation and the longstanding outmigration of hill men in search of employment to the plains have combined to dramatically alter Himalayan society, pushing women into new roles by undermining the social and ecological structure that once ordered their lives. The combination of such pressures and the timely organizing talents of Gandhian activists inspired such women to assert their rights and challenge the destruction happening all around them.

Historical Background

The Uttarakhand region of Uttar Pradesh, India consists of Kumaon and Garhwal that are also the major ethnocultural groups of that area. The two lands persisted as independent feudal kingdoms until they fell to Gurkha expansionism in 1795 and 1803 respectively. For twelve years, the cruel overlords pillaged the land of resources. Deforestation began in earnest as the conquerors plundered the best trees of the lower foothills. Villagers also abandoned their terraced fields to escape like their Nepali brethren from the ravages of the Gurkha forces. Following the Anglo-Gurkha war of 1816, these areas were ceded and incorporated into British India. This change did not bode well for the forests. Though depredations against the forests had occurred before, organized commercial logging to feed Britain's industrial revolution would severely impact the Uttarakhand Himalayas. Large tracts of forested land were granted for agricultural usage. The needs of the British colonial state also resulted in systemic timber harvesting. Extensive railroad construction felled the slow-growing but luxuriant deodar or Himalayan cedar trees.

By the turn of this century, colonial commercial interests were replacing old growth forests with chir-pine plantations for resin extraction purposes. Later, the colonial government felled these same trees by the hundreds of thousands during both world wars. Forest conservation acts and policies only restricted forests further for colonial rather than the local inhabitants' use. The economic devastation of hill communities and the erosion of ancient cultural and societal ties to the forests resulted in self-destructive protests against imperial rule. Rather than freeing reserved forests of their restricted status, villagers responded to increasingly onerous burdens on their livelihoods with spontaneous forest fires and indiscriminate felling. Nationalists also mounted other protests against the exploitative forest policies of the colonial administration, but were suppressed violently by the British Raj.

The advent of independence and the end of the princely puppet states unfortunately accelerated deforestation in the Himalayas. With economic growth and development as new guiding principles, governments encouraged natural resource extraction on an unprecedented scale, even exceeding that of the colonial era. In serving the overall national interest, conditions for forest ecosystems worsened and hill communities were increasingly destabilized. Following the brief border war between India and China in 1962, large swaths of relatively pristine regions of Garhwal and Kumaon were assaulted with an influx from the South. Roads opened up more forests to logging interests, although initially welcomed by local people for the jobs these infrastructure projects created. This had a considerable adverse impact on hill society that remains to this day.

The Modern Context

Both deforestation and the introduction of a money-based economy into the hills dramatically dislocated Uttarakhand village communities. The Garhwal Rifles and other Indian Army regiments had provided opportunities to young Garhwali men for many decades. Although accustomed to such outmigration of men, the new economic realities had propelled a vastly larger movement of people to the South. Many went as menial labourers or servants. Indeed, it became commonplace for affluent Indian families to employ Pahari Lok who were renowned for their honesty and hard work, if not simple-minded gullibility. Sadly, labour abuse regularly marked their service to unscrupulous landlords or exploitative employers. Entire villages were abandoned, as poverty and the monetary demands of the new economy squeezed more and more families off their ancestral lands and down the road to the terai and the plains. Village women often stayed behind and survived on remittance. Their own back breaking daily work intensified has fewer men were available to plow the land or to perform other physically demanding chores.

With the disruption of family life, domestic problems grew acute as the increasingly infrequent visits of fathers to their homes coincided with the expanded responsibilities and workload of mothers. Environmental deterioration and the fall of the great forests further propelled Uttarakhandis to the plains and severely burdened the women that remained. Suicide became common as wide-scale misery afflicted households throughout the Himalayas. Women who could no longer bear the daily toil of walking farther and farther distances for diminishing necessities took their lives by the scores as lasting respites from such harsh living conditions. Even water shortages arose as the broad-leaf trees that once nourished streams disappeared from the landscape. Longer hours spent foraging for firewood led to the neglect of children who waited all day for their mothers to return and prepare dinner. The time spent harvesting wood and fodder invariably exceeded sixteen hours and returns were dismal. The unavailability of fodder trees moreover resulted in the decline in animal husbandry and milk as part of the hill people's diet. Many households could no longer afford a single bullock and communities forsook raising livestock. Malnutrition and sickness increased in frequency as the full extent of the human and ecological tragedy unfolded.

Furthermore, natural disasters increased in intensity as a result of deforested watersheds and destabilized geology. Commercial contractors from the plains carried out their massive extraction of natural resources such as timber, limestone, magnesium, and potassium by destructive means. The hum of machinery, rumble of construction vehicles, and explosion of dynamite became ubiquitous as companies blasted mountainsides, clear cut forests, excavated quarries, and consumed resources for their own corporate needs. Given such massive disruptions of the fragile Himalayan ecology, flooding and landslides claimed more victims and caused extensive damage. In 1970, the Alaknanda river flooded, destroying many homes and killing hundreds. Catastrophes such as the Yamuna floods of 1978 had their origins in the erosion and landslides around Himalayan watersheds, yet wreaked havoc in the plains as well. Landslides also laid waste to villages as in the Pithoragarh district where falling rocks killed 44 people and ruined 150 acres of land in 1977.

Such desperate conditions and loss of life increased substance abuse in the hills to such an extent as to prompt the Gandhian foundation, Uttarakhand Sarvodaya Mandal, to organize around prohibition issues in the 1960s. This organization was founded by colleagues of Gandhi, Mira Behn and Sarala Behn. These western women had settled in the hills to continue Gandhi's work of peaceful social change. Sarala Behn's disciples formed a dedicated band of Garhwali women social workers who likewise proved instrumental in outreach to the hill communities. Linked strongly with the organization and empowerment of women, these activists fought alcohol consumption that was wrecking families and ruining the lives of so many young adults. The ideal of prohibition subsequently spread to other impoverished areas of India and remains a consequential issue for many rural women struggling to support their families despite the menace of liquor. The campaigns were so successful as to banish alcohol from five of eight Uttarakhand districts by 1971. As a first step towards the awakening of Uttarakhandis to their predicament, the women's prohibition movement would form the foundation for the environmental struggles of the seventies. The experience would prove invaluable in the coming years.

Resistance

By the advent of the seventies, the combined hardship and adversity of hill life had prepared the Garhwali people to respond radically to the powers destroying their land and livelihoods. Effectively mobilized by such longstanding Gandhian sarvodaya workers as Sunderlal Bahuguna who had worked on prohibition issues and the Dashauli Gram Swarajya Sangh (DGSS) village-based cooperative leader, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, the movement took on a distinctly non-violent, grassroots essence. Organized first by the sarvodaya workers, the ideals, aims, and methods of the movement quickly spread to trouble spots across Uttarakhand. The first confrontation occurred over the granting of a forest concession to an outside company rather than local interests. Early successes in direct action embracing the trees to ward off the axes of loggers emboldened villagers to demand consultative and democratic management of shared resources, greater accountability, and environmental sensitive development. Through the process, villagers also learned the value of their own forests and the need to protect and preserve them. The scope of the movement widened as more issues came to the fore. Thus, a renewal of ancient bonds arose as people became increasingly aware of the importance of sustainability and reverence for the land. The role of women would soon prove decisive.

Socially conscious activists fanned out across the Himalayas in an attempt to organize as many communities against the commercial logging operations that had threatened and continued to menace their livelihoods. Women, whose voice were once marginal, but were recently inspired by the anti-drunkenness campaigns of the late sixties, heeded the calls and went to defend the trees. In 1974, their courage and vigilance saved Reni forest. As the state government and contractors cleverly diverted the menfolk to a fictional compensation payment site, the women rose from the villages and embraced the trees just as the labourers disembarked from their trucks. Under the leadership of Gaura Devi, a spirited fifty year old illiterate woman, a four day standoff ended in victory for the women villagers. The labourers themselves had come from impoverished hill regions of India and had been shamed into retreating. They, above all, sympathized with the plight of the Reni women and in an irony that would be replayed over and over again, they helped spread the word of Chipko among their own communities in Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir, and Nepal.

In several more actions at places such as Amarsar, Chanchnidhar, Dungari, Paintoli, and Badhyargarh, hill women demonstrated their newfound power as non-violent activists. The momentum increased by leaps and bounds as large-scale resistance arose to external logging interests. In 1977, Bachni Devi, ironically the wife of a contractor, led village women to save Adwani forest. The resultant empowerment of women dismayed many men, yet others grew to accept the new state of affairs. This was perhaps made possible by the immense sympathy aroused by the hardship endured by hill women. Garhwali women likewise proved themselves worthy of respect and reverence in the eyes of their husbands and brothers. Their spirit in defense of the land saved the day. Their spontaneous grassroots activism eventually culminated in the banning of all tree felling above 1000 metres in 1980.

A Gathering of Women in the City

A Gathering of Environmental Activists

A Tree Planting Couple

Where from Here?

As a Third World grassroots movement, the village participants of the Chipko Andolan have set an example of non-violent Gandhian resistance for indigenous peoples and marginalized citizens throughout the Third and Fourth World. By combating such powerful opponents as state governments, commercial loggers, and development planners, villagers of the Garhwal hills demonstrated the courage and foresight of ordinary people when inspired through their own self-empowerment. They have in their struggle challenged the very basis of Western-inspired development as an organizing societal principle, no small feat when confronting the combined forces of state, corporate, and scientific reasoning behind the over-arching and all pervading paradigm. Neither have they rested as continuing grassroots reforestation and afforestation endeavours have aimed to create environmentally sound alternatives for the uplift of the hill people. The lives of such women have furthermore changed for the better since the heydays of the movement. Women's groups have spread to most villages in the hills and formed the nuclei of the ecological rehabilitation of the foothills. Management decisions have been made in cooperation with all concerned. The full participation of all villagers in the activities and decisions of the community has improved, in intangible ways, the overall quality of life.

The struggle continues in many forms. The forests are still endangered and the building of the Tehri dam megaproject that will displace many villages is being resisted by many of the same activists. Recently, demands for more autonomy and full statehood have been undertaken by Uttarakhand women activists who were just coming of age when Chipko began. The new battles have been bloody as state governments and police have inflicted terrible atrocities and human rights violations on the new activists. Yet the undying thirst for self-determination, freedom, and respect for people's rights still persists and sets an example of human dignity for us all.

Literature Cited:

Dogra, B. 1983. Forests and People: A Report on the Himalayas. Bharat Dogra, New Delhi.

Dogra, B. 1992. Forests, Dams and Survival in Tehri Garhwal. Bharat Dogra, New Delhi.

Karan, P.P. 1994. Environmental Movements in India. Geological Review, 84(1):32-41.

Khator, R. 1989. Forests: The People and the Government. National Book Organisation, New Delhi.

Nelson, B. 1993. Chipko Revisited. Whole Earth Review, 79:116-123.

Shiva, V. & J. Bandhyopadhyay. 1986. Chipko: India's Civilisational Response to the Forest Crisis. INTACH, New Delhi.

Weber, T. 1987. Hugging the Trees: The Story of the Chipko Movement. Viking-Penguin Inc., New York.