Contemporary History of India (HIS05)

First Assignment

Unit 5: Many Voices within the Nation

Chipko Movement

Submitted by

Ritam Talukdar

G2019BA026
Introduction

The Indian nation has many voices within it and since its independence, multiple political
voices have sought to claim their space within the nation. Among them, the voices of the
women’s movement in India have echoed far and beyond the borders of the nation. The
women’s movement in India dates back more than a hundred years and has evolved
manifolds since then. The movement can be categorised into pre-and post-independence
periods. One of the most important and formative influences on the feminist movement in
India was the experience of colonial rule, while the experiment of democracy was an
equivalent influence on contemporary movements (Kumar, 1993).

The nineteenth century was the period concerned with the rights and wrongs of women. The
primary concern was social reform from the conditions under which Hindu women lived.
Some of the oppressive conditions imposed on women were child marriage and Sati, the
burning of a widow on the funeral pyre of the husband. Multiple restrictions were imposed on
women during this period which was sought to be reformed by men who were exposed to
liberal ideas. At this time the difference between the sexes led to a belief that the roles of man
and woman are different and hence, they needed to be treated differently. During this time
women were portrayed as ‘mothers’ of the nation. Gandhi emphasised the qualities of
motherhood and came to be known as the parent of the ‘Indian women’s movement’ (Kumar,
1993). Feminists, as for rights, demanded equal property rights, voting rights and education.

Post-independence feminist movements based themselves on different principles highlighting

yet another facet of female oppression based on gendered structures, division of labour based
on sex and female subordination. The symbol of ‘the mother’ was replaced with the symbol
of ‘daughter’. The focus was shifted from a mother to working women; productivity from
reproductivity. Feminist reflections on the perils of being born as a girl, puberty, fear of
sexual harassment, marriage and the repetition of the cycle through the birth of a daughter
came to the forefront of the women’s movement.

Post-independence there was a lull in feminist activities. Feminist activities resumed with
new vigour in the country when the constitutional guarantee of ‘equality between the sexes’
was denounced as a sham as women were being paid lower wages and at the same time had
to shoulder other duties that come with being a daughter, wife or a mother.
Women also faced peril at the hand of government policy decisions that did not take
consideration of ground reality and were passed without assessing the damage it would do to
a certain section of the population. A series of such decisions, like the Indian Forest Act of
1927, led to the “Chipko Andolan” or “Chipko Movement”.

Chipko: A Background

The conclusion of the Sino-Indian border conflict in 1963 led to significant development in
the, then, state of Uttar Pradesh. This attracted many foreign logging companies to the
abundant forest reserves in the region. On the other hand, government policy restricted the
local villagers’ access to forest resources. The villagers were dependent on the forest for food
and firewoods but on a larger scale, they relied on the forest to regulate weather, purify water,
prevention from soil erosion. 

The movement was initiated by some Sarvodaya workers of the Chamoli region who worked
in the region to boost employment opportunities. Chandi Prasad Bhatt and his co-workers had
been working in the region for 13 years (Jain, 1984) to reconstruct the society.

Bhatt founded a co-operative in 1960 comprised of unskilled and semi-skilled construction

workers. They worked successfully until they faced a strong lobby led by rich contractors.
The contractors would encroach on many ventures that would be led by Bhatt.  Other times,
the government schemes interfered with the co-operative’s business. For instance, the
Sarvodaya started small industries using forest resources but faced difficulties due to
government policies. There would be multiple demonstrations from 1971 to 1973 against the
government’s policies.

Chipko Movement

Chipko movement was a non-violent ecological movement carried out by rural villagers,
especially women in India during the 1970s. It aimed to protect the trees and the forests at
large from government-supported logging. The movement began in the region of present-day
Uttarakhand in 1973 and quickly spread around the Himalayan region. The movement started
under the leadership of Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna where men and women
would resist excessive logging and deforestation by hugging the trees (Mukherjee, 2019).
Hence, the name ‘Chipko’.

The tensions between the government and the villagers intensified when the Forest
Department denied the people their annual request of 10 ash trees but allotted 300 trees to a
sports company called Simon Company. The arrival of the Simon Company’s agents also
brought the Chipko Movement.

The workers decided on 23 March 1973 that would not let Simon Company cut any trees and
rd

on 24 April 100 villagers from in and around Gopeshwar marched on, beating drums and
th

singing traditional songs. The company agents fled the scene. The Forest Department decided
to offer one tree to the village workers to let the company continue but the villagers refused.
The Forest Department gradually kept increasing their offer to ten trees but the villagers
stood firm.

Following the aforementioned events, the Forest Department allotted the Simon Company
new trees in the Phata forest in another part of the district. On 20 June 1973 a communist
th

leader, Kedar Singh Ravat joined hands with the Sarvodaya workers and organised a Chipko
demonstration (Jain, 1984). The villagers kept an eye on the forest till December of that year,
that is when the Company’s validity expired. The movement began to grow from this point
onwards.

The Social Setting

Garhwal was a division of Uttar Pradesh. It had a population of around thirteen lakhs
distributed across four districts, namely Uttarkashi, Chamoli, Tehri and Pauri. The population
was sparse in the bordering districts. There were 104 women per 100 men as men would
mostly migrate to get jobs in the military or get other jobs in cities like Pune and Delhi. In the
district of Chamoli, 60% of women were considered to be ‘working’ while only 55% of men
in the same district were ‘working’ (Jain, 1984). Women mostly work in cultivation. While
men only plough the land women do the rest of the fieldwork. A small percentage of female
workers are engaged in household industries of manufacturing, sewing and repairs.
Females, in Chamoli, not only outnumbered men but also headed most of the households.
This can be attributed to male migration. There are different types of female-led households
like single-member female-led households or female-led households due to the absence of
males. Approximately 20% of the households are headed by females in the absence of males
and about 0.4% of households are headed by females even with the presence of males.

The geographical setting of the region dictates people’s dependence on the forest as well as
land for subsistence and other requirements of survival. The dependence on forest marks a
uniqueness for the Chamoli people compared to the people of the plains.

Every family owns some farmland where they grow wheat, paddy, pulses and oilseeds. The
people are mainly dependent on monsoon rains and irrigation canals. The food produce can
meet the needs of an average family for about three to six months. Therefore, the villagers
have to look for alternative sources of food and the nearest ones were inside the forest.

Prior to 1821 people had free access to the forest but since then government regulations
slowly started to creep in. Many tribal communities lost control over territories that they used
to hold for food.

The sex roles in the region were marked by complicating patriarchal connotations. The
majority of the families were nuclear and of patrilineal descent. The men who do not migrate
for work have minimal economic participation. They would only prepare the land for
cultivating and mend the house, apart from that their contribution was little to none. Hence,
the burden for cultivation fell on the women and the girls and so did the traditional burden of
cooking and other household activities like collecting firewood and fodder for cattle. The
women seldom got a break from such backbreaking and tedious work which prevented them
from having much political power, if any at all. Most of the political power was reserved for
elder males of the families.

Government Scheme Impact

The various development plans introduced by the government had been unsuccessful to make
a meaningful impact on the lives of the poor rural people and the dreaded life of the women.
The government was able to set up schools, medical and housing festivals but the response of
the locals was mixed regarding such development measures.

 Chipko: As an Eco-Feminist Movement

Poor village women are the most affected group by environmental destruction. Women of all
ages and medical conditions are equally affected as they have to meet the daily needs of a
household after a tiring day. The worse the ecological conditions get, the greater the toll on
these women. On the edge of poverty and environmental destruction, they are pushing the
limits of their physical tolerance because they have to travel long distances to gather water,
firewood and edibles.

In 1952 the Indian government brought around 33% of India land under forest cover. The
government stated that it was their utmost priority to increase the forest cover but they could
not materialise their promises. Flagship projects like dams, reservoirs and canals failed to
provide adequate irrigation or to mitigate floods and droughts that hit India annually.

The consequences were suffered by poor rural women whose search time for water, fodder
and fuel increased from 2 hours to 8 hours. The increased search time for daily necessities
translates to lower time for wage work or increasing working day time to 14-15 hours
(Kumar, 1993). Further, it led to adverse health effects. The health condition was made worse
by the unavailability of clean fuel. Moreover, shortage of firewood and usage of cow dung
cakes led to undercooking of food that had severe health effects as well. It was under these
conditions that the ‘Chipko’ movement arose.

In the history of protests for a safe environment in India, the protest of villagers of Tilari in
the Tehri Garhwal, 1930 is a well known one. The villagers gathered to protest forest laws
that were to be imposed by the rulers of Tehri. Despite several casualties, the villagers
managed to retain traditional rights to the forest produce. The Chipko movement was
propelled by women who transformed the struggle into something that was their own
(Kumar, 1993).

The movement got its name from the tactic used by the protesters, hugging the trees, to save
the trees from being cut down. ‘Chipko’ means ‘to cling’ or ‘to hug’ in Hindi. The exact
histories of Chipko differ. It is believed to have begun one morning in 1973, according to the
CSE Report, when representatives of a sports factory from Allahabad came to cut 10 trees in
the hill town of Gopeshwar in Chamoli district.  Firstly, the villagers requested them against
it but when the contractors persisted, the villagers ideated to hug the earmarked trees. The
contractors were defeated and weeks later the villagers along with Chandra Prasad Bhatt went
to other villages to dissuade the contractors.

The movement saw the entrance of women a year after, in 1974. A forest overlooking the
Alaknanda river close to the village of Reni was to be auctioned off. In the knowledge of this
information, C. P. Bhatt visited the village and told the men about the success of Chipko in
Gopeshwar. However, the men decided that it would be better to protest to the authorities in
town. The contractors saw the absence of men as an opportunity to start cutting trees.
Meanwhile, the women had eavesdropped on to the discussion between C. P. Bhatt and the
menfolk because they were on not included in the meeting. The women, seeing this as their
issue, took firm action against it. They were led by a brave 50-year-old widow, Gauri Devi. A
group of about 30 women blocked the path to the forest singing in unison that roughly
translates to

  “This forest is our mother’s home

   We will protect it with all our might”

and with that, the contractors had to leave defeated (Kumar, 1993).

One year later, in 1975, the women of Gopeshwar once again stopped the cutting of trees by
clinging to the trees. They took it one step further this time by ‘gheraoing’, that is
surrounding, some government staff quarters. They only stopped when the District Magistrate
assured them that the young trees near the staff quarters won’t be cut down.

The Chipko movement spread to different parts of the Chamoli district and other parts of the
Tehri Garhwal region. At the forefront of the movement, everywhere, were women. Since
their initial entry, the women have only looked forward and evolved the movement as it was
carried forward. For instance, in Henwal Ghati, women protested against the haphazard
tapping of pine trees by tending the wounds of the trees with mud and sacking. Each protest
solidified women’s closeness to nature and their determination to conserve and protect the
forest against exploitation and destruction.
The success of the protests led the women to form Mahila Mangal Dals (women’s group)
with the help of Dasauli Gram Swaraj Mandal (DGSM) led by C. P. Bhatt. Many Dals
claimed the right to decide what was to be done in the forests and fields. They also fought
against the patriarchal panchayat to protect their fields. In one instance, the village women
built walls around their fields because men would take their cattle grazing through the fields,
trampling the crop. The men were furious and called a panchayat.

The women have been facing harassment since the day Gauri Devi and other women
protected the trees. The men threatened and misbehaved women while they were blocking the
contractors. Gauri Devi was spat on and was offered a bribe but she did not budge. They
would even go on to compose folk songs about Gauri Devi being arrested by police and sing
and dance to it.

The Chipko movement grew into a fight for a safer environment in Uttarakhand. The
movement grew to include protection from mining works, as in Almora. Contractors from
Kanpur secured a right to mine soapstone near a village called Khirakot. The problem arose
when the contractor had to transport the soapstone; they had to travel through paths used by
the villagers of Khirakot. The process of transportation created unnecessary hindrance to the
villagers and the dust from the soapstone, that settled on the fields, formed a layer on the
topsoil making it difficult to cultivate the land. The women, at first, asked the men to discuss
these issues with the contractor. The contractor not only refused to listen to them but he also
decided to file criminal cases against them when the villagers stopped working and built
walls around their fields. The women fought the case in court by collecting money from each
and every household they could. The contractor hired thugs to intimidate the women but to no
avail. Finally, they tried to bribe the women and at last, they resorted to burning the shops
that were owned by the sons of these protesting women. However, the District Magistrate
was persuaded to visit the village and he cancelled the case and the women won their case.
The mines were closed in 1982.

Later, the Khirakot women discovered that they too contributed to the degradation of their
environment. Hence, they decided to take adequate measures to replenish the pine forest and
informed women from other villages about better practices.

Conclusion
The European models of development cannot be replicated as is in a country like India. Such
a policy approach is ignorant of indigenous and marginalised people. In Garhwal, educated
men of privilege were welcoming of such developmental models while villagers were wary
of it. Based on the ideals of Gandhi, Sarvodaya workers emphasised endo-centric strategies,
ecological balance and self-reliance.

The new ecological threats posed by developmental projects were well understood by women
in the Garhwal region because they experience the shortcomings first-hand. The above
account of women was a by-product of grassroots level actions by workers of Sarvodaya who
worked on increasing awareness about the issues. The women participation can be explained
through the ideological basis of Sarvodaya and that women genuinely believe in the
principles of non-violence, co-operation and self-reliance beyond the scope of political
power.

The events of the Garhwal region are unlikely to have been occurred in regions where
Sarvodaya did not exist. The shows that the society was very patriarchal and a women-led
movement had to be spearheaded by a male. The women acted as leaders in the movement
but within the four walls of their household, they were oppressed.

The current scenario has developed a lot. Ecological movements are mostly women-led,
spearheaded by inspirational personalities like Gretha Thunberg. The Fridays For Future,
India is also led by a female and the number of female participants has increased
exponentially. The city of Guwahati has seen a record number of females join the Fridays For
Future protests. They acted on their own conscience; educated, informed and empowered
unlike the women in Reni who had to act spontaneously.

These advancement in eco-feminist movement can be traced back to Chipko Movement and
Gauri Devi and the women of Gharwal, about a hundred year back. Much has changed since
Gauri Devi courageously hugged a tree to save a forest but much remains the same as Disha
Ravi was arrested for engaging in Eco movements much like Devi was harassed. While the
Chipko movement cannot be accurately labelled as ‘eco feminist movement’ as it was done
out of a necessity to save their livelihood which depended on the environment. But the
current movements led by numerous inspirational females are the true ‘eco feminist
movement’ as they are fighting for the survival of the planet itself and we should be part of
this movement as actively as we can.
  

Reference

Jain, Shobhita. (1984). Women and People’s Ecological Movement: A Case Study of Women’s

Role in the Chipko Movement in Uttar Pradesh. Economic and Political Weekly, 19(41).

Kumar, R. (1993). The Struggle for a Safe Environment. In The history of doing: An illustrated

account of movements for women’s rights and feminism in India, 1800-1990. Verso.

Mukherjee, S. (2019). Hugging the Trees: Chipko Movement (1973-1981). Environmental Issues:

Approaches and Practices, 1, 52–59.