Once upon atime IN Rep the flagbearers of Chipk Fifty years ago, women ina alayan village gave the agitation a clear vision. heir Non-violent protest against the Curtailing of forest dwellers’ Tights transformed fental-activism environme beyond the motintains 110 am off’March 26, 1974, a group of Himachall labourers inform about the presence ofthese strangers? ‘She ranto the head of the Mahila Mangal Dal (MMD), Gaura Devi. She told her about the out- \siders in their forest. MMD was a small organi- back nme cipto meets wt Chipko m¢ ‘Gaura Devi had not been able to attend the Treen ne® although her son had talked about Itwas around Ul am — time for cooking in the village. Gaura left her house and rallied Seeing their mothers looking fast, seven litle girls also ran after them. With Gaura were 20 women marched onthe Site for- and seven girls, who! reacts ‘They were shocked to see the women smarcig towards them evn fthey didnot show it The women told them not to cut the forest. This s our parental home, our maika, they sald. We get wood, grass, herbs and vege- tables from here. Don't cut Ifthis is cut, the bills will fll on our village and there will be floods. Our bagads (riverside farmland) will be ‘washed away. Don't destroy our aia Don't destroy our home. This was their lea. Seeing the meals being prepared. ‘the women told the workers to eat ‘heir food and then come down with them, Some ofthe contractor's men and forest employees were drunk. They shouted at the women and accused them of interrupting their nena: ing forest guard ambling sais aaa ™ the guard approach, Gaura Devi unbuttaned her garment. “Here, shoot me and cut down ‘my maika and take it away", she told him. Below the path where she stood; the Rishi- ganga flowed and beyond that he Nanda Devt oomed large. Her challenge was met with a stunned silence. This was an extraordinary ‘momentin Utarakhand history comparable to January 13, 1921, when, in Bageshwar, a lege was taken to stop bepar for colonial off Glals,or to April 23,1930, when in Peshawar Garhwall soldiers refused to fire upon ‘unarrued satyagrahis. Now, in March 1974, in the upper Alaknanda Valley, it seemed as if, ‘through Gaura Devi, not just Reni but all of Shekhar Pathak. Usarikband an hadspoken heeft nunny The labo drunkenbenchne anda J eaten, the scolded ft by the women Alsarmed him. The apg Bard and Out The drunken men cijeg get moving, caste men’ and abused the womens oe cast Meanwhile thom ee ‘stop the labourers. or Seeing an Army vehi Malar therestfthefoe nomads thought thatthe actviss vereconng Se, a ar ee dom They picked up their sabbals (con aden Samene et behind. These women ised the remaining sabbals to pull down the cement strap and close off the approach route to the forest. ‘Thereafter, there wasnoscopefor mischief Gaura, 54, Moongs 5), afd several other women were on the road. Near the bridge lay 800 sacks ofrations. The women sat down onthe une- tion ofthe forest trackand the oad The con- piper es nese Gx Det Ty allthis had happened because of her woman who washot scared ofthe gun Cura kkeptquiet. The women sat there through the night and sang songs about Nanda Devi and other deities, Gaura recalled they did notraise ‘any slogans then, When words translate into action, thereisnoneedtovoicethem. At the dawn of March 27, as the sun rose from the summit behind Rishiganga, the ‘women saw their forest smile, They too were relleed By310 am, Govind Singh Ravrt from Joshimath, Chandi Prasad Bhatt and others from Gopeshwar!‘Marx, and almost equally so of the philosopt oftahatna Gand thee wore ha ade we did was the right thing. We are not remorseful or scared. We did not hitanybody. |Wespoke wo them with love. Ithe police arrest tus, we have no fear. We saved our maika, our fields and bagads." She narrated the chain of ‘would get the men to beat them up. They were told that the activists had no quarrel with both listening to Bhatt. He prased the actions ‘ofthe women and talked aboutthe need totake this struggle further. Rawat said he had never been so happy as he was with his act of resist ance. A decision was taken to hold a demon- stration on March 31 By now, the men of Reni village had come back. They were proud of their women but found it hard to believe the chain of events, For the next four days, the actviss and the labourers stayed put Different ‘groups were given the responsibilty of guard ing the forest and tending to the labourers’ ‘needs and rations, The wornen came and went from the village. They arranged for food. So- ‘gans were raised dally There was alot of con- pressive: ation ‘was held It was asif all of Dhaull valley had ‘gathered on the banks ofthe Rishigange. From all sides, wearing colourful traditional attire, ‘men, women, and children poured in. Some _groups were singing songs about Nanda Devi and others were raising the slogans that had ‘Deen taught to the villagers in past months. Atthis meeting, the villagers and activists ‘defined and presented the mavement in their ‘own ways. The most recent victory was cele- brated, with some tracing the sequence from the villages of Mandal Phata and Rent and talking about fhe need to pre: che the fightand itcame tothe fores that had just been saved. Those who did not know about Mandal and Phhata were sur- (eed tokam ebusthem, Spe pens that until constructive: swere taken by the government, there was o guarantee for thesafery ofthe forests termed thisan unexpected and) event. ‘The Reni resistance gave fhe Chipko agita- tiona clear shape and a certain shine. ‘Who will nt be proud ofthis resistance? ‘Shekhar Pathak thor of Chipo Maverent A People's History, taught at Kuraon University ands row associated with Pohar Foundation. ‘Theviews expressed are persons!50 years ‘after tryst with history, Raini braces for new challenge |On March 26, 1974, women from ithe village took an extraordinary stand by defiantly hugging trees. Today, they're readying to survive the climate crisis Jayashree Nandi letters@hindustantimes com t's been a while since Bina Devi has hada good nightssleep. The furrows, ‘on her sunbaked face have gotten deeper in the last three years, her socks more pockmarkedas she paces ‘up and down her tenement perched ‘on the side of a mountain, waiting for the distant rumble of calamity. On a similar winter night, a wall of water cascading down a mountain slope smashed through her village, marooning mostofits residents and killing two. As day broke, the wreckage of devastation made clear that a glacial lake outburst had crushed the Rishiganga hydel project and National Thermal Power Corporation's Tapovan Vishnugad project. A few days later, water again ‘accumulated in the Rishiganga, prompt- ing the state disaster response force (SDRF) to set up a siren-based early- warning water-level sensor system. “Many of us do not sleep through the night. We wake up suddenly in the fear that it may happen again,” said Devi, ‘Across the Himalayas, this isa depress- ingly common story ~ small mountain communities caught between hulking infrastructure projects, and fragile ecosys- temsunable to bear the burden of untram- melled development. But Devi's predicamentisnot common, hecanse the village she livesin is not com- mon either. Her village of Raini built the earliest people's movement against envi- ronmental degradation with the iconic Chipko, which reached its zenith on March 26,1974 when village resident Gaura Devi and 27 other women confronteda group of loggers, bugging ash trees and keeping a night Jong vigil that forced the lumbermen tofinally retreat. Fifty years later, the hills are in fer- ment again, but this time, Devi and her cohort of local women are notas certain that they can stop the forces that threaten to destabilise their lives. The government has retreated and local organisations that once mobilised hun- dreds of people have atrophied. Most of all, the climate crisis has meant a slow degeneration of their quality of life ina way that is difficult to document, except in lived experience — the meadows grow- ing greyer, the mountain slopes more naked. “We have been seeing a severe decline in snowfall in the past 15 to 20 years. We do not understand what is happening to our hills,” said Devi.History in the hills ‘The mobilisation around Chipko began small, with Gandhian groups sprouting all over the Garhwal hills in the 1960s, against the backdrop of companies and mills first entering the region. In 1973, a group of villagers and Gandhian activists stopped sports company Symonds from. felling trees in Chamoli district. Against the backdrop of the devastating Ala- knanda floods in 1970 that killed several, local villagers stecled themselves against any encroachment on their forests. On March 26, 1974, when forest officials and labourers reached Raini’s forests in the morning, some women spotted them going to the forest. Men from most bor- der villages were in Chamoli that day to collect compensation for a project. The forest department saw itas an opportu- nity to fell the ash trees, as they expected ‘women would not dare to intervene. But, Gaura Devi and 27 other women and girls banded together, hugging a tree each in defiance. “The women did not budge. Some also broke the small road connecting to the forest so that the offi- cials and labourers could not go to the forest at night,” recalled Chandi Prasad Bhatt, one of Chipko’s foremost leaders. Bhatt recalled that Gaura Devi told him not only about the struggle with the agentsand labourers, butalso how they insulted the local women. The women kept the vigil all night, and when the men returned the next morning, they joined the protest. On March 30, the women from Lata, Raini and other bor- der villages put on their traditional attire and carried drums up the hills. “The rally started from Rishiganga. I used to have a protest song which they also sang. They were carrying Chipko ban- ners. Ber Bhao todne dil ko dil se jodne, rokne tabahi chale shanti ke sipahi (to break hatred and stop destruction, the warriors of peace are marching). 1 believe people and forests have a rela- tionship and you cannot oversee it, The women proved it,” said Bhatt. After a four-day stand off, the loggers relented. By then, Chipko had become a house- hold name across north India, and shaken the centres of power in Delhi and Lucknow. A committee formed by chief minister HN Bahuguna eventually ruled in favour of the villagers. Eventually, Chipko came to be recog- nised as one of the world’s first eco-femi- nist movements, where local women used traditional knowledge to speak of their relationship with the ecosystem, the sus- ceptibility of eco sensitive regions such as Raini, and the need for fair access to forest resources and careful planning in the Him- alayan regions.Historic, yet endangered In Raini, a village of 135 people, time appearsstill. Located at the tip of the con- fluence of the Rishiganga and Dhauliganga rrivers, itis at the northwestern edge of the Nanda Devi National Par. The Garhwal ranges loom in the background, one peak lush with forests of pine and fir, and ‘brown and rugged with littie vege- tation. In their traditionally knotted Garhwali sari, the women spenda major- ity of theday tending to their animals and ‘sharing duties with the men, who now also ‘workal construction sites and as labourers downhill. The only concession made to modernity is the occasional denim jacket slungover their shoulders. Yet, things are changing. The memories ‘of the two people from Raini-70-year-old Amnrita Devi and 26-year-old Ranjith Singh Rana, both of whom worked at the Rishi Ganga project -who were killed in 202 are fresh. Ifithas happened once, itcan hap- pen again,” said Devi. ‘The low grumble of the earthmovers working on one projectoranother formsa constant background hum, Nature is turn- ing harsher-the wintersshorter but more biting, the showers heavier but more scat- tered, and the summers longand searing. ‘And below them, the ground appears tobe literally slipping. Nowhere is this change more visible than in the three-room house where Gaura Devi once lived and whic’ is now inhab- ited by her son Chander Singh and his wife Juthi Devi. A huge gash disfigures the front facade of her painstakingly built house, serving villagers a distressingreminder of the slope destabilisation that has rendered Raini unfit to live, and showing thateven the village’s storied fightagainst environ- mental degradation could not safeguard their future. “There are cracks in all our homesand on the roads. Wewere hoping that because this isa historical village, itis Gaura Devi's village after all, the govern- ment will do something, But our hope is fading,” said Devi. Most of the 54 houses in Raini have cracks in their walls and their bases are destabilised. A report by geologists from the Uttarakhand Disaster Recovery Initia- tive (UDRD submitted to the Chamoli dis- trict magistrate in July 2021 and seen by HT said that the 2021 glacial lake burst destabilised Raini, “Raini village is facing serious slope sta- bility problems... During investigation, wide cracks were observed in the walls and floors of many houses, indicating active slope movementin the area. Itis, therefore, advisableto rehabilitate Raini village to an alternative safe location,” said the report, seen by HT. During a field visit by the geol- ogists that year, they observed that the material that forms the slope is highly satu- rated due to incessant rain. On June 14 that year, about 40 metres of the road at Raini broke off and was engulfed by the Dhauli- ganga on the Joshimath-Malari route, cut- ting off army and Indo Tibetan Border Police posts and villages along the India- China border. Local women say they have been pro- testing against hydropower projects since 2007-08 but to little effect. “They were blasting and tunnelling here, that iswhy our land started skidding. All our homes and even the roads used to shake. Don’t we understand these things?” asked Manju Devi, a local resident.At a crossroads Today, Gaura Devi's legacy and the future of Raini stand ata crossroads. Most young people have left the village for harsher, but safer, climes in the plains. Large cracksin the fields have rendered many of them non irrigable, and the elderly women complain that their perennial source of water, the Rishiganga, has been replaced witha tank installed on the upper reaches of a hill above the village. The plan to shift the village also appears to bein limbo, “In 2021, some government people had come who had offered the option of moving us to Suwai gaon near Tapovan. But Suwai villagers refused to give us space. They did not want us to comewith our cattle so we did not move,” said Manju Devi. The Chamoli administration said land was limited. “We earlier identified two nearby areas for the rehabilitation of the villagers. However, the rehabilitation plan couldn't materialise due to limited availability of land,” said NK Joshi, dis- trict disaster management officer. A statue of Gaura Devi and other women hugging trees stands in the mid- die of the village in a newly created park ~areminder of the extraordinary move- ment that reshaped India’s understand- ing of the environment 50 years ago. But local people say they'd much rather see their present and the future of their chil- dren secured. “Nobody visits us any- more,” said Manju Devi. “We are living in fear of another landslide or glacier break.” Fifty years ago, women from the village hugged trees, a milestone in India’s envi- ronmental movement. Now, theyare cling- ing on to their land, living in hope.he efforts of Chipko a orkers helped bring” F change in attitude ‘Sunderlal Bahuguna rom time immemorial, forests and the humen settlements in and around them have existed ina symbiotic relationship, Forests have been source of edible fruits and roots, water, grass and fodder for livestock “and fertile sol for agriculture. Commenting on this, HG Walton wrote _ inthe Almora Gazetteor100 years ago, “The hill manis indeed specaly blessed _by the presence in almost ever jungle offuits, vegetables or rots to help him __ over period of moderate scarcity.” ‘In the last25 years, however, this friendly relationship has been replaced ial Exploitation ofthe forest wealth and forest resources, resulting “in incalculable harm. Himalayan forests are green gold for state governments ‘which earn considerable revenue from the sales of forests, Meanwhile, the of mote and more forest areas under the plough, the shrinkingof pas: ‘utes, and the cutting ofthe mountainsides for road- building have made sol {sion and landslides a phenomenon of geological proportions, On August ‘ABawhen the country was celebrating Independence Day, the Khetaand Tawa sghatarea on the Indo-Nepalese border was the scene ca calamity. Inatand- Slide, 44 people were erushed to death. This was by no means an isolated ~ occurrence. | ‘The Himalayas, at one timea source of prosperity, arenow turning into.a source of destruction. Soil erosion-causes the displacement of about 600,000 tomes of fertile land every yea, sll which takes nature ‘between 500 and 1,000 years to build. The , 2 ‘ossin terms of nitrogen, potash and phos- ie must be of the order of 270,000 Soil erosion has also shortened the «life and capacity of reservoirs and irrigation | channels. Therate of siltation of the reser- irs constructed during the third and | fourth five-year plans was 213% higher than “the estimates. The Ramganga Project in _ Kalagarh, Uttar Pradesh, commissioned in | 1876, hasa reservoir life of 185 years, Buton “account ofthe higher silt load, the actual rate of siltation snow several times greater, “thus reducing the useful life of the dam toa / mere 48 years, About 20% ofthe Kosi canals, _ate silted. These problems of national have been frequently discussed the state assemblies, in Parliament and at ars, but no concrete steps have been to solve them. The Chipko movement -dravin people's atten mn fo them in a most 2 2 jomen have always “een in the forefront of movement atal lar ‘Ge-Mandal Kedarnath feted nar moll), Pata-San- ‘gzali(Uttarlashi), Chane | BS “chatidhar (Almora) and | == “Henwalghati (Tehri- | SG “Gaihvwal) The reason is. “obvious, With the disap- ‘eatance of fertile topsollof te hills, menfolk have leftor the painsin search 4 ‘ofemployment. The whole burden of maintaining their familieshasfallenon == ‘heshoulders of women, Even they purchase food grains and other nevessi- tes with thetrhusbands' income, they have to collet fuel to cook fod, water “to drink and fodder forthe cattle. Theyhave to trudge, quite often 30 kilome- “tyes;tocollect fuel and draw water.” Each day, these necessities of lifeare becoming more and more distant for more and more people in the Himalayas. The UP government this year final- ised a 2125 crore scheme to supply drinking water to 1,250 villages in Uttara- Khand. Some 12 years ago, a similar scheme was devised to bring water to Pauri froma source 60km away. The source at the time yielded water at the rate of 360 litres per minute. Today it yields only 108 litres per minute. The hill ‘women, after hard labour, have to keep awake till late at night to wait for their turn to fill a pitcher of drinking water. These are hard-pressed hill women — who came out of their homes in Raini (Chamoli) in March 1974 to stop the contractors from cutting the trees. They told them: “This forest is our maternal home. We won'tlet you cut the trees.” This sentiment was echoed in Adyani (Henwal valley, Tehrt. ‘Garhwal), where women put sacred threads around the trees marked and ‘sold for felling by the forest department. Whenever the contractors’ axemen ‘came tocut the trees, they had to face strong opposition. And, when on Feb- ruary 1, last forest officers arrived with 50 armed policemen to helpacon- tractor, they clung to the trees and told the axemen: “Cut us, not the trees.” The armed men had to turn back. The chief cutcome of the Chipko movement has been the rousing of tree consciousness among the masses. Even its worst critics admit that the efforts of the Chipko workers have resulted in a change of attitude for the better among the local people. Before this, whenever there were agitations ‘over forest issues by the forest dwellers, the agitators were the destroyers and the government the saviour of forests. Now the situation has been reversed, The Chipko movement will live even after the present exploitative forest policy is changed. We cut more and more forests to meet our never-ending requirement of raw materials. The resources of natural wealth are diminish- ing. The forest area is decreasing with the extension of roads, cities and agri- cultural land, Wildlife is fast disappearing. The skinning of the earth will bring-about untold misery. The Chipko movement demands the plantation of fruit-bearing and fodder-bearing trees. If this is done, the Himalayas will ‘once more become a source of prosperity, and the main product of the coun- ‘try’s forests will no longer be timber and resin, but oxygen, watengnd| soil. — On May 21, 1978, HT carried this article by Sunderlal Bahuguna, an environmentalistUnsung heroes, women look to gain rightful place ‘movement set an example. ‘our forests," said Devi. From their determination, Chipko was born; and, as ong as the movement ran, ‘women formed its backbone. “Sudesha behen, Bachni Devi, Kalavati devi were ‘important leadersbuttheir names did not ‘come up as much as those of the men,” said Vijay Jardhari,a Chipko leader. On February 9,1978, women organised ‘a protest in Narendranagar against the auction of trees.“Sudesha Devi took outa huge protest march, activists managed to break the gates where the auction was taking place. Many of the women were still breastfeeding but they had to goto jail for 4 days,” he added. Inthe 1980s, the leadership mantle was taken over by Kalavati Devi. “These villa- ‘ges were not electrified then. The electric- ity department hed let the electric poles here and did not takethem tothe villages. Led by Kalavati Devi, women decided to ‘arty the electric poles themselves. These ‘women would campall night in the for- ests, keeping a watch on fires,” said S Local women hugging trees duringthe Chipko cerryiuaces Jayashree Nandi Bttesehinastatinescon ring of beads around her neck nda woollen jacket slung over the traditional Garhwali attire, Juthi Devi is. surprisingly sprightly for her age. The 70-year-old is one of the 135-od surviving residents of Raini,perched on te steep mountain face phil from Joshimath in Utarakhand. She speaks haltinglyin Bhotia, the local language. and spends lage chunks ofher day navigatingan aray of strenuous tasks rearing catle, bringing firewood, gath- ering food, tending tothe Belds and taking careof her family. In thismelee of chores, days can sometimes stand still. Yet, the memories of one day are burned into Devt's mind, That spring Tuesday 50 yearsago, Devi ‘was woken upearly by her mother inlaw Gaura Devt, Some localshad spotted men from the plains scoping the forests that ringed thei village. The men comprised Rawat, avillage leader. Today, the region is very different. Framed by rugged peaks and bare stony ‘mountain faces, Raini appears deserted, save for asmattering of langurs and dogs “Most young people, including Juthi and her husband Chander Singh's children, haveleftfortheplains, “Today thisisavil lage of the old. Doyou see any young per- son here? Weare a family of 5 but only two of us are let," added Devi. Many of the women left in Raini an legends in their own right, having founda place in history books and local folklore as partof the Chipkolegacy. But their every- day life is blighted by harsh conditions. ‘There is no primary health centre nearby and the nearestschool isthree kilometers away, involvinga steep hike. Plus, there is the gnawing feeling that the environmen- talist foremothers didn't get their due. “Yes, Gaura Devi did aheroic deed. But all you hear are names of men in the Chipko movement. It's because we are illiterate women who are not able toarti forest officials, agents from the Allaha- bact-based sports company Symonds and labourers to saw off the trees; but the vi- lage was bereft ofits own men, who were all ina nearby city o collect compensa tion fora project. Waiting for them woul have meant surrendering the forests. To the women, there wasonly one choice. “We did whathad to be done, Ourmen folk wereaveay. So fllowed what Gaura Deviasked us todosince she wasleading us” said Devi, Gaura Deviled Juthi Devi and 26 other women and girls from the Raini Mahila Mandal into the forest. Eye ball-to-eyeball with the loggers, each woman hugged an ash tree even as the ‘men jeered and hnurled insultsat them, Nightfell.butthey didn'tmove.As thesun rose over the Garhwal, the men returned and joined the women. By then, newsof their defiant stand had started trickling downhill to Dehradun and Lucknow, even Delhi, Four days later, the women won as, the CMordered an inquiry and the men retreated. “We stopped them from felling ulate our stories,” said Bina Devi, former head of the Mahila Mandal The village followsa ratrilineal systen of property transfer, where men inherit land from their fathers. “That's the ‘unspoken law that women have accepted ong ago,” said Bina Devi. The women toil on the lands of their ‘men, grow food for the village, hike to dense forestsand camp there for months, guarding the forests and also gathering Tesources like herbs and firewood. “Women lift gas cylinders on their back and hike up to their homes. It's routin Until you are dead, you must do it” sai Jaymia Devi, local resident. Yet, they are proud ofthe mark in his- tory they left,and the lessonsthey taught their children, “Every tire theresa crisis, an army is bom... My mether, Gaura Devi created an army,” said her son, Chander Singh. Jayma Devi smiled and agreed. “Yes, we saved our forests because the for- est gave us so much,” she added. “There ‘would be no life withou: it”