The Chipko movement () is a forest conservation movement in India. Opposed to commercial logging and the government's policies on deforestation, protesters in the 1970s engaged in tree hugging, wrapping their arms around trees so that they could not be felled.
Today, beyond its eco-socialist reputation, the movement is seen increasingly as an ecofeminist one. Although many of its leaders were men, women had a much more significant participation, as they were the ones most affected by the rampant deforestation,The women of Chipko Staying alive: ecology, and development, by Vandana Shiva, Published by Zed Books, 1988. . Page 67 which led to a lack of firewood, fodder and water for drinking and irrigation. Over the years the women also became primary stakeholders in a majority of the afforestation work that happened under the Chipko movement.The Chipko Movement Politics in the developing world: a concise introduction, by Jeffrey Haynes. Published by Wiley-Blackwell, 2002. . Page 229.Chipko Movement The Future of the Environment: The Social Dimensions of Conservation and Ecological Alternatives, by David C. Pitt. Published by Routledge, 1988. . Page 112. In 1987, the Chipko movement was awarded the Right Livelihood Award "for its dedication to the conservation, restoration and ecologically-sound use of India's natural resources".Chipko Right Livelihood Award Official website.
Background Inspired by Karan Singh and the Sarvodaya movement, in 1964 Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh ("Dasholi Society for Village Self-Rule"), was set up by Gandhian social worker Chandi Prasad Bhatt in Chamoli Gopeshwar, 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 DGSM from the original Dashauli Gram Swarajya Sangh (DGSS) in the 1980s. The organisation had to face restrictive forest policies, a hangover of colonial era still prevalent, as well as the "contractor system". Under this system, pieces of forest land were commodified and auctioned to big contractors, usually from the plains, who brought along their own skilled and semi-skilled labourers, 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."Hug the Trees!" – Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Gaura Devi, and the Chipko Movement By Mark Shepard. Gandhi Today: A Report on Mahatma Gandhi’s Successors, Simple Productions, Arcata, California, 1987, reprinted by Seven Locks Press, Washington, D.C., 1987.
Hastened by increasing hardships, the Garhwal Himalayas Starting.. Of myths and movements: rewriting Chipko into Himalayan history, by Haripriya Rangan. Published by Verso, 2001. . Page 4-5. soon became the centre for a growing 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 Haridwar 320 kilometers (200 miles) downstream. Numerous villages, bridges and roads were washed away. Thereafter, incidents of landslides and land subsidence became common in the area which was also simultaneously experiencing a rapid increase in civil engineering projects.Ecological crisis Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit, by Vandana Shiva. Published by Pluto Press, 2002. . Page 3.Landslides and Floods Pauri district website.
Event Villagers, including women, began to organise themselves into several smaller groups. The movement started in 1973, taking up local causes with the authorities, and standing up against commercial logging operations that threatened their livelihoods. In October 1971, the Sangha 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 racquets. In March 1973, the lumbermen arrived at Gopeshwar, and after a couple of weeks, they were confronted at village Mandal on 24 April 1973, where about a 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 the 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 (50 miles) away from Gopeshwar. Here again, due to local opposition, starting on 20 June 1974, 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 until December, when they had another successful stand-off when the activists reached the site in time. The lumbermen retreated, leaving behind the five ash trees that had been felled.
A few months later, the final flashpoint began 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 25 March 1974, the day the lumbermen were to cut the trees, the men of Reni village and DGSS workers were in Chamoli, diverted by the state government and contractors to a fictional compensation payment site, while back home, labourers arrived by the truckload to start logging operations.Box 5: Women defend the trees Global Environment Outlook, GEO Year Book 2004/5, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).On seeing them, A local girl 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 talks failed, and 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. The women kept an all-night vigil guarding their trees against the cutters until 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 other villages, including Henwalghati, and more people joined in. Eventually, after a four-day stand-off, the contractors left.Chipko! – Hill conservationists
Effect The news soon reached the state capital, where the 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. The Hindu, Sunday, 2 June 2002.
Over the next five years, the movement spread to 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 that 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 the development of the region without disturbing the ecological balance. The movement took up economic issues of landless forest workers and asked for guarantees of a minimum wage. Globally, Chipko demonstrated how environmental 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, called Rakhi, around trees destined for felling. According to the Hindu tradition of Raksha Bandhan, the Rakhi signifies a bond between brother and sisters. They declared that the trees would be saved even if it cost them their lives.The Chipko Movement: India’s Call to Save Their Forests womeninworldhistory.com.
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.Bahuguna, the sentinel of Himalayas by Harihar Swarup, The Tribune, 8 July 2007. One of the prominent Chipko leaders, Gandhian Sunderlal Bahuguna, took a 5,000 kilometre (3000 mile) 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.India: the Chipko movement Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Participants
One of Chipko's most salient features was the mass participation of female villagers.Mishra, A., & Tripathi, (1978). Chipko movement: Uttaranchal women's bid to save forest wealth. New Delhi: People's Action/Gandhi Book House. 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 of this participation was impacted by or derived from the ideology of Chipko has been fiercely debated in academic circles.Aryal, M. (1994, January/February). Axing Chipko. Himal, 8–23.