Modern Indian consciousness about the perils that unchecked deforestation poses to the fragile Himalayan ecology begins with the Chipko movement of 1973, when the hill peoples of the then Uttar Pradesh, now Uttarakhand, offered their lives to preserve their forests, causing shock, awe, and admiration in a somnolent nation. Barely four decades on, the immeasurable catastrophe that has struck the State is a cumulative tragedy of lessons deliberately un-learnt so that politicians, bureaucrats, and local people alike could cash in on the ‘development boom’ being pushed by corporates and contractors.
Uttarakhand is truly the chronicle of a calamity foretold. The heavens roared (one personally never heard such unnerving thunder in over five decades), the mountains ripped, and tender human lives and habitations ceased to be. Putting shattered lives and hamlets back together again will be a herculean task.
Yet Chipko (literally, stick to, hug, embrace) is by no means the first such movement in Indian history. Over five centuries ago, Guru Jambeshwar (b. 1451) of Bikaner called for the protection of trees and wildlife. His disciples came to be known as Bishnoi (followers of 29 precepts), and live mainly in Rajasthan, but are also found in Haryana, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. His rules ensured preservation of the bio-diversity of the region, particularly the khejri (prosopis cineraria) trees that fix nitrogen in the soil and are excellent fodder for animals.
Guru Jambeshwar proscribed killing animals and felling green trees. The Bishnoi are traditional protectors of the deer and antelope (blue bull, black buck, chinkara and chowsingha). Members of this community caught actor Salman Khan and his friends for shooting black bucks for sport in 1998; later former cricketer, late Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi was also booked for the same offence following protests from the Bishnoi community.
In 1730, some 363 Bishnoi men, women and children of village Khejarli, Jodhpur district, led by an intrepid Amrita Devi, gave up their lives to protect their sacred trees from being cut down at the orders of the local ruler, Maharaja Abhay Singh of Jodhpur. The villagers hugged the trees to save them, and were ruthlessly hacked by the King’s men, till the bodies piled up so high that the horror of it all caused the king to apologise and order his men to retreat.
Maharaja Abhay Singh then issued a royal decree banning the cutting of trees from Bishnoi villages. Over the centuries, the Bishnoi have guarded the animals and trees of their region, even at the cost of their lives. Khejarli was India’s first known instance of a people’s movement to protect the environment, without regard for their own lives, and is the precursor of the Chipko movement. Three decades ago, the writer visited Khejarli where a memorial was erected to honour those pioneering brave hearts; to this day, not a blade of grass grows at the spot where the blood of the martyrs collected in a pool.
The Chipko movement began spontaneously in 1973 when women of village Mandal in the upper Alaknanda valley, led by Gaura Devi, Dhoom Singh Negi, Bachni Devi, and others, began clinging to trees when contractors of a sports goods company came to chop them down. They coined the slogan – ‘what do the forests bear, soil, water, and pure air’. This reverberated all over the country and inspired similar local initiatives in many places, such as the Western Ghats and the Vindhyas.
Sunderlal Bahuguna, one of the pioneers of the movement, gave the slogan, “ecology is permanent economy”. He drew national attention to the cause by undertaking a 5,000-kilometre trans-Himalaya march from 1981 to 1983, going from village to village to gather support for the movement. After his meeting with then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the Government of India issued a 15-year ban on felling of green trees in 1980.
Bahuguna says the Uttarakhand floods would not have caused so much devastation if the mountainsides had not been so thoroughly denuded of tree cover in the name of development. Hydropower plants, which stop the flow of water for storage, also increase the risk of floods and landslides.
A major contributory factor in the disaster is the pine trees planted by the British for timber for railway sleepers. Indeed, locals in the hills often complain that the pine trees do not protect the soil from erosion and their leaves and branches do not enrich the soil as native species do.
Activists like Sunderlal Bahuguna and Chandi Prasad Bhatt have devoted their lives to educating people at the grassroots to protect the Himalayas and the health of the river Ganga. Bahuguna is actively engaged in the anti-Tehri Dam protests which began in the 1980s and continue with the active participation of village women who are frequently harassed and arrested by the authorities.
The Tehri Dam, Bahuguna always maintained, was never a choice between development or environment, but between extinction or survival. He has frequently gone on long hunger strikes on the banks of the Bhagirathi in order to stall the dam; the recent tragedy may now force the authorities to rethink the issue.
Perhaps the Supreme Court, which cleared the dam in 2001, will in future refrain from crushing native wisdom to the benefit of rich contractors and corporates. It has not escaped popular notice that no Indian corporate with private helicopters has sent the helicopters to assist in the rescue efforts, or to drop supplies on trapped villagers and pilgrims.
Another eminent Chipko leader, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, hails from the family of the traditional priests of Rudranath Temple in Gopeshwar, one of the Panch Kedar temples dedicated to Shiva, the most auspicious of which is the Kedarnath temple that withstood most of the ravages of the flood. Bhatt’s fight against the government policy of curbing villagers’ right to tree and forest produce for fuel and fodder, in favour of outside commercial interests, led him to mobilise villagers in support of the Chipko Andolan. This eventually overturned the British era forest policy of 1917!
Had the Central and State Governments remembered and respected the message of Chipko, the current tragedy could have been mitigated.
Niticentral.com, 25 June 2013
http://www.niticentral.com/2013/06/25/uttarakhand-chronicle-of-a-calamity-foretold-95034.html
