Chandi Prasad Bhatt’s contribution to green cause
On July 15 this year, President Pranab Mukherjee honoured Chandi Prasad Bhatt with the Gandhi Peace Prize-2013. He is a great environmentalist, Gandhian and thinker.
The Gandhi Peace Prize is an award that is bestowed to individuals and organisations for their contributions towards social, economic and political transformation through peace and other Gandhian methods.
Born on June 23, 1934, Bhatt was founder of the Chipko movement, adopting non-violence in preventing deforestation in the Garhwal region of the Himalayas by hugging trees to prevent them from being felled during the early 70s.
For his contribution towards the movement, he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1982. In 2003, he was appointed a member of the ‘National Forest Commission’, which reviewed all existing policies and legal frameworks relating to forest management. In 2005, he was conferred the Padma Bhushan.
He was inspired by Gandhian leader Jai Prakash Narayan and actively participated in the Sarvodaya movement, Bhoodan and Gramdan.
He organised hill villages for economic development and fighting liquor abuse.
He founded the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh (DGSS) in Gopeshwar in 1964, to organise fellow villagers for employment near their homes in forest-based industries, especially ash trees and herbs for ayurvedic medicine, and to combat exploitation due to discriminate forest policies.
Curtailment of the villag-
BORN ON JUNE 23, 1934, BHATT WAS FOUNDER OF THE CHIPKO MOVEMENT TO STOP DEFORESTATION IN GARHWAL REGION BY HUGGING TREES
ers’ rights to trees and forest products in favour of outside commercial interests enabled Bhatt, in 1973, to mobilise the society members and villagers into the collective Chipko Movement (Hug the Trees Movement) to force revision of forest policies dating from 1917. Women played the leading role.
The Chipko movement, though primarily a livelihood protection movement rather than a forest conservation movement, went on to become a rallying point for future nonviolent environmental protests and movements, all over the world.
It helped to slow down the rapid deforestation, exposed the vested interests, increased ecological awareness and demonstrated the viability of people power which stirred up the existing civil society in India to address the issues of tribal and marginalized people.
The President appreciated the movement and work of Bhatt.
He said, “It highlights the unique responsibility of protecting creation that has been placed on human beings. It is a movement of love against pulverising greed.”