Embrace the tree: Remembering Sunderlal Bahuguna
Sunderlal Bahuguna led the ecological foundation of our lifestyle. The ecological worldview of Chipko Movement and his piece of work provides a strategy for our collective survival. The Chipko, or ‘Embrace the Tree’ movement to protect forests from commercial felling in Garhwal Himalayas revived the Indian strategy of conflict management through satyagraha in the early 1970s.
The force behind the movement was support from the women in village camps who were the pillars of the struggle. In early 1974, under the leadership of Goura Devi, 27 women came together and hugged a large number of trees, preventing their felling. After this incident, the government stopped the system of contract felling and formed the Uttar Pradesh Forest Corporation.
Sunderlal Bahuguna was an institution in himself. He believed in sustainability of natural endowments through ecological stability. His message has the key solution for human survival from ecological disasters that we are currently going through. He practiced the Gandhian noncooperation method of protest.
Prominent sarvodaya workers such as Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Dhoom Singh Negi led his work and chased away the commercial contractors who were felling trees in ecologically rich Chamoli and Tehri Garhwal districts. Bahugua approached the then prime minister Indira Gandhi for a complete ban on commercial felling of trees in UP Himalaya.
A 15-year ban was recommended from the office of the prime minister.
ECONOMIC CRISES HAVE ROOTS IN ECOLOGICAL CRISES. THE BAHUGUNA PHILOSOPHY IS BASED ON THE ECOLOGICAL WISDOM THAT ECONOMIC PROSPERITY AND LIVELIHOODS DIRECTLY RELY ON THE PROTECTION OF THE VERY LIFESUPPORT SYSTEM ON WHICH OUR SURVIVAL DEPENDS.
During 1981 – 83, Bahuguna led 4870 km Kasmir to Kohima Chipko foot march which further spread to Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.
Bahugua always advocated for the rights of the forest resources which were neglected by the commercial interests in the Himalaya, the Western Ghats, and the Central Indian hills. Due to many of his long-standing protests, forest-felling was banned in the Western Ghats and the Vindhyas. The Chipko movement became a national campaign. Later a national forest policy was drafted which was more receptive to the local needs and the need to preserve the ecological integrity of the forests.
Economic crises have roots in ecological crises. The Bahuguna philosophy is based on the ecological wisdom that economic prosperity and livelihoods directly rely on the protection of the very life-support system on which our survival depends.
Human well-being is only possible in a healthy ecosystem, based on the economy of permanence rooted in ecological principles.
It is this belief with natural resources and human needs that is aptly captured in Bahuguna’s well-known saying that ‘ecology is permanent economy’.
George Alfred (2013) has written a wonderful book about his work titled ‘Ecology is Permanent Economy: The Activism and Environmentalism of Sunderlal Bahuguna’. Bahuguna also took up protests against large dams in the sensitive eco-fragile Himalayas. For several years, he was the main force behind the Tehri Dam protests and frequently went on hunger strikes on the banks of the Ganga.
I had the privilege of participating in one of the silent protests in Uttarakhand in 2012 with him. Bahuguna will never disappear from our mainstream development discourse and social movements. Let’s carry forward his ideals of protecting and nurturing mother nature!