Axing Chipko
Research for this article was made possible, in part, by a fellowship from the Panos Institute, London. The views expressed here are the writer's own.
The world knows it as the Chipko movement — the most successful environmental mass action of the South, in which simple hill villagers fought big business. There was feminist romance in mountain women hugging trees to save them from the plainsman's axe, daring him, "chop me before you chop my tree." The Leftist nirvana of idealistic little-folk fighting rapacious capital also seemed to have been attained, as did the Gandhian's vision of nonviolence, self sufficiency and khadi. The overall package was good enough to bring awards to the leaders on the Chipko front, grist for academic papers and books, and raw stock for journalists from far and wide.
Yet, the movement was much more than what has been written about it, and also much less. For a while, from early to the late 1970s, Chipko brought unprecedented energy and direction to Uttarakhand — the Kumaun and Garhwal poor-cousin hill districts of Uttar Pradesh state. Hill peasants saw possibilities of cooperative action, uniting against timber merchants and political bosses, and exploring the employment potentials in the hills. Certainly, Chipko was more than an absolutist environmental wave that was only concerned with trees.