Unquiet Uttarakhand

Soda! Activism in the Uttar Pradesh hills has its origins back in the days when the British still ruled. Back then, too, the inhabitants of Kumaun and Garhwal were politically alert and active.

Over the past two decades, a wave of social movements has swept the hill region of Uttar Pradesh. These include movements againsi alcoholism and sale ofillicit liquor, againstunregulated mining, against the siting of large hydroelectric projects, and for the establishment of aseparate province of Uttarakhand within the Indian Union. Most celebrated of all is the Chipko Andolan, the ´Hug the Trees´ movement that is arguably the best known environmental initiative in the world.

These contemporary social movements have heiped place Uttarakhand firmly on the social and environment at atlas of independent India. Yet these movements have also inspired scholars to recover, from the margins of history asitwere,theheritageofearliermovcmentsin the region. Where colonial officials liked to write of the ´simple and law abiding htllman´, the fact is that the hill peasantry have been as politically active and alert to injustice as their counterparts elsewhere in India.

Mountains, Forests and Governance
The analysis of social movements in Uttarakhand must reckon with three distincti ve features of life in the hills. First, the ecological characteristics of mountain society — the close integration of agriculture and animal {husbandry with the forest, the limited availability of cultivable land, and possibilities of agricultural intensification —¦ have meant that in Uttarakhand, as in the Alps and the Andes, rural society has amore or less uniform class structure, composed largely of peasant proprietors with a relatively small proportion of big landlords or agricultura! labourers.Hence the absence of the classic agrarian conflict between landlords and landless labourers. Rural discontent has beenexpressed in different ways, however. This I will deal with presently.

Second, the forests of the region are among (he most valuable in the Subcontinent, a source of hardy coniferous timber and lucrativepine resin. Fromthe late 19th century, the forests ofUttarakhand have been intensely exploited under government auspices, but for the outside market. Commercial forestry entailed strict curbs on the peasant´s access to the woodlands, which adversely affected the local economy and sparked widespread resentment.

Third, throughout the period of colonial rule (1815 to 1848), Uttarakhand was divided into two distinct political units: the princely state of Tehri Garhwal, and Kumaun Division, which was controlled directly by the British. Thus, while theregion was quite homogeneous in terms of economy and culture, the structure of the state, and especially the style of rule, differed greatly in the two territories.

The monarch of Tehri Garhwal, representative of a 1200 year old dynasty, enjoyed enormous legitimacy among his subjects, who accorded him a quasi-divine status. Garhwal´s personalised and flexible system of authority contrasted with the more rule-bound and bureaucratic style of the British in Kumaun, where the colonial state was further separated from its subjects by the chasms of Tace, class and language.

Where the first two factors might explain the originsof socialpro test across Uttar akhand, it was political division of Kumaun and Garhwal which lay behind the different ways in which protest articulated itself.

Kumaun: The first century of British rule in Kumaun is notable for the absence of peasant movements. In view of its strategic location (bordering both Nepal and Tibet), land Tevenue was pitched at a rate substantially lower than the adjoining plains districts. The system of providing unpaid labour {begar) and services {bardaish) for touring officials were, till the advent of commercial forestry, the main source of peasant discontent. The sporadic opposition to forced labour gathered momentum following the state´s takeover of the forests of Kumaun between 1911 and 1917, because forest officials extracted begar at will even as their actions deprived the peasantry of a key economic resource.

Matters came to a head in January 1921, when a general strike against begar paralysed the administration. The strike was called by a massive demonstration at the great Uttaraini fair in the town of Bageshwar. This was followed several months later by a movement against the forest department, with villagers deliberately torching State-con trolled forest areas which were being exploited for timber and pine resin.

Both the begar and forest movements were quite successful: the former leading to the abolition of the forced labour system, the latter forcing the state to make major concessions in its forest policy (although it retained tight control over the more valuable forests). In later years, the peasant rebels continued lo set fire to commercially-worked forests to express iheir dissatisfaction with government policies. Meanwhile, in 1930 and 1942, there was considerable local support, led by the Congress Parly, to the nationwide campaigns against British rule. This included attempts to hoist the national tricolour at public places, and general strikes in response lo the arrest of local leaders.

Garhwal: InTehri Garhwal, commercial forest operations had started even earlier — towards the latter decades of the 19th century. Peasant movements in the chiefdom were” often connected with restrictions on access to the forests. Social movements against state forestry, which erupted in 1904, 1906 and 1930, followed a classic pattern. While breaching forest laws and attacking state officials, peasants did not question the legitimacy of the monarch, himself above wrongdoing in their eyes (by contrast, popular movements in Kumaun were aimed directly at the British). Rather, the peasants asked him to intervene by withdrawing unjust laws and punishing tyrannical officials.

While earlier movements had tended to subside after the monarch´s intervention, events took a different turn in 1930. In the absence of the king, away onholiday in Europe, the Dewan (chief minister) advocated punitive action against those who opposed forest settlement operations in Rawain, a county in the northwestern corner of the chiefdom. The movement spread rapidly when village leaders were arres ted. When negotiations broke down, theDewanmarchedonRawainwithanarmed force. Coming upon a meeting of villagers on the banks of the river Jamuna, this force fired on the crowd and caused many deaths.

Whereas the Rawain affair and theearlier social movements had arisen in response to the state´s takeover of forests, the last and most widespread movement in Tehri Garhwal focused on the heavy burden of land revenue on the peasantry. Land settlement operations, commenced in 1944, were immediately resisted by the affected villagers, who refused to submit to the preliminary survey that was beingconducted.orsupplyfcegar to settlement officials.

When officials took an intransigent stand, what began as a localised movement was quickly transformed into a statewide revolt against the nobility. Leaders of the local Congress party played a significant role in this transformation, as did the proclamation of Independence on 15 August 1947. However, in terms of its aims and methods, this upsurge resembled an archetypal peasant movement rather than a carefully orchestrated nationalist campaign. Thus, villagers burnt court records, attacked state officials, and set up azad pancftayats (liberated areas).

Police firing in the town of Kirtinagar, in early 1948, gave the movement added impetus —c arry ing the corpses of their de ad comrades, peasants marched in their thousands to the capital, Tehri, ultimately taking over the town. The legitimacy of his rule at last questioned, the monarch signed the instrument of Tehri Garhwal´s accession lo Independent India.

Contemporary Movements
When die Chipko movement broke out in March 1973, it was quickly assimilated into the global environmental debate, then gathering force in the wake of the Stockholm Conference, whichhad been held the previous year. Others saw its non-violent tactics as an exemplificati on o f Gandhism (´ ´G andhi´ s ghost saves Himalayan trees,” wrote a journalist breathlessly in one of the first published accounts of the movement.) In later years, Chipko has also been acclaimed by feminists as an inspiring example of the special bond that exists between women and natae.

It is true that there is a strong (if implicit) environmental message in Chipko, that its most important leadeis come out of the Gandhian movement, and that wo men hav e p articipated in large numbers (though not, as is sometimes presented, in opposition to men). But in their | eagerness to lay claim to 2 Chipko, environmen-t; talists, G andhi an s and feminists have all underplayed, and often ignored altogether, the long history of social protest in Uttarakhand that set the stage.

Interestingly, the peasants who formed the core of Chipko were themselves acutely aware of this historical heritage. For them, Chipko was but the latest in a series of movements against the state´s encroachment on their rights, its longstanding denial of their moral and historical claims on the produce of the forest.

Alongside Chipko, several other initiatives have continued the tradition of popular protest in Uttarakhand. Since the 1960s, peasant women have protested the erosion of family life by the spread of alcoholism in the hills, aided by illicit distillation and sale. Led by Gandhi anworkers, and more recently by left wing activists, they haveorg anised demonstrations, sit-ins at liquor stills, and social boycott of both vendors and alcoholics.

Women have also played a prominent role in the peasant opposition to open ´cast mining in different parts of Uttarakfeand, Meanwhile, the most celebrated leaders of Chipko have been coordinating resistance to large dams being planned or built in their home terri tory—Sunderial Bahuguna inTehri, and Chandi Prasad Bhatt in Vishnuprayag.

Scholarly research on the social movements of Uttarakhand is proceeding apace, but much work remains to be done. For the colonial period, research might focus on regional variations in the scale and intensity of protest, and on the role of ideology and organisation. The more recent movements against alcoholism, mining and dam-building also await detailed and sociologically informed analysts.

Above all, we lack an authoritative history of the Chipko Andolan, the most famous and yet in some ways the most misunderstood of social movements of 20th century UttaTakhand.

R Guha is presently Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Library and author of The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (1990) and co-author of the more recent This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India.