Sunderlal Bahuguna

 

Sunderlal Bahuguna and his opposition to the Tehri dam have been a reference point for environmental movements in India. Diversely acclaimed as the father of the Chipko movement, a freedom fighter, a true disciple of Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave, an environmental thinker and writer, a gentle crusader, an unobtrusive messiah, a rishi, the face of TBVSS, convenor of Himalaya Bachao Andolan and much more, Bahuguna has maintained an important presence in the environmental movement of the country.

 

Sunderlal Bahuguna is an Indian eco-activist and Gandhian peace worker, famous for his invaluable contributions to environmental activities. Sunderlal Bahuguna has contributed globally through awareness raising measures concerning deforestation, the negative effects of liquor on mountain life, and the health of the Ganges River. Through his work, Sunderlal has become synonymous with the Chipko movement. He was one of the first people to point out the fallacies of judgment when creating the Tehri Dam. Sunderlal’s outspoken views have ignited the young people of India into action to perpetuate the protest against the ecological ruin imposed on India. He will be most remembered in history for igniting a grassroots movement for protecting the environment.

 

Sunderlal Bahuguna was born on 9th January 1927, in Maroda village near Tehri in Uttar Pradesh. His father was a forest officer in the Garhwal region of Uttar Pradesh. He was the youngest of five children. Sunderlal was originally named Gangaram, but Bahuguna had a sister named Ganga which confused matters for their parents, when either of them was called. “Since I was a beautiful child, they renamed me Sunderlal,” recalls Bahuguna.

 

Initially, Sunderlal Bahuguna fought against untouchability and later started an anti-liquor drive in the Garhwal region with the support of local women. He started social activities at the age of thirteen under the guidance of Shri Dev Suman, who was a nationalist and a Gandhian, spreading the message of non-violence. Bahuguna also mobilised people against colonial rule before 1947. He adopted Gandhian principles in his life and married a woman named Vimla, with the condition that they would live amongst rural people and establish an ashram in a village in Garhwal. Inspired by Gandhi, he walked through Himalayan forests and hills, covering more than 4,700 kilometers by foot and observed the damage done by mega developmental projects on the fragile eco-system of Himalayas and the subsequent degradation of social life in villages.

 

Chipko movement: 

The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan is a movement that practiced the Gandhian methods of satyagraha and non-violent resistance, through the act of hugging trees to protect them from being felled. The idea of 'Chipko' was that of Sunderlal Bahugana's wife and the action was adopted by him. The word 'Chipko' was a loose translation of the word "angal waltha" in the Garhwali language meaning "embrace", which was later was adapted to the Hindi word, Chipko, which means “stick” by Chandi Prasad Bhatt, a noted environmentalist.

 

In Garhwal, the movement started at first between the contractors and people, due to loss of livelihoods. The forest trees were cut down for making sports equipment. The local people were the ones most affected by the rampant deforestation, which led to a lack of firewood and fodder as well as water for drinking and irrigation. Forest cover started decreasing at an alarming rate, resulting in hardships for those involved in labour-intensive fodder and firewood collection. This also led to deterioration in the soil conditions and erosion in the area. As water sources dried up in the hills, water shortages became widespread. Subsequently, communities gave up raising livestock, which added to the problems of malnutrition in the region. 

 

This crisis was heightened by the fact that forest conservation policies, like the Indian Forest Act, 1927, traditionally restricted the access of local communities to the forests, resulting in scarce farm lands in an over-populated and extremely poor area, despite all of its natural wealth. Thus, the sharp decline in the local agrarian economy, lead to migration of people into the plains in search of jobs, leaving behind several de-populated villages in the 1960s.

 

Gradually, rising awareness of the ecological crisis, which came from an immediate loss of livelihood caused by it, resulted in the growth of political activism in the region. The local people established the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh (DGSS), a Garhwal Dasholi Village society for self-rule. This action was led by Sunderlal Bahuguna and Chandi Prasad Bhatt in Gopeshwar, with an aim to set up small industries using the resources of the forest. 

 

The area had restrictive forest policies, a hangover from colonial era, as well as the "contractor system", in which tracts of forest land were commodified and auctioned to big contractors, usually from the plains, who brought along their own skilled and semiskilled laborers, leaving only the menial jobs like hauling rocks for the hill people, and paying them next to nothing. On the other hand, the hill regions saw an influx of more people from the outside, which only added to the already strained ecological balance.

 

Hastened by increasing hardships, the Garhwal Himalayas soon became the centre for a rising ecological awareness of how reckless deforestation had denuded much of the forest cover, resulting in the devastating Alaknanda River floods of July 1970, when a major landslide blocked the river and affected an area starting from Hanuman chatti, near Badrinath to 350 km downstream till Haridwar. Further, numerous villages, bridges and roads were washed away. Thereafter, incidences of landslides and land subsidence became common in an area which is experiencing a rapid increase in civil engineering projects.

 

Soon villagers, especially women, started organizing themselves under Bahuguna's leadership, into several smaller groups, taking up local causes with the authorities, and standing up against commercial logging operations that threatened their livelihoods.

 

In October, 1971, the Dasholi Sangh workers held a demonstration in Gopeshwar to protest against the policies of the Forest Department. More rallies and marches were held in late 1972, but with little effect, until a decision to take direct action was taken. The first such occasion occurred when the Forest Department turned down the Sangh’s annual request for ten ash trees for its farm tools workshop, and instead awarded a contract for 300 trees to Simon Company, a sports goods manufacturer in distant Allahabad, to make tennis rackets.

 

In March, 1973, the lumbermen arrived at Gopeshwar, and after a couple of weeks, they were confronted at village Mandal on April 24, where about hundred villagers and DGSS workers beat drums and shouted slogans, thus forcing the contractors and their lumbermen to retreat. This was the first confrontation of the movement. The contract was eventually cancelled and awarded to the Sangh instead. But, the issue had grown beyond the mere procurement of annual quota of three ash trees, and encompassed a growing concern over commercial logging and the Government's forest policy, which the villagers saw as unfavourable towards them. The Sangh also decided to resort to tree-hugging, or Chipko, as a means of non-violent protest.

 

But the struggle was far from over, as the same company was awarded more ash trees, in the Phata forest, 80 km away from Gopeshwar. Here again, due to local opposition, starting on June 20, 1973, the contractors retreated after a stand-off that lasted for a few days. Thereafter, the villagers of Phata and Tarsali formed a vigil group and watched over the trees till December 1973, when they had another successful stand-off, when the activists reached the site in time. The lumbermen retreated leaving behind five felled ash trees.

 

The final flash point began a few months later, when the Government announced an auction scheduled in January, 1974, for 2,500 trees near Reni village, overlooking the Alaknanda River. Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna set out for the villages in the Reni area, and incited the villagers, who decided to protest against the actions of the Government by hugging the trees. Over the next few weeks, rallies and meetings continued in the Reni area

 

On March 26, 1974, the day the lumbermen were to cut the trees, the men of the Reni village and DGSS workers were called to Chamoli by Uttar Pradesh state government and contractors for fictional compensation payment. Meanwhile labourers arrived by the truckload at Reni village to start logging operations. A local girl, on seeing them, rushed to inform Gaura Devi, the head of the village Mahila Mangal Dal, at Reni village. Gaura Devi led 27 of the village women to the site and confronted the loggers. When all the talking failed and the loggers started to shout and abuse the women and threatening them with guns, the women resorted to hugging the trees to stop them from being felled. The women kept an all-night vigil guarding their trees from the cutters till a few of them relented and left the village. The next day, when the men and leaders returned, the news of the movement spread to the neighbouring Laata and others villages including Henwalghati, and more people joined in. Eventually, after a four-day stand-off, the contractors left. The then state Chief Minister, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, set up a committee to look into the matter, which eventually ruled in favour of the villagers. This became a turning point in the history of ecodevelopment struggles in the Region and around the world.

 

The struggle soon spread across many parts of the Region, and such spontaneous stand-offs between the local community and timber merchants occurred at several locations, with hill women demonstrating their new-found power as non-violent activists. As the movement gathered shape under its leaders, the name Chipko Movement was attached to their activities. Subsequently, over the next five years the movement spread to many districts in the Region, and within a decade throughout the Uttarakhand Himalayas. Larger issues of ecological and economic exploitation of the region were also raised.

 

The villagers demanded that no forest-exploiting contracts should be given to outsiders and that local communities should have effective control over natural resources like land, water, and forests. They wanted the Government to provide low-cost materials to small industries and ensure development of the Region, without disturbing the ecological balance. The movement took up economic issues of landless forest workers and asked for guarantees of minimum wage. Globally, Chipko demonstrated how environment causes, up until then considered an activity of the rich, were a matter of life and death for the poor, who were all too often, the first ones to be devastated by an environmental tragedy. Several scholarly studies were made in the aftermath of the movement. The movement achieved a victory when the Government issued a ban on felling of trees in the Himalayan regions for fifteen years in 1980, by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, until the green cover was fully restored. Sunderlal Bahuguna, took a 5,000-kilometre trans-Himalaya foot march in 1981–83, spreading the Chipko message to a far greater area.

Gradually, women set up cooperatives to guard local forests, and also organized fodder production at rates conducive to local environment. Next, they joined in land rotation schemes for fodder collection, helped replant degraded land and established and ran nurseries, stocked with species they selected.

 

The Chipko movement, though primarily a livelihood protection movement rather than a forest conservation or an eco-activism movement, went on to become a rallying point for many future environmentalists, environmental protests and movements all over the world and created a precedent for non-violent protest. 

 

It occurred at a time when there was hardly any environmental movement in the developing world, and its success meant that the world immediately took notice of this non-violent movement, which was to inspire in time many such eco-groups by helping to slow down the rapid deforestation, expose vested interests, increase ecological awareness and demonstrate the viability of
people's power. Above all, it stirred up the existing civil society in India, which began to address the issues of tribal and marginalized people. So much so that 25 years later, 'India Today' mentioned that the people behind the "forest satyagraha" of the Chipko movement as amongst “100 people who shaped India”.

 

In 1977, Women’s participation in the Chipko agitation was a very novel aspect of the movement. Although many of its leaders were men, women were not only its backbone, but also its mainstay. Over the years, they also became the primary stakeholders in a majority of the afforestation work that happened under the Chipko movement.

 

In the Uttarakhand Region, the communication media underlying the Chipko movement was remarkably small-scale and lowtech, emphasizing local knowledge, local resources, local leadership, local language and locally relevant methods of communication. Poets and singers were frontline motivators, writing verses and songs for public performance to inspire grassroots participation. Ghanshyam Sailani emerged as the poet laureate of Chipko, penning such verses as: 
“Let us protect and plant the trees,Go awaken the villages,And drive away the axemen."

 

Anti-Liquor movement:

Sunderlal bahuguna saw the devastation in Uttaranchal, caused by alcohol. Sunderlal began moving throughout the mountains and providing strength and encouragement to the mountain women to eradicate alcohol from the mountains. Traditionally, these Hindu people do not consume alcohol; however the drink was flowing heavily between India and China, influencing many in its path. The forest contractors of the Region usually doubled up as suppliers of alcohol to men. Women held sustained agitations against the habit of alcoholism.

 

Anti Tehri dam protest: 

The Tehri dam built on the Himalayan Rivers of Bhagirathi and Bhilangana for irrigation and hydel power. Sunderlal Bahuguna and his long-standing opposition to the Tehri dam in Garhwal, have been significant markers in the environmental movements of India in general and for struggles against big dams in particular.  For Bahuguna, the construction of Tehri dam is related to a development system which, according to him, is based on two lies -nature is a commodity and society comprises only of human beings. This system, he claims was born and developed in the west, where the state had vast colonies to exploit, less population, and a big area. However, its application to densely populated countries has created a host of problems, and the crisis of Ganga is one of them. The basis of development, he argues, should be cultural values, and its objective should be the achievement of peace and fulfillment, instead of affluence. It is not the dam, but Ganga that can solve the problems of the Region. He stresses the tradition of worshipping the Ganga, which should be strengthened with scientific support.

 

Sundarlal Bahuguna’s concerns also gave birth to the Save Himalaya Movement, which asks for “a Himalayan policy in which inspiring aspect of Himalaya is maintained”. It states that the Himalaya should remain a living space for its permanent residents, spiritual seekers, pilgrims and tourists visiting for peace and for enjoying scenic beauty. There should be a ban on indiscriminate exploitation and on construction of big dams. He along with his associates formed the Tehri Bandh Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti (Committee for Struggle against Tehri Dam henceforth TBVSS).

 

Four major effects of Tehri dam: atrocities, displacement, corruption and genocide to the local people. Though the reservoir is likely to irrigate 2,70,000 hectares of land, and generate 346 MW of hydel power, the dam submergence area includes the town of Tehri and 23 villages in the vicinity, while 72 other villages are partially submerged. Nearly 5,200 hectares of land is lost to the reservoir. In addition, about 85,000 persons have been fully or partially displaced.

 

Sundarlal Bahuguna remained behind the anti-Tehri Dam protests for decades; he used the Satyagraha methods, and repeatedly went on hunger strikes at the banks of Bhagirathi as a mark of his protest. In 1995, he called off a 45-day-long fast following an assurance from the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao of the appointment of a review committee on the ecological impacts of the dam. Thereafter he went on another long fast which lasted for 74 days at Gandhi Samadhi, Raj Ghat, during the tenure of Prime Minister, H.D. Deve Gowda who gave personal undertaking of project review. However, despite a court case which ran in the Supreme Court for over a decade, work resumed at the Tehri dam in 2001, following which he was arrested on April 20, 2001. Eventually, the dam reservoir started filling up in 2004, and on July 31, 2004 he was finally evacuated to a new accommodation at Koti, a little hillock, along the Bhagirathi continues his environment work.

 

Sunderlal Bahuguna has been a passionate defender of the Himalayan people, working for temperance, the plight of the hill people (especially working women). He has also struggled to defend India's rivers. The opposition to the Tehri dam was not just a simple disagreement on the safety, viability-nonviability, costs-benefits, and displacement-resettlement of a big project. It struck right at the heart of philosophical, cultural, religious, political, moral debates around contemporary developmental efforts and increasing references and emphasis by Sunderlal, on the purity and holiness of Ganga.

 

Environmental effects on Himalayas: 

On June 16, 2013, a Multi-day cloudburst centered on the North Indian state of Uttarakhand caused devastating floods and landslides in the country's worst natural disaster, since the 2004 tsunami. The unprecedented destruction witnessed in Uttarakhand state was attributed, by environmentalists, to unscientific developmental activities undertaken in recent decades contributing to high level of loss of property and lives.

 

The environmental experts reported that the tunnels built and blasts undertaken for the 70 hydro electric projects, contributed to the ecological imbalance in the State, with the flow of river waters restricted and the stream-side development activity contributing to a higher number of landslides and more flooding.

Though, parts of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh experienced the flood, over 95% of the casualties occurred in Uttarakhand. As of 16th July 2013, according to figures provided by the Uttarakhand government, more than 5,700 people were "presumed dead." This total included 934 local residents.

Destruction of bridges and roads left about 100,000 pilgrims and tourists trapped in the valleys leading to three of the four Hindu Char Dham pilgrimage sites. The Indian Air Force, the Indian Army, and paramilitary troops evacuated more than 1,10,000 people from the flood ravaged area.
This disaster, brings to the notice, the warnings given by Sunderlal. He said “It [building the dam] is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. It will benefit the richest farmers, it will uproot the forests of Tehri. The benefits will go to the rich farmers of Western UP and to Delhi’s residents. They say the dam will withstand earthquakes. But these hills will not. Already there are cracks visible in some hills. If the dam breaks, within 12 hours the entire region up to Bulandshahar will be wiped out. Look around, even America is breaking their big dams.”

 

The Great man's views on the environment:

Bahuguna, who represents India’s first generation of green crusaders, said that the days of Himalayan rivers were numbered, which further accentuated the need to preserve the Western Ghats that stretch from Dhule in Maharashtra to Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu.

 

Everything in a forest is dependent on each other,” he said, deploring the trend of artificial forestry. “Today our forests have become plantations. These artificial plantations in the name of forests must stop. Wildlife is an integral part of forests,” 
"Consumerist culture is destroying nature which has become a commodity. Hills, rivers and trees are in danger. The Himalayas have to be saved from the rising temperature. Let us not disturb the flow of rivers," said Bahuguna.“The source of the Ganges at Gangotri is expected to run dry in 2030” 

Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA): 

Narmada Bachao Andolan is a social movement, following Bahuguna's principals, consisting of adivasis, farmers, environmentalists, and human rights activists against a number of large dams being built across the Narmada River

Bahuguna said that the need of the hour was to enhance forest cover in India. “A forest is a community of living things"

 

Jal Satyagraha:

Jal Satyagraha was started on 9th September 2013, in Madhya Pradesh state. Due to the Indira Sagar Dam, the local people's livelihoods will be destroyed, it will submerge hundreds of villages. They demanded a conclusive answer to various serious issues such as compensation for illegal submergence caused due to the release of waters from the upstream Sardar Sarovar dam, into the reservoir, land-based rehabilitation of more than 1,500 adivasi families, ensuring community forest rights etc.

Satyagraha is the struggle for the Truth, a Gandhian way of fighting injustice with the power of the Truth. Jal means water and the two words indicate a powerful means of struggle in the Narmada valley. Hundreds of people are now standing in the waters of the sacred river in the three districts of Khandwa, Hrada and Dewas, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, demanding justice and the implementation of the law. 

Eco-activists like Medha Patkar, Rajendra Singh and Nigamanda saraswathi, Anil Agarwal, Baba Amte and Sam Pitroda are actively taking on environmental issues. It is heartening to see the next generation take inspiration from Sunderlal and fight for the sustainable development of environment.
A prolific writer and communicator, Bahuguna has himself written many articles, leaflets and booklets. His remarkable physical endurance, sage-like apearance,simple living, personal asceticism and effective communication are constantly marvelled at.

 

Awards:

In 1981 Government of India awarded with Padma Shree, but he politely refused saying that "I do not deserve it till flesh and blood (top soil) of India was flowing down to the sea." He got Jamnalal Bajaj Award for constructive work in 1986, Right Livelihood Award (Chipko Movement) in 1987, Honorary Degree of Doctor of Social Sciences was conferred by IIT Roorkee in
1989 and Padma Vibhushan in 2009.

 

Conclusion:

Thus, Sunderlal Bahuguna, Garhwali environmentalist, Chipko movement leader and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of Non-violence and Satyagraha, has been fighting for the preservation of forests in the Himalayas, first as a member of the Chipko movement, and later as he spearheaded the Anti-Tehri Dam movement till early 2004. He is one of the early environmentalists of India, and later he and people associated with the Chipko movement started taking up environmental issues, against large dams, mining and deforestation, across the country. The nation pays him a tribute for his contribution for
the trees.