Chipko (or Hugging a tree) movement started in 1973 and continued till 1980’s in the present hill state of Uttarakhand. It was one of the most successful environmental movements in Independent India. The movement was the first of its kind that challenged the authority of the state through non-violent protest by the villagers of a ‘remote’ area. The movement inspired several similar environmental movements in other states of India and the world as well. This paper attempts to throw light on the historical discourse of the movement, focusing on the growing environmental consciousness in the people of the region exemplified through several ‘forest satyagrahas’ organised in the pre-independence period.
Furthermore, the paper would like to examine the question of ‘ideology’ associated with the movement. Was the movement stimulated by a need for ecological conservation, was it an attempt on the part of the local population to exercise their agency over the resources of the forests or was it to initiate environmental activism against the rampant exploitation of the forests by the state? The final part of this paper would link the Chipko Movement with the larger questions of identity and statehood, and assess if the cultural and political legacy of the movement did play any role in the demands for autonomous statehood seen through the region in the 1990s. The paper would conclude by analyzing the role of the movement in shaping ‘developmental’ activities in today’s Uttarakhand thereby helping us to assess whether the Chipko movement can be termed as a success or not.
Since the focus of the paper is to understand the relationship of the people of the hills with their ecosystem, it would be useful as an environmental anthropological study to understand the dependence of the local communities on natural resources and their efforts for preservation.
