The forests of India are a critical resource for the subsistence of rural people throughout the country, especially

in hill and mountain areas, both because of their direct provision of food, fuel and fodder and because of their role in stabilising soil and water resources. As these forests have been increasingly felled for commerce and industry, Indian villagers have sought to protect their livelihoods through the Gandhian method of satyagraha or non-violence resistance. In the 1970s and 1980s this resistance to the destruction of forests spread throughout India and became organised and known as the Chipko Movement.

The first Chipko action took place spontaneously in 1973 and over the next five years spread to many districts of the Himalaya in Uttar Pradesh. The name of the movement came from a word meaning 'embrace': the villagers hugged the trees and thus saved them by putting their bodies in the way of the contractors' axes. The Chipko protests in Uttar Pradesh achieved a major victory in 1980 with a 15-year ban on green felling in the Himalayan forests of that State by order of India's then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. A similar ban was later also implemented in the states Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh. (In 2005, the ban was still in place regarding felling for commercial purposes except for Himachal Pradesh where it had been lifted again in 2004 despite Chipko s protests.) The movement spread to Himachal Pradesh in the north, Karnataka in the south, Rajasthan in the west, Bihar in the east and to the Vindhyans in central India. In addition to the ban in Uttar Pradesh, the movement succeeded in halting clear felling in the Western Ghats and the Vindhyas, as well as generating pressure for a natural resources policy more sensitive to people's needs and environmental factors.
The Chipko movement or Chipko Andolan is a movement that practised the Gandhianmethods of satyagraha and non-violent resistance, through the act of surrounding trees to protect them from being felled. The modern Chipko movement started in the early 1970s in theGarhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand,Then in Uttar Pradesh with growing awareness towards rapid deforestation. The landmark event in this struggle took place on March 26, 1974, when a group of peasant women in Reni village, Hemwalghati, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, acted to prevent the

cutting of trees and reclaim their traditional forest rights that were threatened by the contractor system of the state Forest Department. Their actions inspired hundreds of such actions at the grassroots level throughout the region. By the 1980s the movement had spread throughout India and led to formulation of people-sensitive forest policies, which put a stop to the open felling of trees in regions as far reaching as [1] Vindhyas and the Western Ghats. Today, it is seen as an inspiration and a precursor for Chipko [2][3] movement of Garhwal. The Chipko movement, though primarily a livelihood movement rather than a forest conservation movement, went on to become a rallying point for many future environmentalists, environmental protests [4][5] and movements the world over 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 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, a quarter of a century later, India Today mentioned the people behind the "forest satyagraha" of the Chipko [6] movement as amongst "100 people who shaped India". Today, beyond the eco-socialism hue, it is being seen increasingly as an ecofeminismmovement. Although many of its leaders were men, women were not only its backbone, but also its mainstay, because they were the ones most affected by the rampant [citation needed] deforestation, , which led to a lack of firewood and fodder as well as water for drinking and irrigation. Over the years they also became primary stakeholders in a majority of the afforestation [7][8][9][10] work that happened under the Chipko movement.

When did the Chipko Movement get started?

This Chipko Movement was started by group of villagers in Uttrakhand who opposed the cutting of trees. It is the first organised movement started in April 1972 to protect the trees against the commercial Forest Policy. Though this Chipko movement gained its prominence in 1970s, the real movement occurred in 1604, when a large number of villagers (from the Bishnoi community) embraced the trees in a forest (near Khejri village, close to Jodhpur) and prevented the kings soldiers from cutting them down. The angered Jodhpur king ordered the soldiers to kill the Bishnois, while cutting down the trees, and as a result around 363 people lost their lives trying to protect their beloved Khejri trees (which are regarded as gods of the desert). That event has been recorded in Indian history as the Chipko Movement. Thus started, the Chipko Movement has now gained great significance throughout the world's conservationist circle for its successful attempts against deforestation. Chipko in local dialect means to embrace and refers to the method that has been applied to protect the forest from the commercial timber cutters. This revolutionary movement started by the villagers to save forests from deforestationsoon got worldwide support and attention. Chipko Movement was very successful in influencing policy both at center and state level. The participants in Chipko Movement were primarily small town women who fought for their bread and communities, these women were determined to protect the forests from deforestation even at the cost of their lives. Gradually men also were involved in the Chipko Movement.

What is the current day impact of Chipko Movement?

Forest is an asset that provides survival for many Indian villagers where it is not merely in terms of fulfilling their basic needs but also in terms of livelihood. So when trees were felled indiscriminately for commercial and industrial purposes, villagers sought to protect their forests by following the Gandhian method of Satyagraha by hugging the trees when the axe man comes to cut it.

The fact that the villagers undertook to guard the forests from felling also side by side planting the saplings for the coming generations at the cost of their lives made Chipko Movement a worldwide phenomenon. When people questioned the villagers about their action, the villagers are known to have replied that if they plant a tree now it will bear fruits after many years where their children and grandchildren would eat its fruits even if they are no more. When it comes to understanding the Chipko Movement, women of Uttrakhand village would know it perfectly because this has been the way of looking at their forest which supports their lives, and so their sentiments will always be attached to Chipko movement.

Chipko Movement leader like Mr Sundarlal Bahuguna believed that, Ecology is the permanent economy and all his life he taught the villagers to protest against the destruction of the forest. There are many movements that formed to save natural resources inspired by Chipko Movement in India and abroad.

Lessons learnt

Appiko movement
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The Appiko movement was a revolutionary movement based on environmental conservation in India. The Chipko movement (Hug the Trees Movement) in Uttarakhand in the Himalayas inspired the villagers of the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka State in southern India to launch a similar movement to save [1] their forests. In September 1983,led by Panduranga Hegde, men, women and children ofSalkani "hugged the trees" in Kalase forest. (The local term for "hugging" in Kannada is appiko.) Appiko movement gave birth to a new awareness all over southern India.It is organised by Pandu Ram Hegde of Karnatka.

Legacy
In Tehri district, Chipko activists would go on to protest limestone mining in the Doon Valley (Dehra Dun) in the 1980s, as the movement spread through the Dehradun district, which had earlier seen deforestation of its forest cover leading to heavy loss of flora and fauna. Finally quarrying was banned after years of agitation by Chipko activists, followed by a vast public drive for afforestation, which turned around the valley, just in time. Also in the 1980s, activists like Bahuguna protested against construction of the Tehri dam on theBhagirathi River, which went on for the next two decades, before founding the Beej Bachao Andolan, the Save the Seeds movement, that continues to the present day. Over time, as a United Nations Environment Programme report mentioned, Chipko activists started "working a socio-economic revolution by winning control of their forest resources from the hands of a distant bureaucracy which is only concerned with the selling of forestland for making urban-oriented [7][24] products.". The Chipko movement became a benchmark for socio-ecological movements in other forest areas of Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar; in September 1983, Chipko inspired a

similar, Appiko movement inKarnataka state of India, where tree felling in the Western [24] Ghats and Vindhyas was stopped. In Kumaon region, Chipko took on a more radical tone, combining with the general movement for a separate Uttarakhand state, which was eventually achieved in [18][24][29] 2000. In recent years, the movement not only inspired numerous people to work on practical programmes of water management, energy conservation, afforestation, and recycling, but also encouraged scholars to start studying issues of environmental degradation and methods of conservation in the Himalayas and [30] throughout India. On March 26, 2004, Reni, Laata, and other villages of the Niti Valley celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Chipko Movement, where all the surviving original participants united. The celebrations started at Laata, the ancestral home of Gaura Devi, where Pushpa Devi, wife of late Chipko Leader Govind Singh Rawat, Dhoom Singh Negi, Chipko leader of Henwalghati, Tehri Garhwal, and others were celebrated. From here a procession went to Reni, the neighbouring village, where the actual Chipko action took place [19] on March 26, 1974. This marked the beginning of worldwide methods to improve the present situation. [edit]