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Chapter 8 Modes of Chipko Resistance In his study of peasant resistance in the Himalayas, Ramachandra Guha undertakes an analysis of the Chipko Movement from the perspective of the sociology of social movements. In doing so he draws attention to its pattern of leadership, its forms of mobilization, the emergence of its codified ideology, and the relationship of the leader and the led. He also tries to comprehend the transformation of meaning it brought about in the lives of its participants and its relationship with past movements that concern the relationship between peasantry and state.1 His analysis does much to explain the political impact of the Chipko Movement. In the course of my many conversations with Sunderlal, I heard repeatedly about a number of features of the Chipko Movement that, from his perspective, contributed largely to the achievements of the movement. To call them strategies or methods might imply that they were procedures contrived and deployed to address the villagers’ condition. I call them modes of chipko resistance. While each had its own origin and development, they emerged organically in the context of the Chipko Movement and together reveal its integrity and character. There were three such modes of chipko resistance that stood out prominently in these conversations, and a fourth, about which Bahuguna said little, but that judging from press reports and other literature had a strong impact on the moral credibility of the movement . Foremost among them was the padyatra (foot march). I stated earlier that as a means of spreading the message of Gandhi , the idea of the padyatra had come to Bahuguna from Vinoba, but it had an impressive history in the work of the Buddha, Shankaracarya, Jesus, and Gandhi. Because communication among the villages of the region was limited, the method of the padyatra was especially congenial to conditions in the hills. During a foot march the activists could meet the 99 100 Ecology is Permanent Economy people. “Jesus,” he reminded me again, “spoke to people face to face.” The padyathra, as Sunderlal practiced it, was an especially exciting venture. Frequently Sunderlal would begin it on a date of special significance that tended to highlight its importance. May 25, 1974, was the anniversary of the birth of Shri Dev Suman. On this date several young people began a historic padyatra, traversing the entire region of Uttarakhand from the village of Askot on the border with Nepal in the east, to Arakot on the border with Himachal Pradesh in the west. Sunderlal was with them for a good part of the journey. With the accompaniment of musicians and singers, they entered each village with songs and slogans that provoked a gathering of interested and curious villagers. Their message was about the importance of the forest for their own welfare, the threats to the forest from government policy, and the need to protect them. The visitors would then invite the villagers to an evening meeting in which they would tell the story of the Chipko Movement and of the success it had achieved. The following day, with a letter of introduction from the headman of the village, they would proceed to their next destination. They repeated this regimen for forty-four days. Because the padyatra is a pilgrimage, it evokes a strong religious sentiment. It tended to provoke both a festive mood and a sense of the seriousness of the issues that provoked it. Weber points out that they were sometimes organized by students, sometimes by the women. Often they were to areas especially affected by landslides and floods. To the people they brought insight into the causes of these conditions and the strategy needed to address them. From 1973 to 1975 Sunderlal Bahuguna is known to have walked forty-two hundred kilometers .2 Much of the success of the demonstrations that brought about real change in policy was related to these efforts in bringing the chipko message to the villages of the hills. A second critical mode of chipko resistance was the folk song. I indicated earlier that on May 3, 1973, when Sunderlal set off on his first padyatra in support of the Chipko Movement, the Garhwali folk singer and folksong writer Ghanshyam Sailani was with him. During this and other padyatras, Sailani’s inspiring songs put the message of the movement to music and verse. It was in a song composed during one of these journeys that the word “chipko” itself gained currency among the people. At this time forest activists wanted to...

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