Sunderlal Bahuguna, an ardent advocate for nature conservation in India, was born on January 9, 1927, in Maroda, Uttarakhand. His experiences form a remarkable story with the Himalayan mountains featuring in it- the fight for survival, the bravery and the faith in modern social movements. Bahuguna’s transition from being an independence fighter in India to a Gandhian environmental fighter was marked by several key events, most notably the Chipko movement and the anti-Tehri Dam battles.
The beginning of the Chipko movement during the early 1970s was a turning point in Bahuguna’s life. The term Chipko, which translates from Hindi to ‘to cling’, came into existence after many villagers decided to hug trees to prevent contractors from cutting them down. The movement was multi-faced and non-violence, as it was not merely directed toward tree protection but also acted as a means to save many different cultural life elements formed around the forests. This is what Bahuguna believed as he and his wife, Vimla, became one of the first campaigners for this and coined the motto “Ecology is Permanent Economy”. He was right in his assumption that, rather than being regarded as an asset to be capitalised, the environment provides the base for the survival of the people who live in the Himalayas.
In the early 1980s, Bahuguna set out on a ponderous 5,000-kilometre sojourn through the Himalayan range, blessed with foot trails whereby he moved from village to village, gnashing of environmental conservation on his route. This sweeping journey became the backbone of the movement and witnessed the movement hogging in the national limelight. The Chipko movement achieved a landmark victory in 1980 when a 15-year ban on the cutting of green trees in the region was declared after a meeting with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
However, his activism did not just end there. He waged a ceaseless fight on the anti-Tehri Dam movement in the 1980s. The Tehri Dam, a gigantic hydroelectric project on the Bhagirathi River, posed serious ecological and social threats to the region, throwing thousands out of their homes and threatening the delicate Himalayan ecosystem. Bahuguna, who had witnessed the catastrophic consequences of such large-scale projects, converged the protests around the theme of Satyagraha, Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent struggle. His hunger strikes, with the longest lasting 74 days, became an epitome of his conviction towards ecological justice.
Though Bahuguna held firm to his protests, with minor undertakings from political leaders promising that the dam’s ecological impact would be looked into, the Tehri Dam project continued and construction overtook in 2001. Yet the legacy of Bahuguna’s struggle is indelible in the environmental movement in India, leading masses to think beyond the more significant consequences of such mega-projects.
Bahuguna fed, entertained and led other movements alongside his direct eco-activism. Drawing mainly from the Chipko model, the Appiko movement of Karnataka was inaugurated by Pandurang Hegde in 1983. The Western Ghats conservation activities initiated by Bahuguna also led to some critical regional policy changes, such as the ban on green felling in 1989. His vision for environmental preservation transcended state boundaries with the proposal to protect humanity and nature from industrial development.
Bahuguna had his concerns and social issues of hill people, especially the miserable plight of women of these far-off communities, very much in mind throughout his life. His early work for the temperance movements and campaigns against untouchability, projected an integrated view of social justice. Guided through his entire career by traditional Gandhian values of non-violence, self-reliance and reverence for nature, Bahuguna was involved in innumerable movements infavourr of social justice.
Bahuguna casts his long shadow over environmentalists and activists: a fighter for ecological resistance who showed the hair-trigger point if customary American habits were ever inefficient to subvert towards an environmental battle. Even after progressing into his later stages, he remained a voice for the disadvantaged communities of the Himalayas to raise awareness of the cause.
Sunderlal Bahuguna, the great green crusader, passed on May 21, 2021, from the complications of COVID-19, continuing to cast an undying legacy behind him. Bahuguna’s significant contributions to ecological movements have been captured in the memento book on his life and work, published later in his memory and compiled by his daughter, Madhu Pathak. It is this legacy from Bahuguna that lives on—even death could not take this away—the legacy of hope that involves endurance and, above all, unparalleled zeal for the cause of Nature’s stewardship.
