The Chipko movement can mainly be called the women’s movement. Women, fully responsible for agriculture, livestock, and children, have moved out due to increasing deforestation in the context of urbanization due to floods and landslides.
The Chipko movement was a nonviolent movement of 1973 aimed at protecting and preserving trees, but perhaps firstly to mobilize women to protect forests, change attitudes, and recall their positions in society. The movement against deforestation and maintaining ecological balance originated in the Chamoli district of Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand) in 1973 and never spread to other states in northern India. The name ‘Chipko’ is derived from the word ‘hug’ as the villagers hug and surround the trees.
The Chipko movement gained traction under Sundarlal Bahuguna, an environmental activist, who educated his life and protested against the destruction of the forests and the Himalayan Mountains. It was his effort that saw the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ban the cutting of tensions. Bahuguna is remembered for the slogan “Ecology is the sustainable economy”.
The method of resisting the cutting or grafting of trees is called “Chipko”, which makes this method popular in tree care. Due to its popularity and effectiveness, Chipko took the form of a mass movement, which became known as the “Chipko Movement”.
Although the various protests were largely decentralized and autonomous, the Chipko movement began to emerge as a movement for peasant and women’s rights. Apart from the “tree-hugging” nature, Chipko protesters used many other techniques based on Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha (non-violent resistance). For example, in 1974, Bahuguna fasted for two weeks in protest against forest policy. In 1978, Chipko activist Dhoom Singh Negi staged a protest against the auction of Advani Forest in the Tehri Garhwal district. Local women tied sacred threads around the trees and recited the Bhagavad Gita. Elsewhere, the resin-tapped chrysanthemum (Pinus Roxburgh) was tied to a turban to protest their exploitation. In 1978, in Pulna village of Bhuntar Valley, woodcutter tools and the remaining receipts were seized, claiming that the women had left the forest.