Question

important message conveyed by Chipko Movement

Answer 1

The Chipko Movement was started in the northern Himalayan segment of Uttar Pradesh, the area that is well known as Uttarakhand. The word “chipko” refers “to stick” or “to hug”. The name of the movement comes from a word meaning “embrace”: where the villagers hug the trees, saving them by interposing their bodies between them and the contractors’ axes.
This became popular as “Chipko movement”. Chipko movement is a grassroot level movement, which started in response to the needs of the people of Uttarakhand. The rate of heavy depletion of forests was resulting in destruction, arid- making the Himalayan mountain range barren. Moreover, the construction of dams, factories and roads had already led to deforestation.
Most of the leaders of the Chipko Movement were village women and men who strove to save their means of subsistence and their communities. Sunderlal Bahuguna, a renowned Gandhian, with a group of volunteers and women started the non-violent protest by clinging to the trees to save them from felling.
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This gave a start to the “Chipko Movement”. The main objective of this movement was to ensure an ecological balance and the survival of the tribal people whose economic activities revolved around these forests. His appeal to Mrs Gandhi resulted in the green-felling ban.
The 5,000-km trans-Himalaya foot march in 1981-1983 was crucial in spreading the Chipko message. Bahuguna coined the Chipko slogan: “ecology is permanent economy”. Chandi Prasad Bhatt, one of the earli­est Chipko activists, fostered local industries based on the conservation and sustainable use of forest wealth for local benefit. Dhoom Singh Negi, with Bachni Devi and many village women, first saved trees by hugging them in the “Chipko embrace”.
They coined the slogan:
“what do the forests bear” soil, water, and pure air”. Ghanashyam Raturi, the Chipko poet, whose songs echo throughout the Himalayas of Uttar Pradesh and Indu Tikekar, a doctor of philosophy, whose spiritual discourses throughout India on the ancient Sanskrit scriptures and on comparative religion have stressed the unity and oneness of life, put the Chipko Movement in this context and there are other prominent leaders of the movement.

Answer 2

The Chipko movement or chipko andolan was primarily a forest conservation movement in India that began in 1973 and went on to become a rallying point for many future environmental movements all over the world; it created a precedent for non-violent protest started in India.[1][2] 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. Today, beyond the eco-socialism hue, it is being seen increasingly as an ecofeminism movement. 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 deforestation,[3] 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 work that happened under the Chipko movement.[4][5][6]

In 1987, the Chipko Movement was awarded the Right Livelihood Award.[7] The chipko aandolan is a movement that practised the Gandhian methods of Satyagraha where both male and female activists played vital roles, including Gaura Devi, Sudesha Devi, Bachni Devi and Chandi Prasad Bhatt