Why the Forests Mattered
For hill villages, the forest was not scenery — it was the economy. Oak and other broadleaf trees gave fodder for cattle, leaf litter for fields, firewood for winter and timber for houses. Their roots held the soil on steep slopes and fed the springs that villages depended on for water.
From the colonial period onward, however, the state treated these forests mainly as a source of revenue. Large tracts were auctioned to contractors from outside the hills, while villagers' own rights to use the forest were steadily restricted. After the devastating Alaknanda flood of 1970, which many linked to deforestation upstream, resentment grew sharply.
Mandal, 1973: The First Chipko
The spark came in Mandal village in Chamoli district. A local cooperative, the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh led by Chandi Prasad Bhatt, had been refused permission to cut a few ash trees to make farm tools. Shortly afterwards, the forest department allotted ash trees in the same forest to a sports-goods company from the plains.
In April 1973 the villagers marched into the forest with drums and declared that they would hug the trees rather than let them be cut. The company's men left without felling. The word for "to cling" or "to stick" in the local language, chipakna, gave the movement its name: Chipko.
Reni, 1974: Gaura Devi and the Women
The most famous Chipko action took place on 26 March 1974 at Reni, a village near Joshimath on the road to the Indo-Tibetan border. Around 2,500 trees had been auctioned to a contractor. On the day the felling was due, the village men had been called away to Chamoli to collect long-pending compensation for land, and the students and activists who supported them were kept busy elsewhere.
When the contractor's labourers arrived, Gaura Devi, the head of the village women's group (Mahila Mangal Dal), gathered about 27 women and girls and walked into the forest. They told the workers that the forest was their maayka — their mother's home — and that they would have to shoot them before cutting a single tree. Through the night the women guarded the path. The labourers eventually withdrew, and the felling at Reni was stopped for good.
Gaura Devi had been widowed young and had little formal education, but her courage made her a symbol of the movement — and of the central role that hill women played in protecting the environment they depended on.
The Movement Spreads
- Chandi Prasad Bhatt focused on local, village-run use of forests and on reforestation camps, arguing that people who live beside the forest are its best protectors.
- Sunderlal Bahuguna took the message across the Himalaya, including a long foot march from Kashmir to Kohima in the early 1980s. His phrase "ecology is the permanent economy" became a slogan of the movement.
- Village women like Bachni Devi in Advani led their own protests, sometimes against their own husbands who were working for contractors.
A popular Chipko song summed up the movement's thinking:
"Kya hain jangal ke upkar? Mitti, paani aur bayar. Mitti, paani aur bayar, zinda rehne ke aadhaar."
What do the forests give us? Soil, water and pure air. Soil, water and pure air are the basis of life.
What Chipko Achieved
- In 1980, the central government imposed a 15-year ban on commercial green felling in the Himalayan forests of what was then Uttar Pradesh.
- The movement inspired similar protests elsewhere, notably the Appiko movement in Karnataka.
- In 1987 the Chipko movement received the Right Livelihood Award, often called the "Alternative Nobel Prize".
- Most importantly, it changed how India talks about forests — as living systems that people depend on, not just timber.
Chipko's Legacy Today
The questions Chipko raised are still alive in Uttarakhand: how to balance roads, dams and tourism with fragile slopes, springs and forests. Festivals such as Harela, when people plant saplings at the start of the monsoon, carry the same spirit forward. A memorial to Gaura Devi stands in Reni, and the village is a quiet stop on the road to Niti valley.