Monday May 12 Of Myths and Movements Chapters 1-4

The Author:

Haripriya Rangan is a Senior Lecturer at MonashUniversity in Australia. Her research interests include: social geographies of market place trade; environmental history around the Indian Ocean; postcolonial development; and regional development and management of commons resources.

Background/Events, Figures:

--Chipko emerged during the 1970s as a peaceful form of protest against economic exploitation of forest resources in the Garhwal region. As stories spread about the local residents hugging trees as a means of trying to protect them, Chipko became symbolic in various ways. In India it was romanticized by the media as championing ancient traditions and people with different agendas focused strictly on a particular aspect of the movement, carrying out different associations as a peasant, environmental, or feminist movement even further.

--China’s war with India (mentioned on page 4): Oct. 20, 1962 about 20,000 Chinese troops invade India through the Himalayas near the North Eastern Frontier Agency (now Arunachal Pradesh) of India. China and India have had disputes over control of the Aksai Chin plateau, the region having linked caravan trade routes from Tibet to Sinkiang, a remote province in China for centuries. Just months prior to the invasion, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru demanded that China withdrew from the plateau and placed Indian troops in the area.

--Chandi Prasad Bhatt: A Gandhian activist; supported self-reliance, cooperative work and cottage industry. He (supposedly) inspired tree-hugging. During the 1960s he organized a cooperative, the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal. He advocated forest rights of the village community.

--Sunderlal Bahuguna: ca. 1947 was the general secretary of the Tehri Garhwal branch of the Congress Party and like Bhatt, had also formed a cooperative. Bahuguna believed in a synthesis between a spiritual relationship with nature and using science and technology to be informed.

--Vandana Shiva: An ecofeminist. From her, much about the Chipko movement has been heard by the English-speaking world. Shiva believes that the environmental problems leading up to the movement have its roots during the colonial period.

--Ramachandra Guha: A sociologist. He believes that the Chipko movement is first and foremost, a peasant movement and considers any other aspects (environmental and feminist issues) as secondary.

Terms:

--Chipko: a verb, in Hindi and Garhwali meaning “to adhere” (Rangan, 20).

--Dasholi Gram Swarajya Mandal(DasholiVillage Self-Rule Organization, or DGSM): A cooperative based on Gandian ideals for a village self- rule (“Gram Swarajya”) created during the 1960s with the goal of being a self-sustaining, egalitarian, non-violent community.

--Ecofeminism: “A socio-political theory and movement which associates ecological (esp. environmental) concerns with feminist ones, esp. in regarding both as resulting from male dominance and exploitation” (OED).

--Scientific Forestry: a scientific method involving surveys and using growth statistics to create management plans to measure the annual tree growth and evaluate how much timber can be extracted without compromising the forest.

Questions:

1. Based on Rangan’s discussion of the word, what does “myth” mean and how has Chipko passed into mythology?

2. Based on the reading so far, why would there be a “negative” (or an unenthusiastic) response to Chipko among the local residence in Garhwal?

3. How/where do Bhatt’s, Bahuguna’s, Shiva’s and Guha’s views about the Chipko movement differ and overlap?

4. What makes the Himalayan region “backwards”? How does a closer analysis of Himalayan history challenge the notion of “backwardness”?

Bibliography

Bhatt, Chandi Prasad. “The Chipko Movement.”Orissa conference on Nonviolence and Social Empowerment. 2001. < (7 May 2008)

“China’s War with India.” Time. 12 March 1979. < (7 May 2008).

“Ecofeminism.” Oxford English Dictionary Online. March 2008 < (7 May 2008).

MonashUniversity. Haripriya Rangan, 22 Nov 2007, < (6 May 2008).

Oosthoek, Jan. “The Colonial Origins of Forestry in Britain.” Environmental History Resources. < (7 May 2008).