Tehri Dam Conflict

Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, few projects generated as much controversy as India’s proposed Tehri Dam. The hydroelectric power plant would supply irrigation, drinking water, and an annual 1000 MW of renewable power. It would also alter the ecology of Uttarakhand and force up to ten thousand people to leave their homes.

The government announced plans to dam the Bhagirathi River in 1990. Right away, several groups raised concerns. Flooding from the dam would reach the town of Tehri, displace local residents, and destroy areas of forest that had been protected since the Chipko movement. The dam’s location near a seismic fault could also put it in the path of earthquakes. Furthermore, the Bhagirathi is a holy river to Hindus, and many viewed the dam as a desecration.

Tehri Bandh Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti, or the Anti-Tehri Dam Struggle Committee, brought a petition to the national Environmental Appraisal Committee to halt construction of the dam. The case went on to reach India’s Supreme Court, where it continued for ten years.

Sunderlal Bahuguna, who had been active in the Chipko movement, protested construction through a series of hunger strikes. He also moved to a house by the edge of the river, which would be destroyed if the dam were completed.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the dam in 2000. In December, thousands of people organized peacefully to oppose resuming work on the project. They sat outside the construction site and stayed there. After about a month, police broke up the protests, both by arresting demonstrators and beating them.

Throughout the next four years, the people of Tehri launched several protests, occasionally repressed by police. One poignant demonstration recreated the Chipko protests in a forest that had been touched by the movement 20 years prior. Those trees were now slated for destruction to make room for transmission lines.

None of these protests succeeded in stopping construction. In 2004, the government completed the first phase of the project, and the dam became fully operational in 2006. It is now a familiar aspect of the landscape and a popular tourist attraction.

Narmada Bachao Andolan

Narmada Bachao Andolan is an ongoing movement to halt a series of dams being built on the Narmada River. It began in 1985 with objections to the Sardar Sarovar dam.

Sardar Sarovar was the first major venture of the Narmada Valley Development Project, approved in 1978. The NVDP included plans for 30 large dams, 135 medium dams, and 3,000 minor dams on the river. Projected environmental effects included flooding, soil erosion, and destruction of forests and farmland.

One of the biggest points of contention was the displacement of people living in the valley. The affected villagers were not consulted during the planning process, and they received very little information beyond the government’s offer to provide them new homes. Furthermore, activist and Ph.D. student Medha Patkar discovered that the compensation was much less than had been promised. The government would cover only the expected cost of destroyed crops, not the new houses. Patkar would go on to became the primary organizer against the dam.

In 1994, public pressure led the World Bank to withdraw its funding for the project. However, India continued building the dam by itself.

Narmada Bachao Andolan failed to stop the government from finishing the Sardar Sarovar dam. It did win some concessions, however. A Supreme Court decision mandated that all displaced people be fully compensated, although the extent to which this happened is still debated.

After the Sardar Sarovar dam was built, NBA focused its attention on preventing additions to the structure that would increase water backup. Despite their efforts, the Supreme Court approved height increases on seven separate occasions. The height of the dam has more than doubled since 1999, from 80 meters to 163 meters. NBA is still leading campaigns to interrupt construction of the Narmada Valley Development Project’s remaining dams.

 

Appiko Movement

In 1983, villagers in the Western Ghats launched their own version of the Chipko movement. The Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka had seen its forests dwindle over decades of short-sighted government policies. Logging for paper and plywood had reduced forest cover by 70 percent since 1950. Many of the remaining areas had been converted from native ecosystems to monoculture plantations of teak and eucalyptus. This degraded the ecosystem enough to deplete its watershed, setting off a pattern of seasonal drought.

After observing the success of the Chipko movement in Uttarakhand, a group of  Salkani villagers decided to try to reproduce it in their community. Over 200 people marched to a forest outside Sirsi and embraced trees marked for felling. Their protest lasted 38 days. Eventually, they succeeded in cancelling the logging.

Other villagers launched similar protests throughout the district. Instead of “chipko,” they referred to the movement as “appiko,” the word for hugging in their local language. Appiko activists led a number of efforts to not only halt the damage caused by the forest department, but reverse it. One solution was to plant native trees in deforested areas. Another was to build and distribute fuel-efficient stoves to reduce the demand for firewood.

After facing sustained pressure from the Appiko movement, the state government revised its policies to better protect forests. It banned clearcutting throughout Karnataka. In sensitive rainforest areas, it protected all healthy trees from being cut. With this new approach, forest cover gradually returned to more areas of the Western Ghats.

Save Silent Valley Movement

After opposition to the dam grew among conservationists and scientific organizations, the National Committee on Environment Planning and Coordination temporarily suspended the project to conduct an impacts study. A 1976 task force concluded that the dam’s ecological harms outweighed its benefits. It recommended cancelling the entire project. However, the Committee chose to move forward anyway, arguing that safeguards would limit the damage. Several non-governmental organizations disputed the Committee’s conclusions, including its claim that only 10 percent of the ecosystem would be lost if safeguards were added.

An organized campaign to cancel the dam began to emerge. After receiving ominous results from their own impact study, the Kerala Science Literature Movement became one of its primary agitators. They organized a series of protests and marches. Teacher and student organizations also planned demonstrations against the dam. Ecologists traveled from village to village, building support for conservation among the general public. Famous writers lent their talents to the movement by composing poems, essays, and plays communicating its message.

These efforts paid off in 1983, when Indira Gandhi permanently cancelled the dam’s construction after years of public pressure. Silent Valley became a national park two years later. Today, it is treasured as both a biodiversity hotspot and a testament to the success of environmental activism.

Silent Valley Hydroelectric Project

Chipko wasn’t India’s only conservation movement of the 1970s. As peasant farmers drove a debate over industry and logging in the north, the southern state of Kerala faced its own ecological impasse. The issue concerned a tropical evergreen rainforest called Silent Valley. After a dam threatened to flood part of the area, public outcry birthed the Save Silent Valley campaign and bolstered a national reckoning with the costs of economic development.

In 1973, the Indian Planning Commission approved plans for a dam of the Kunthipuzha river. The Silent Valley Hydroelectric Project would generate 240 MW of electricity per year and employ several thousand people in its construction. It would alter the river and cause flooding upstream, as all major dams do. Unlike other large dams, though, it would not force any people out of their homes: There were no human settlements in Silent Valley. The project received broad initial support from the local populace.

However, the absence of humans in Silent Valley made it an area of ecological importance. The nearly untouched stretch of forest was the last of its kind in the Western Ghats mountain range. It housed an incredible diversity of plant and animal life, products of a 50-million-year period of undisturbed evolution. These species included the lion-tailed macaque (pictured above), three tiger species, and the nilgiri langur — all endangered.

Two early opponents of the dam were Steven Green and Romulus Whitaker. Green was an American biologist studying primates in the region, especially the lion-tailed macaque. Whitaker was conducting a survey of Silent Valley snake species. Both warned that damming the Kunthipuzha would destroy critical habitat for the animals they studied.

(Continued next week.)

Chipko Part 4: Moving Forward

Over the next few years, the Chipko movement grew to a nationwide force for forest conservation, peasant’s rights, and female empowerment. Over 150 villages are estimated to have participated. Women formed the backbone of the movement, as they were responsible for the services most affected by deforestation: raising livestock, gathering food, and collecting firewood and drinking water. Their strategies expanded from hugging the trees to other nonviolent forms of protest. In the Advani forest in 1978, women encircled trees with sacred threads. In the Bhyundar valley, they stole loggers’ tools and refused to give them back until the forest was safe.

While its characteristic protests involved large groups of villagers, the Chipko movement also benefited from the work of individual activists. One of its most prominent figures was a man named Sunderlal Bahuguna. Bahuguna drew international attention when he marched 4,870 km through the Himalayan mountains to see the impacts of deforestation firsthand. His journey brought the Chipko message to even more forest villages. Bahuguna also coined one of the movement’s most famous slogans: “Ecology is permanent economy.”

In 1980, Bahuguna met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and implored her to act on behalf of the forests. Shortly afterward, the Chipko movement achieved its largest and most decisive success: Gandhi banned commercial logging in the Himalayas for the next 15 years.

Today, Chipko is remembered as the most significant environmental movement in India’s history. It saved about 40,000 square km of forest from loggers, but it also galvanized local communities and added to India’s rich history of nonviolent resistance. Its decentralized, grassroots methods served as inspiration for later causes. From the first demonstration in Mandal to the global conservation movement that followed, Chipko activists showed that changing the world can start with something as simple as hugging a tree.

Pictured: A 2018 Google doodle commemorates the Chipko movement on its 45th anniversary.

Chipko Part 3: Reni

After the success of the first Chipko protest, members of the DGSS organization travelled to other villages, sharing their strategy for stopping loggers. When the government gave another contract to the Simon Sports company, this time for 80 trees in the Phata forest, villagers once again blocked their efforts.

The most famous event of the Chipko movement came in 1974, after the Forest Department announced its plan to auction off 2,500 trees near the village of Reni. Outraged villagers held several rallies and protests in the months leading up to the auction. Fearing another standoff, the government devised a plan to trick the villagers. They promised the men of Reni compensation in the nearby city of Chamoli. After every man had left, the contractors rushed to begin logging in secret.  

Gaura Devi

An observant Reni girl spied trucks in the distance and rushed to alert the others. Gaura Devi, the village matriarch, led a group of 27 women to the logging site. There they appealed to the loggers. The men refused to turn back, and they began threatening the women with guns. However, Devi and the villagers stood their ground. They kept an all-night vigil guarding the trees. The next day, as the men returned and word spread to neighboring villages, more and more protesters joined them. The contractors backed down after a four-day standoff.

A month later, the government established a committee to examine the impact of logging in the Alaknanda valley. It issued a ten-year ban on commercial logging in the area.  

 

Chipko Part 2: Mandal

In the Mandal village of Gopeshwar, India, community members gathered to make a plan of resistance. Despite their repeated objections, the Forest Department had approved an outside company’s contract to begin logging in the Mandal forest. 300 of the trees that sustained the community were to be chopped to make tennis rackets.

After considering several proposals, the villagers decided on a strategy to stop the logging. They would go to the edge of the forest and embrace trees marked to be felled. They called this tactic chipko, a Hindi word meaning “to cling.”

When the lumberers arrived to Mandal on April 24, 1973, they were met with about a hundred demonstrators, who hugged trees, chanted slogans, and beat traditional drums. The loggers eventually gave up and turned back. Afterward, the Forest Department cancelled the company’s contract, and instead approved the original request of DGSS, the local group behind the protest. This decision allowed villagers to use a small number of trees for farm equipment.

About the photograph: Chandi Prasad Bhatt founded the DGSS and led the meeting where villagers organized the Chipko strategy. He is considered the father of the Chipko movement. 

 

Chipko Part 1: Origins

Last week’s post covered the Khejarli massacre of 1730. Villagers in Rajasthan, India gave their lives to save a forest from destruction. One notable impact of these martyrs was their role in inspiring the modern Chipko movement over 240 years later.

The Chipko movement arose in the Himalayan foothills of India. During the Sino-Indian War, India’s government expanded its system of roads to help move troops. These extended through remote forest villages in Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand). When the conflict ended in 1963, a new area of land could be reached by commercial logging vehicles for the first time. Foreign companies began moving into the region to harvest lumber.  

Heavy logging created problems for villagers, whose way of life depended on forests. Trees provided firewood, animal fodder, and ecosystem services like water purification. They also prevented flooding. When monsoon season arrived in 1970, the Alakananda River broke its banks, which had been weakened by the loss of trees. Over 200 people died in a massive flood.

An organization called the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh (DGSS), which had worked to promote village self-rule, concluded that irresponsible logging practices were behind the flood’s severity. They argued for an end to foreign logging in the region. Between 1971 and 1973, the DGSS led several demonstrations and marches protesting the Forest Department’s policies.

In 1973, the Department made things worse by granting Simon Sports license to fell 300 ash trees near the village of Mandal. Just earlier, they had denied a request from the DGSS for ten trees to make agricultural tools for the community. Villagers were outraged. The DGSS, led by founder Chandi Prasad Bhatt, called a meeting to discuss what to do next.

The Original Tree-Huggers: Khejarli Massacre, 1730

Next to the village of Khejarli, a flourishing Khejri tree forest stood in stark contrast to the rest of India’s Jodhpur desert. For nearly 300 years, villagers had attended to the ecosystem, following the principles of non-harm outlined by their Bishnoi faith: Feed and protect wildlife. Treat living things with compassion. Do not kill animals or green trees.

Bishnoism was originally founded in response to an environmental crisis. In the 1470s, a severe drought hit the state of Rajasthan. After seeing impacts of the drought worsened by people exhausting the natural landscape, a man named Guru Jambheshwar started preaching a set of 29 principles that included protections for the environment. Rajasthan, and the Jodhpur desert region in particular, became home to several communities of nature-loving Bishnois. They protected forests and relied on them for food, shade, and clean water.

Now, in 1730, royal soldiers arrived to the Khejarli village. Maharajah Abhay Singh was building a new palace and needed firewood to burn limestone. The party began felling Khejri trees with their axes.

When the villagers heard sounds of chopping coming from their sacred forest, they rushed to the scene, aghast. The soldiers ignored their pleas to stop. When a woman named Amrita Devi explained that the Bishnoi religion prohibits cutting trees, the leader of the party, Giridhar Bhandari, told her that he would spare the forest only in exchange for a bribe. She considered the idea an insult to her faith and refused. Instead, she stood between the soldiers and the next tree about to be chopped. She threw her arms around it and announced that they would have to kill her before the tree was harmed.

After some hesitation, Bhandari ordered his men to proceed anyway. Amrita Devi died shielding the tree from their axes.

The next Bishnois to step forward were Devi’s three daughters. They, too, embraced Khejri trees and were killed by the soldiers.

As the news of these deaths spread through Khejarli and its neighboring villages, more and more people volunteered to hug trees as they were being cut down. 363 Bishnois sacrificed their lives in this way. Eventually, Bhandari relented and told his men to stop. They turned back without finishing the logging.

When news of the massacre reached the maharajah, he was appalled by what his soldiers had done. He apologized to the Bishnoi community and issued a royal decree protecting their forests from harm.

This event is notable in environmental history for many reasons. The Bishnoi martyrs conducted the first recorded instance of an environmental protest. Their strategy of hugging trees directly influenced the Chipko movement, a push for Himalayan forest conservation in the 1970s. More immediately, they saved an ecosystem from destruction, and they brought protections to the forests of Jodhpur still in effect today.