My Science School

            Hugging is not just an act to show that you love somebody; it also helps you to protect whomever you are hugging. Large numbers of men and women in a village in Uttarakhand hugged trees to protect them from deforestation agents. The act soon became a movement called the Chipko movement, a non-violent way of protesting against deforestation.

             Sunderlal Bahuguna, a noted Garhwali environmentalist, was a Chipko movement leader. The idea of Chipko movement originated from his wife and Bahuguna put it into practice. For years, he has been fighting for the preservation of forests in the Himalayas as a member of the Chipko movement. Bahuguna later spearheaded the Anti-Tehri Dam movement starting in the 1980s, which continued to early 2004. He was one of the early environmentalists of India, and later he and people associated with the Chipko movement started taking up environmental issues, such as protests against large dams.

              Chipko movement started in 1973 spontaneously in Uttarakhand, in an effort to save trees and forests from felling by forest contractors. Sunderlal Bahuguna used the Satyagraha methods, and repeatedly went on hunger strikes on the banks of the Bhagirathi as a mark of his protest.

Picture Credit : Google