Environmentalist and Gandhian Sunderlal Bahuguna died at AIIMS, Rishikesh on May 21, 2021. He was 94.
- He was one of the founders of the Chipko, or hug the tree movement, in the 1970s to save Himalayan forests.
- He also led the charge against the construction of big dams in the Himalayas in the 1980s.
- He opposed the construction of the Tehri dam and sat on two long hunger strikes against the dam.
- He lived for decades in his Silyara ashram in Tehri Garhwal.
- He also led a movement of women’s groups, or mahila mandals, to enforce prohibition in Tehri Garhwal, which was then part of Uttar Pradesh.
- He was born on January 9, 1927 in Maroda village in Tehri — now a district in Uttarakhand.
- Bahuguna was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2009. In 1981, he had refused to accept the Padma Shri over the government’s refusal to cancel the Tehri dam project despite his protests.
About Chipko movement
- The Chipko movement was a Gandhian form of protest against deforestation by locals in the Himalayan region.
- To stop deforestation, locals – primarily women – would make circles around trees and stop men from cutting them down.
- The first such Chipko action took place in April 1973 in Mandal village (Uttarakhand), and spread over the next five years to many Himalayan districts.
