Chipko Movement

This paper focuses on the shifting contours of the anti-Tehri dam movement in the past three decades. It examines the changing declarations of environmentalists, especially Sunderlal Bahuguna and other leaders of the movement on the one hand, and the involvement of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in the anti-dam politics on the other. Exploring the evocations of nature, religion and nation in different phases by these two groups of actors, it argues that through a regular use of certain mythical beliefs and simplified dichotomies, there was an inadvertent collaboration between green and saffron. The Tehri dam became a means of combining sacredness with impulse, gravity of high politics with solemnity of daily worship, and nature with nationalism.

For more than two decades Anil Agarwal was India's most articulate and influential writer on the environment. His work was marked by his striking ability to synthesise the results of specialised scientific studies; his knack of communicating this synthesis in accessible prose; and the insistence that it was not enough for the environmentalist to hector and chastise, but offer solutions as well even if the state was unwilling to accept them as yet.