Thread #ChipkoMovement 1/n: The movement began as a protest by both men and women of Reni and Lata village in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand asking for their rights over lands and forest resources, including rights to be the labour that harvests the timber.
#ChipkoMovement 2/n: It was a movement to control land, forest and labour resources. It was later given this 'save the environment' hue to suit other interests and narratives. In fact one of its key leaders in the Chamoli hills came from the and was not of the Gandhian views.
#ChipkoMovement 3/n: Other leaders and interests from middle hills got involved much later to stretch the movement into something else. This included timber merchants that had lost timber harvest contracts.
#ChipkoMovement 4/n: These interests fueled and funded the movement spreading downhill. In turn the movement got subverted to the 'save the tree' variety as that suited many powerful interests and lent itself easier to journalistic reportage by urbane heads
#ChipkoMovement 5/n: The reorienting of the movement to 'save the tree (STT) trope' brought much greatee misery to the people of Reni and Lata villages of Chamoli including the women leaders we now much celebrate
#ChipkoMovement 6/n : As a consequence of the movement being termed as STT trope, they lost their forests to ban on timber felling and resource harvesting, and then yet more to the creation of Nanda Devi biosphere reserve.
#ChipkoMovement 7/n: After #ChipkoMovement, the same villages of Chamoli, Uttarakhand also witnessed Chheeno Jhapto movement (Snatch back your rights movement) by the same legendry women and their next gen. Did that not fit into our urbane 'environmentalism' narrative?
#ChipkoMovement 8/n : This movement of people for their resources was last seen on TV. From Maharashtra when farmers walked to Mumbai asking their rights under Forest Rights Act. This movement has never stopped
#ChipkoMovement 9/n: This movement has not stopped for decades because we all, who do not live off the forests directly, over generations have usurped it into an imported narrative of 'save the tree' or 'save the tiger' and turned it against the people.
#ChipkoMovement 10/n : This non-use and pure protection argument furthered by vested interests and naive understanding has led to misery for millions of tribals and other forest-dwelling people as well as destruction of forests by the powerful industrialized powers
#ChipkoMovement n/n : To honour the men and women of Chipko movement requires us to understand the debate about forest rights better. To start with.
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