Ecology Is Permanent Economy

George Alfred James

Description

For decades, Sunderlal Bahuguna has been an environmental activist in his native India, well known for his efforts on behalf of the Himalayas and its people. In the 1970s, he was instrumental in the successful Chipko (or "hug") movement during which local people hugged trees to prevent logging for outside concerns. He was also a leader of the long opposition to the Tehri Dam. In both conflicts, the interests of outsiders threatened the interests of local people living relatively traditional lives.

George Alfred James introduces Sunderlal Bahuguna's activism and philosophy in a work based on interviews with Bahuguna himself, his writings, and journalistic accounts. James writes that Bahuguna's work in the Indian independence movement and his admiration for the nonviolence of Gandhi has inspired a vision and mode of activism that deserves wider attention. It is a philosophy that does not try to win the conflict, but to win the opponent's heart.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. The Encounter

2. The Childhood of an Activist

3. Going Underground

4. The Short Career of an Activist Politician

5. Meeting Mira Behn

6. Marriage and the Parvatiya Navjeevan Ashram

7. Embracing the Trees

8. Modes of Chipko Resistance

9. A Permanent Economy

10. Chipko Ecology: Shallow or Deep?

11. Srinagar to Kohima: An Educational Mission

12. Protesting the Tehri Dam

13. Social Ecology, Religion, and the Tehri Protest

14. Against the Tide: Bahuguna’s Philosophy of Life, Religion, and Nature

Appendix 1: Some Critical Dates in the History of Modern India and the Activism of Sunderlal Bahuguna
Appendix 2: Arguments of the Petitioners in the Public Interest Litigation against the Tehri Dam

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Lycée
• Philosophie
• Hinduism
• Ethnic studies

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 20 juin 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438446745
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ecology Is Permanent Economy
Ecology Is Permanent Economy
The Activism and Environmental Philosophy of Sunderlal Bahuguna
George Alfred James
Cover image: “On the Pilgrimage Route between Gangotri and Gaumukh, June 1998.”
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
James, George Alfred.
Ecology is permanent economy : the activism and environmental philosophy of Sunderlal Bahuguna / George A. James.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4673-8 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Bahuguna, Sunderlal, 1927– 2. Environmentalists—India—Biography. 3. Environmentalism—India—Philosophy. 4. Chipko movement. 5. Tehri Dam (India) I. Title.
GE56.B34J36 2013 333.72092—dc23 [B]
2012026097
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Gladys and Alfred James. Let light perpetual shine upon them.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Encounter
Chapter 2 The Childhood of an Activist
Chapter 3 Going Underground
Chapter 4 The Short Career of an Activist Politician
Chapter 5 Meeting Mira Behn
Chapter 6 Marriage and the Parvatiya Navjeevan Ashram
Chapter 7 Embracing the Trees
Chapter 8 Modes of Chipko Resistance
Chapter 9 A Permanent Economy
Chapter 10 Chipko Ecology: Shallow or Deep?
Chapter 11 Srinagar to Kohima: An Educational Mission
Chapter 12 Protesting the Tehri Dam
Chapter 13 Social Ecology, Religion, and the Tehri Protest
Chapter 14 Against the Tide: Bahuguna’s Philosophy of Life, Religion, and Nature
Appendix 1 Some Critical Dates in the History of Modern India and the Activism of Sunderlal Bahuguna
Appendix 2 Arguments of the Petitioners in the Public Interest Litigation against the Tehri Dam
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Map of Uttarakhand Himalaya Showing Principal Sites of Chipko and Other Activities
Gaumukh, the Source of the Bhagirathi River, Where in 1978 Sunderlal Bahuguna Took the Pledge to Protect the Himalayas in All Aspects
Approximate Route of Bahuguna’s Padyatra from Srinagar (JK) to Kohima (NL)
Bahuguna’s Kuti at Tehri Where for over Ten Years He Remained in Satyagraha
Sunderlal Bahuguna at Eighty-five
Acknowledgments
It would be more than arrogant to give the impression that this book is the result of the work of the author alone. There are many persons I must thank for their help. First among them are Sunderlal and Vimla Bahuguna for their many hours of attention to my persistent questions and for accommodating me to their often very hectic schedule of appointments and obligations. In addition, I thank Pandurang Hegde whose present work with the Appiko movement of South India is perhaps the most explicit and effective extension of the chipko vision. I thank him for his constant encouragement and his help in making contact with Sunderlal and Vimla Bahuguna when the usual channels of communication had failed. For extensive information and documentation concerning the Tehri Dam I thank Shekhar Singh. For additional information and documentation on the life of Sunderlal and Vimla Bahuguna I thank Bharat Dogra, and Jayanta Bandyopadhyay. For his assistance in helping me understand the importance of the life and activism of Sarala Behn I thank Anupam Mishra. For his help in tracing the route of Bahuguna’s famous foot march from Srinagar to Kohima I express my thanks to Anil Joshi, founder of the Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organization (HESCO). I also acknowledge with thanks the help of Shannon Mooney for rendering into a map the route of Bahuguna and his colleagues from Srinagar to Kohima. I wish to thank Bidisha Kumar for creating an accurate, detailed, and readable map of Uttarakhand indicating the principal sites of chipko activism. For their excellent scholarship on the Chipko Movement of which I made extensive use, I thank Thomas Weber and Ramachandra Guha. I also express my thanks to the University of North Texas for a succession of Faculty Research Grants, a Faculty Development Leave and a grant from the Charn Uswachoke International Development Fund, and to the Fulbright Foundation for a fellowship that made possible the research on which this book is based. I wish also to thank Bidisha Kumar for reading through the entire manuscript at an early stage in its development and for her many and helpful corrections and suggestions. For their thorough reading of the entire manuscript and for many helpful suggestions I express my heartfelt thanks to Mary Evelyn Tucker, Chris Chapple, and Thomas Weber. For a thorough proofreading of the manuscript I thank Richard Watson, and for his help in the final preparation of the manuscript I thank Matt Story. There are many others too numerous to mention without whose assistance this work could not have been completed. Among them I must include Nancy Ellegate and the editorial staff at the State University of New York Press. For any inaccuracies or omission of important details I take full responsibility.
Introduction
The person about whom this book is written is by no means a household name in the West. Even the pronunciation of his name presents a challenge to native readers of English. Yet the issues with which his life has been engaged are familiar. Today, in the West, the condition of the environment is drawing increasing public attention. Environmental issues are also widely recognized as global in scope. What remains largely unknown in the West is the struggle for the environment in non-Western countries, sometimes in areas of those countries little known to their urban dwellers. This book is the story of the activism and the environmental philosophy of a man whose work has focused on the Western Himalayas of India. Yet the concerns for which he has fought transcend the location in which he first expressed them. They include the depletion of the planet’s forests cover, the just distribution of water, and the rights of the poor and disenfranchised to an equitable share of the earth’s resources. The environmental philosophy that developed in the crucible of the struggles for which he is known represents the vision of a sustainable relationship between human beings and the natural world that is globally significant. The title I chose for this book is the quotation and slogan for which he is perhaps best known. That ecology is permanent economy is his reply to those of all countries who believe that environmental concerns have to be weighed against the demands of our economic well-being. Both words have the same root which refers to the oikos or the home in which we all live. It expresses in capsule form the heart of his environmental philosophy. This story, though it is set in the Western Himalayas of India, is relevant to an understanding of environmental struggles everywhere.
Born in 1927 in the practically unknown village of Marora, in what was then the United Provinces of British India, his parents named him Sunderlal. In Hindi, “Sundar” means beautiful, and “Lal” means child (particularly boy child). The equivalent of his names in English might be something like “Fairchild.” At the age of thirteen under the guidance of a prominent Gandhian activist, Sunderlal Bahuguna (pronounced Bahoo-gun-a) joined the struggle for India’s self-rule. For his involvement with this movement he was jailed for the first time at the age of seventeen. After India achieved independence Bahuguna became involved in Gandhi’s program for the development of independent and self-reliant villages. His concern for the villages of the hills drew his attention to the degradation of the environmental upon which they relied. Bahuguna’s environmental activism became internationally visible in his role in the famous Chipko Movement in the 1970’s. Chipko (to hug) was a grassroots movement committed to saving the Himalayan forests by hugging the trees to shield them from the axe. Bahuguna supported and underlined the non-violent principles of this movement with foot marches, fasts, and speeches to village people concerning the economic, social, ecological, and religious significance of the forests. The success of the Chipko Movement engendered movements of a similar nature in the south of India, in Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. Bahuguna has lent much support to these movements. In 1981, Bahuguna began a foot march of 4870 kilometers (3026 miles) through the foothills of the Himalayas raising awareness of the exploitation to which their forests and their people were exposed. Today, at age eighty-six, his career in public life has spanned almost seven decades, in which he has been and remains a strong advocate for the environment, and especially for an integrated government policy concerning the Himalayas. His environmental philosophy is rooted in the soil of Indian philosophy, informed by the insights of contemporary ecology, and inspired by the vision of Gandhi.
This book is based largely upon interviews I conducted with Sunderlal Bahuguna over the course of several years. They began when I was undertaking a study of environmental movements in India at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in 1998 and continued during the summer months through 2005, when, after a bout of dengue fever, I was advised to restrict my travels in India to the winter months. The first interviews were conducted at T