Who is s.l bahuguna

Sunderlal began moving throughout the mountains and providing strength and encouragement to the mountain women to eradicate alcohol from the mountains. Traditionally these Hindu people do not consume alcohol; however the drink was flowing heavily between India and China, influencing many in its path. Directly following the elimination of the threat of alcohol, Sunderlal and the women of the mountains turned their energy to another prominent threat, the deforestation of the Himalaya Mountains.

The British government and then the Indian government came into the Himalayan Mountains and began clear-cutting the forests. The ecological effect was devastating for the mountaineers. Sunderlal worked with others to ignite the Chipko movement. Chipko literally means tree huggers. Sunderlal and the local women would chain themselves to the trees so that the loggers could not cut the trees down.

The Chipko is still working to protect the trees today through the same nonviolent methods. Sunderlal is most famous for his work to stop the creation of the Tehri Dam.

The intention of the Tehri Damis to divert water from wandering through the mountain villages and increase water flow to New Delhi.

This will cost the mountain villagers their supply of water. To show his opposition to the Dam, Sunderlal has petitioned the government and gone on hunger strikes to show his unfailing commitment to stopping the Tehri Dam Project. The Tehri project began in Sunderlal protested with many others until Finally in the Dam began to fill and Sunderlal and his wife Vimla were forcibly moved to a government issued home upstream.

Sunderlal has vowed that this is not the end; he will continue to fight for ecological protection in India. Sunderlal Bahuguna has contributed globally through awareness raising measures concerning deforestation, the negative effects of liquor on mountain life, and the health of the Ganges River. We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation.

They woke up to the "tenuous links between deforestation, landslides and floods", noted Ramachandra Guha, a historian who has chronicled the Chipko movement. Three years later, Bahuguna and fellow activists began embracing trees.

Young men took an oath in blood to protect nature. Very soon, women in the Himalayas became an integral part of the movement too, embracing trees and tying rakhis - a symbolic red thread tied around a brother's wrist during the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandhan - onto the bark of trees.

They walked in the snow and took away tools from loggers to stop felling. Bahuguna, who grew up in the Himalayas, connected the dots well. He wrote that deforestation led to erosion of fertile land and pushed the men out of the villages to look for jobs in cities. This left women to "bear all the responsibilities of collecting fodder, firewood and water, apart from farming". Not surprisingly, the Chipko movement became an important milestone in the fight to secure women's rights. Over the years, Bahuguna, with his flowing beard and trademark bandana, went from strength to strength.

College students and women joined him in greater numbers. They staged peaceful demonstrations, hugged trees and went on fasts.

The Chipko movement not only provoked greater environmental consciousness across India, but also inspired other environmental movements across the world. The Chipko movement began in in Uttarakhand, a rural, mountainous region in northern India. Many men in Uttarakhand left for jobs in the towns and cities, and women stayed behind, depending on the forests.

They gathered firewood for heating and cooking, grass to feed their livestock, and wild medicinal herbs. But as more trees were logged for manufacturing railroad ties, furniture, paper, and sports equipment like tennis rackets, local women had to walk further and further to get their daily necessities.

The companies sent their lumbermen to cut the trees, but the villagers confronted them in the forests, and stood their ground. While this first confrontation was mostly men, most of the subsequent confrontations were led by women. Bahuguna is well-known as the face of the Chipko movement because he was its messenger. He spread word of the Chipko movement on foot, including a 4, kilometers tour 3, miles in the early 80s.

It was the ladies who hugged the trees. Bahuguna had been influenced by Gandhian principles of civil disobedience since the young age of 13, when a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi walked up to him and his friends on the street, carrying a big box with a charkha, a kind of loom or spinning wheel, inside.

This was back in , when India was still under British colonial rule and the government suppressed the weaving of clothes by the Indian people.