Sunderlal bahuguna biography
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Sunderlal Bahuguna: The man who taught India to hug trees
India correspondent
"We are doing violence towards the earth, towards nature. We have become butchers of nature," Sunderlal Bahuguna once told an interviewer.
Bahuguna, who died with Covid-19 on Thursday aged 94, was known the world over as the man who taught Indians to hug trees to protect the environment. He was one of the main leaders of the Chipko movement in northern India in the 1970s. In Hindi, chipko literally means "hugging".
Heeding calls by Bahuguna and fellow activist Chandi Prasad Bhatt, men and women in the Indian Himalayas embraced and chained themselves to trees to stop loggers from cutting them down. It was a powerful symbol that conveyed, 'Our bodies before our trees'.
It also became a movement that brought to the world's attention the devastation wrought by the environmental crisis in the world's highest mountains.
A devastating flood in Uttarakhand in 1970 had come as a rude awakening for villagers. 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, Bahu
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[Obituary] Sunderlal Bahuguna: End of an era for Indian environmentalism
- Noted Gandhian Sunderlal Bahuguna, known for leading Chipko in the 1970s and the anti-Tehri dam Movement in the 1990s, breathed his last on May 21, 2021.
- He practised a simple and sustainable lifestyle inspiring many who immensely contributed to the cause.
- Bahuguna advocated for an integrated and pragmatic approach for the conservation of the entire Himalayan belt and foot-marched almost 5,000 kilometres from Kashmir in northern India to Kohima in eastern India.
Kya hain jangal ke upkaar
Mitti paani aur bayaar
Mitti paani aur bayaar
Zinda Rahne ke Aadhar
(What are the blessings of forests on us. They provide us healthy soil, clean water and air which make life possible for us.)
This legendry slogan coined by journalist and poet Kunwar Prasun has echoed in the Himalayan valleys since the 1970s and galvanised an entire generation of environmentalists in the region. It was popularised by Sunderlal Bahuguna, leader of the famous Chipko forest conservation movement, that had men and women of Uttarakhand villages hug trees to protect them from the axe.
The 94-year-old environmentalist succumbed to Covid-19 on May 21, 2021, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Rish
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Sunderlal Bahuguna
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