In late March 1974, a young girl ran into the village of Reni, high in the Garhwal Himalayas, with news that could not wait. Labourers had arrived on the slopes above the Alaknanda River, and they had come to cut down the forest. The men of the village were away, so she took the news to Gaura Devi, a widow in her late forties who led the village women.
\n\nGaura Devi quickly gathered 27 women and led them up the hill to face the loggers. Some of the men were armed, and the women had nothing but their bodies and their nerve. By the time the village men came home, the trees were still standing. The stand at Reni, a hamlet close to the Tibet border, became the defining moment of the Chipko movement.
\n\nThe trees above Reni had been auctioned by the forest department to a contractor, about 2,500 of them in all. For the people of the area, the forest supplied fodder for their animals and firewood for their hearths, and it held the steep slopes together. In July 1970, the Alaknanda had flooded catastrophically, and many in the valley blamed the clearing of the hillsides upstream.
\n\nResistance…
Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle
