A GANDHIAN IN GARHWAL: CHANDI PRASAD BHATT By Ramchandra Guha

D. A GANDHIAN IN GARHWAL: CHANDI PRASAD BHATT
By Ramchandra Guha, A Gandhian in Garhwal

Answer the following question in about 300 words

1. Write an essay on the life and career of Chandi Prasad Bhatt.

1. चंडी प्रसाद भट्ट के जीवन और करियर पर एक निबंध

A: Chandi Prasad Bhatt was born in a family of priests. As a boy, he often visited the family shrine at Rudranath. When he walked through the alpine pasture, he had to take off his shoes, so as not to harm the flowers. In one stretch, there was a ban on spitting and coughing and on anything that might pollute of the river below. There were taboos on plucking plants before the festival of Nandasthmi: after which the restraint was removed, so that the plucking of the now ripened flowers also released their seeds.

Once he met a shepherd burning the flowers of the sacred brahmakamal. On being
questioned, the shepherd answered that he was making antidote for stomach ache and he added that he broke off the plant with his mouth, like a sheep, so that the deity would think that it was nature’s natural order, rather than the hand of man at work. These events sensitized Bhatt to the local traditions of folk ecology.

In 1964, Bhatt founded the Dashauli Swarajya Seva Sangh. It emphasized local
employment generation through weaving, bee-keeping, herb collection and cottage industries. It was the mother organization of the Chipko Movement. In 1973, the Forest Department refused to allot the organization hornbeam trees to make agricultural implements from but auctioned them off to a distant sports company. This made the DGSS protest.

At Bhatt’s suggestion, the villagers threatened to hug the trees rather than to allow the loggers in. It was not an economic movement that would subside once it demands were met. On the contrary, its was aim was to reconstruct environment and to foster love towards trees in the hearts of humans. Safeguarding the hill forests was only the first step towards transforming the relationship between humans and nature.

As an environmentalist, Bhatt critiqued large dams and called for a synthesis between the practical knowledge of peasants and latest scientific innovations. He demonstrated that women and tribal people had a greater stake in the responsible management of nature than city dwellers.

A GANDHIAN IN GARHWAL: CHANDI PRASAD BHATT By Ramchandra Guha, A Gandhian in Garhwal