Fire in the Heart, Firewood on the Back (Writings on and by Himalayan Crusader Sunderlal Bahuguna) Edited by: Tenzin Rigzen For Save Himalaya Movement, Ganga Himalaya Kuti, P.O. TEHRI, PIN-249001 INDIA EDITOR’S NOTE The present book of writings on and by Shri Sunderlal Bahuguna has been divided into three convenient sections. The first section consists of Shri Bahuguna’s profiles, the second of interviews with him, and the third of articles by him. The pieces have been arranged chronologically, in order of their appearance in various publications. In the articles by Shri Bahuguna in the third section, a certain repetition of ideas and concepts has been inevitable, since many of these talks/articles are comprehensive and complete in themselves with regard to the issues they address. In the interests of retaining their original flavour and comprehensiveness, no attempt has been made to truncate the original pieces. Foreword It is with pleasure that I learnt very recently about the proposal to print and publish this present book upon the Save Himalaya Movement that has inspired and induced numerous dedicated persons to join this all-out effort to safeguard the serene and pure environment of the Himalayan Mountains and to protect its delicate, fragile, but extremely precious ecology. The invasion of commercially oriented official projects has endangered our eco-system as well as the purity and integrity of our Himalayan environment. The Himalayas are a national asset belonging to the people of entire India though geographically this area may be situated within the secular jurisdiction of particular states. This national asset should not be treated casualty or tampered with by any authority either of the state or central government, due to its short sighted policy. Such a policy, and such projects, would constitute a flouting of the national interest and the welfare of the common subjects, and would mean ignoring the sentiments of our countrymen as a whole. The people need to be made aware of the actual situation in this regard. Hence this book is a timely publication. The title of the present publication, “Fire in the Heart, Firewood on the Back” is touchingly significant and very meaningful in that it brings out the silent sorrow and the unvoiced resentment and indignation of the neglected hill dwellers in many of the third world countries. The world needs to know the plight of the less fortunate fellow beings of our global human family. The pioneering spirit and the deep dedication of the initiator of this movement to rescue the Himalayas from the onslaught of commercial exploitation, Shri Sunderlal Bahuguna is known to me since the past many years and I wish and hope this publication helps him in his onward struggle to save this national heritage. I wish the Movement al I success and this publication wide circulation. (Swami Chidananda) SECTION I 1. Fire in his Heart, Firewood on his Back — T. S. Sudhir in the Economic Times . 2. Yes Prime Minister, re-enacted all over again. — Claude Alvares in The Observer , 8 April 1992 3. The Old Man and the River — Pritish Nandy in The Observer , New Delhi April 12-18, 1992 4. Moving Mountains 5. Bahuguna’s Diary Devashish Mukerji in The Week , May 3, 1992 Shishir Bhate in The Indian Express , Bombay, 19-6-95 6. The Old Man and The Dam — Ajit Bhattacharjee, in Outlook , June 26, 1996 Fire in his heart, firewood on his back Legend has it that a young prince, Bhagirath, in order to redeem the sins of his ancestors, took it upon himself to get Ganga to descend from heaven into the Himalayas. Centuries later, a Gandhian fakir, Sunderlal Bahuguna, is fighting mightier forces to impede the construction of the Tehri dam across the same river so that Haridwar and Rishikesh are not washed away in the event of an earthquake. For all his love for the region and its bounties, it would have been appropriate if his original name - Gangaram - hadn’t been dropped. The youngest of five children of a forest officer in the Garhwal region of Uttar Pradesh, Bahuguna had a sister named Ganga which only confused matters when either of them was called out. “Since I was a beautiful child, they renamed me Sunderlal,” recalls Bahuguna. Since then, the environmentalist has acquired several pseudonyms. Still a stringer with United News of India (UNI), Bahuguna wrote under the pseudonym ‘Narad’ for a local paper in 1940 to avoid detection. While the pro-Tehri lobby labelled him ‘an enemy of science’, Indira Gandhi forgot his first name and referred to him as ‘Chipko Bahuguna’. But much before he inspired the masses to hug trees, Bahuguna was drawn into the freedom movement by Mahatma Gandhi’s innocuous-looking spinning wheel. “This charkha shall bring us independence,” Shridev Suman, a Gandhian told 13-year-old Bahuguna. The latter was impressed enough to buy three books -two by the Mahatma - from Suman. The metamorphosis was swift and Bahuguna began freelancing for Delhi newspapers. His penmanship wasn’t appreciated by his family who packed him off to Mussoorie. It didn’t help, for Suman’s arrest soon thereafter made Bahuguna more resolute than ever. Says he, “Though Suman was kept in tight security, I managed to get information about the torture inflicted upon him. Soon the news were headlines in the national press which built up public opinion against the king’s repression in Tehri Garhwal.” The upset local police finally caught the offender on March 19, 1944. But luck was on Bahuguna’s side. “The thanedaar was renowned for his cruelty. But then he had also worked as an orderly to my father. So in order to fool others and preserve his reputation, he hit only on the ground while I cooperated by groaning and moaning,” chuckles Bahuguna. Shifted to Narendra Nagar jail, he received the news of Suman’s death after 84 days of fasting. But Bahuguna was fed food with kerosene oil mixed in it. “Seriously ill, I was operated upon by a half-crazy but competent doctor with a hookah in his left hand,” says he. The doctor, however, convinced the police to release Bahuguna conditionally as further imprisonment would have been dangerous to his life. The acquittal launched the archetypal picaresque hero. Reaching Lahore with Rs 25 in his pocket, he made do with tuitions and a frugal fare of rotis and salt. A severe bout of typhoid notwithstanding, Bahuguna stood first in the university. His fees were waived off and a scholarship of Rs 15 was awarded. Then his past - the Tehri Garhwal police - caught up with him but Bahuguna escaped. The stroke of the midnight hour saw him as the general secretary of the Prajamandal, the local equivalent of the Congress. He also started working as correspondent for Hindustan. Says Bahuguna, “They paid me two annas per column inch and Rs 5 on retainer basis. Devdas Gandhi asked me to write for The Hindustan Times also and I managed to earn Rs 15 per month.” While organising adult education classes for the untouchables and protests against liquor vends, Bahuguna came in touch with Gandhi’s two European disciples, Mira Behn and Sarla Behn. In fact, he met his better half courtesy the latter. The “still very beautiful” Vimla Nautiyal was a worker with Sarla Behn. Says Bahuguna, “Her only condition was that I should renounce my political life. The total expenditure on our marriage, conducted under a tree in 1956, was Rs 49. The late 60s saw Bahuguna going green. For while undertaking a padyatra, he realised that massive deforestation would ring the death-knell of the Himalayas. In March 1973, the UP government decided to auction the ash trees to a sports manufacturer when a month prior to that, a request by the locals to cut the wood had been rejected. When the contractors came with armed police, hundreds of women hugged the trees. Chipko - the world’s first environmental movement - had begun in the land of the apostle of non- violence. Says Bahuguna, “Though it began as an economic movement to articulate the basic demands of me locals, it acquired an ideological impetus when the havoc wrought by the felling of trees began to tell upon the ecosystem in the form of landslides and floods.” In 1981, the UP government banned felling of trees above an altitude of 1,000 metres. It continues to this day. Awards and international appearances have come his way aplenty. He declined the Padma Shri in 1981. Invited to the UN energy conference in Nairobi the same year, he drew attention to the precarious state of the world’s green cover by marching to the conference centre with a bundle of firewood on his back. Bahuguna’s favourites are Garhwali devotional songs, Vishnu Sahasranam and the Gitai - rendering by Vinoba Bhave for his unlettered mother. Another favourite is the common man with whom he has “worked all his life”. On the Kashmir-Kohima padyatra in the early 1980s, Bahuguna had for company an old man from Shimla. “His horoscope predicted that he would die while walking. Since nobody was confident of my surviving the tortuous 4,870 km journey, he had decided to give me company on my odyssey to heaven.” Both survived. (T.S. Sudhir in The Economic Times) Yes Prime Minister, re-enacted all over again On Thursday evening, at 4.30 pm, MP George Fernandes met Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in connection with the continuing hunger strike by the 65-year old Sundarlal Bahuguna at the proposed Tehri dam site. The fast was already in its 35th day.