Vimla Bahuguna: A Legacy of Radical Dissent and Tough Action | Deepti Priya Mehrotra

Vimla Bahuguna (1932-2025) the educator, environmentalist, activist and leader was an extraordinary phenomenon. Gandhian, feminist and socialist, her approach of caring and non-violence combined with uncompromising opposition to social injustice as well as capitalist development. Thoughtful commitment nourished the life she had chosen. Immersed in constructive work and socio-political activism, her convictions drew her into direct confrontation with state and private agencies. Resisting commercial forestry, big dams, destructive mining, human trafficking, and discrimination based on gender, caste or community, she was a leader in the quiet, true way: seeking no limelight yet a source of undying inspiration to countless people.

The Making of an Activist

Vimla’s family roots were in Malideval, a village in Tehri Garwhal district of Uttarakhand. Her mother Ratna Devi Nautiyal, questioned social prejudice and practices such as polygamy and ‘kanya vikray’ (sale of girls for marriage). Vimla’s father Narain Dutt Nautiyal held a post in the Forest Department. While in school, Vimla was drawn to the freedom movement, as were her (two) brothers and (four) sisters. Their parents were exceptionally brave, for they sent Vimla far-away after Class 8, to Lakshmi Ashram, a newly-opened Gandhian school in Kausani, near Almora. Among the first five students of this school, it was here that Vimla’s thinking took shape, and ideals that sustained her lifelong.

Lakshmi Ashram, or Kasturba Mahila Uthhaan Mandal-Kumaon, was run by Sarala behn (originally Catherine Heilman, half-British and half-German). She had come to India in 1932, drawn by what she had heard of Gandhi. She taught in Vidya Bhavan, Udaipur, and the school in Wardha, before coming, in 1941, to the Kumaon hills. During Quit India, she mobilized and supported local freedom fighters, and was herself jailed. She carried on thereafter, tramping through the hills, understanding the common people, attempting to develop livelihoods in consonance with local ecology and culture. In 1946, she set up Lakshmi Ashram, with the aim of strengthening hill women: who were the backbone of the economy, yet themselves sorely neglected.

At Lakshmi Ashram, Vimla Nautiyal was educated within the philosophy of ‘nai taleem’ (literally, ‘new education’), with emphasis on self-reliance, bread-labour, horticulture, dairy-farming, along with studies. It was (and continues to be) an all-female campus. Girls and their teachers ran the show, taking care of the dairy, vegetable patch, fruit trees, cooking and eating nutritious, delicious food. They engaged in community outreach, deeply absorbing the spirit of sarvodaya (welfare of all). After completing her schooling, Vimla began teaching at Lakshmi Ashram.

Soon after national independence, came news of widespread rioting, and Gandhi’s assassination. When Vinoba Bhave’s call for Bhoodan went out, Lakshmi Ashram responded. The entire staff and students walked through rural Kumaon, asking big landowners to donate land for the landless. During 1953-55, Vimla went to Bihar and participated in the Bhoodan movement there, where land ownership was far more skewed than in Uttarakhand. She walked from village to village, with indefatigable energy, successfully persuading landowners and ensuring that benefits were not denied to Dalits, and women. Vinoba Bhave extolled her extraordinary abilities. Already, Vimla was a force to reckon with. Having learnt to be focused, fearless and confident, in time she carved out new paths in the rugged Himalayas.

The Life She Chose

When she received a proposal for marriage from a young Congressman, Vimla Nautiyal rejected it outright: she did not want to marry a politician. Sundarlal Bahuguna was then Secretary of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Party. But both sets of parents were keen on the match. Sundarlal, from Maroda village, Tehri Garhwal, had first met Vimla when she came up to Tehri and put up a play on Bhoodan. Carefully reviewing her stance, Vimla agreed to marry, on condition that he leave party politics and accompany her as an activist-on-the-ground. He agreed; he was genuinely rethinking his own life-path, in the light of Vimla’s convictions and philosophy.

Their marriage in 1955 inaugurated a long and richly rewarding partnership. Moving to Silyara, a remote village in Tehri Garhwal, they set up Parvatiya Navajivan Mandal, to generate new life in the hills. Theirs was a simple cottage home, with space for classes and for a few students to reside on-campus. Day scholars came from Silyara and near-by villages. Together, students and teachers greened the campus. In response to local needs, Vimla began basic health work, and ignited women’s collectives, to tackle myriad issues.

Both she and Sundarlal worked on local livelihoods, linked to ecological integrity. They opposed the commercialization of trees, forests, forest products, soil, water, rivers. In the midst of all the activism, they had three children—Madhu, Rajeev and Pradeep.

By the mid-1960s, Vimla Bahuguna along with hundreds of women was embroiled in direct confrontation with the state. They picketed liquor vends, which contributed to male alcoholism, impoverishment, and domestic violence. Vimla was arrested and interred for fourteen days in Saharanpur jail, six-year-old Pradeep with her. The agitation carried on, despite repression, and yielded results in the form of (temporary) ban on liquor sale within Tehri.

Meanwhile during the 1970s, people’s opposition to deforestation came to the fore. Forests provided fuel-wood, fodder, soil and water, allowing a way of life in harmony with nature. As the scale of deforestation increased, this way of life came under threat.

Chipko: To Save the Forests

The Chipko movement was led by local women of Uttarakhand, throughout the 1970s decade. In Reni village, Pithoragarh, Gaura Devi led a group of women to surround and embrace trees, preventing their being axed down for timber. In Tehri Garhwal, participation in anti-liquor campaigns had made tough activists out of countless women such as Mangsiri Devi and Sudesha behn. They knew the power of satyagraha, peaceful principled resistance. Again, Vimla Bahuguna and women from Mahila Mangal Dals engaged in collective struggle.

They hugged trees, tied rakhis signifying that trees were like their homes, their siblings, and mothers. They conducted sit-ins and gheraos, to protect forests which they knew were vital for survival. In 1979, Vimla and Sundarlal Bahuguna, Mangsiri Devi, Nanda Devi, Satyeshwari Devi, Bhuri Devi and Jupli Devi, all from Silyara village, set up vigil to save Bandyargarh forest, which was slated for felling. Sundarlal ji was arrested, but many others joined the protest, which continued until contractor and workers abandoned their plan and left the forest. 

As protests by various groups raged across Uttarakhand, the government—both regional and national—was compelled to pay attention. Committees were set up, surveys and meetings held. In 1980, a ban on tree-felling above a certain height in the Uttarakhand hills, was finally announced. This was a big success for the movement. Chipko became rather well-known, catching the imagination of environmentalists and eco-feminists, helping inspire similar action elsewhere in India and around the world. During 1981-83, Sundarlal ji went on a long foot march from Kashmir to Kohima, to raise consciousness about environment concerns and action needed to preserve the ecology of the Himalayas.

Vimla Bahuguna returned to her daily tasks, steady as the sun. I met her in Silyara in 1988, calm, indefatigable, her wiry frame belying the tough activism and subsistence labor she engaged in. Sundarlal ji was away, on another tour. She cooked while we conversed; I wondered: Did she not sometimes feel like traveling the world, as he did? Firmly, she replied: “It is important to travel out, meet people and give them an idea of what we think. But the everyday grassroots work has to carry on. I stay in the village, walk to other villages, teach the girls, tend the cattle and tackle the problems people bring to me…. Long years ago I dedicated my life to constructive work in the hills, and I do not like to leave this even for one day.”

But leave she did, time and again, for tasks even more acute, ever more urgent.

Opposing Tehri Dam: ‘Save Ganga, Save Himalayas’

Plans were afoot since the mid-1970s to build a big dam at Tehri, on the Bhagirathi River, source headstream of the Ganges. The dam would generate hydro-electricity to feed grids in the northern plains. Collective protest against this project began in 1977 with formation of the Tehri Baandh Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti. In June ’78, Yugvani newspaper described massive participation in anti-dam protests, for example “…350 women from Khaand village walked with dhol-bajas 20 kilometres to the dam site, which was packed with protesters. Police, Provincial Armed Constabulary and women police were present.” Over a hundred demonstrators were arrested during these protests. Government promised to set up a review committee, people dispersed; the movement dwindled.

A decade later, the movement surged again. By then, tunnels had been constructed, coffer dam was under construction, and seventeen villages had been evacuated. In 1989, Sundarlal Bahuguna began a sit-in at the dam site, in Tehri. Hundreds of activists, local people, joined the sit-in, in tents put up amid the swirling construction dust. Vimla Bahuguna too camped here for months on end. Protestors, along with experts, pointed out how the dam would displace over one lakh people, destroy 123 villages, the beautiful historical Tehri town, local environment, flora and fauna, as well as pose several potential dangers. They suggested run-of-the-river small dams, which would benefit local people as well, rather than only city in the plains.

In October 1991, a massive earthquake caused terrible destruction in Tehri Garhwal. Their home and workplace in Silyara was severely damaged. While Sundarlal continued to camp at the Tehri protest site, Vimla plunged into rehabilitation work across the area. But the earthquake also induced more people to join the anti-dam protest. On December 14, 1991, some 5000 people gathered at the site and staged an incredible coup. As Vimla later described: “We marched up to the machines and men. We weren’t violent. We simply surrounded the machines and requested the workers to leave.” The workers left, and work on the dam came to a halt. Batches of women, men and children came every day, to keep vigil.

This stalemate, a tremulous victory for the people, lasted 76 days. On February 28, 1992, Vimla Bahuguna was arrested from the dam site, along with 40 others, including 8-year-old Guddi and 84-year-old Mangsiri Devi. Work on the dam resumed. In jail, Vimla undertook a protest fast, over eleven days. All 41 protesters were released; the agitation carried on.

I made a trip to Tehri in April 1992, and stayed ten days at the dharna. There was Vimla di within the tents—counseling people, discussing issues wisely, knowledgeably. She took charge of the kitchen, with her sister Urmila Bhatt (who came down from Uttarkashi) and 17-year-old college student Sunita Chamoli. Girl-children like Guddi, Saraswati and Pushpa worked virtually full-time on kitchen tasks and fetching buckets of water. Women cooked for 20 to 30 persons per meal, using a small stove that had lost its pin, and a pressure cooker whose gasket did not fit. The gendered division of labour meant that women, although competent activists, often had less energy for wider issues and events. Often only men held meetings, discussing events and deciding strategies. All the same, Vimla Bahuguna and other women played a huge role, articulated their thoughts and commanded deep respect.

Sundarlal Bahuguna, at the time, was on a long fast. It received media attention, national and international, going on for 73 days, at which point (in May ’92) the government halted dam construction, and set up a review committee. Of course, this too proved to be eyewash; work on the dam soon resumed. Activists went to court and won a stay order, but finally, the court ruled that the government could go ahead and complete the dam. Work resumed on the dam in 2001.

Undying Relevance

Although the movement to stop the Tehri dam failed in its central objective, it succeeded in educating local people and a wider public, and helped shape a discourse that provided impetus to protests such as the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Within Uttarakhand, the struggle to ‘save Ganga, save the Himalayas’ carries on, helmed by activists old and new.

As Vimla and Sundarlal Bahuguna pointed out, within just fifty years following independence, the Himalayan foothills witnessed the destruction of over half its forest cover. The consequences are there for all to see: soil erosion, landslides, dried-up springs and streams, terrible forest fires, floods, avalanches, and subsidence of entire towns and villages. Today hundreds of ghost villages exist, emptied out because life there is no longer sustainable.

In her last years, spent in Dehra Dun, Vimla Bahuguna urged young people to oppose environmental destruction and create sustainable initiatives. “Because if we hadn’t started Chipko,” she said, “the mountains would have been hollow.” She did everything she could possibly do, to save the hills, its rivers and forests. Surely it made a difference. Wisdom such as she embodied might still save us, even as we stand teetering uncertainly at the edge of global destruction.