Resolute In Struggle: The Environmental Legacy Of Vimla Bahuguna

• Vimla Bahuguna dedicated her life to defending India’s forests, empowering women, and advocating for the poor, shaping some of the country’s most significant social movements. She embraced rural activism over urban comforts, working to ensure land rights and social upliftment for marginalised communities.
• While her husband, Sunderlal Bahuguna, became the public face of India’s environmental movement, Vimla was its quiet but steadfast force. She chose a life of simplicity and service, organising women, sustaining movements, and keeping their activism deeply rooted in non-violent resistance.
• She played a crucial role in mobilising women for the Chipko Movement, turning tree-hugging into a global symbol of resistance. Beyond environmental battles, she led efforts against liquor shops harming rural communities and fiercely opposed the Tehri Dam, spotlighting the human costs of large-scale development.
• Eschewing fame, she worked tirelessly behind the scenes to strengthen movements, mentor activists, and promote rural self-sufficiency. Her impact endures in the forests she fought to protect, the women she empowered, and the grassroots struggles that continue in her name.

Vimla Bahuguna, who spent a lifetime defending India’s forests, empowering women, and championing the rights of the poor, died on February 14, at the age of 93. Her passing, four years after that of her husband, the renowned environmentalist Sunderlal Bahuguna, marks the gentle passing of a key figure whose work was foundational to some of India’s most consequential social movements.

Born into a well-regarded family in Tehri, in what is now Uttarakhand, she eschewed the comforts of urban life in favour of grassroots activism. Inspired by Sarla Behn, an Englishwoman-turned-Gandhian, she joined the Sarvodaya movement, a vision of upliftment for all, and dedicated herself to the Bhoodan Movement in Bihar in the early 1950s. Led by Vinoba Bhave, this campaign sought to persuade landowners to voluntarily donate land to the landless. Where Bhave spoke of moral duty, Vimla Bahuguna worked on the ground, ensuring that women and Dalits were not forgotten in the land distribution, teaching children, and organising village women to take control of their own lives.

Her marriage to Sunderlal Bahuguna cemented a partnership of shared struggle. While he became the public face of India’s environmental movement, her work and vision made their activism sustainable. She embraced the hardship of life in a rural ashram over the privileges of political circles, encouraged her husband to move from politics to social service and led movements of her own while managing their home in Silyara. Their shared commitment to non-violent resistance and environmental advocacy defined their lives, and together, they became the backbone of India’s ecological consciousness.

Unlike the flamboyant Sunderlal Bahuguna, Vimla was a quieter person, who stayed away from the media glare, but endowed a rustic dignity that only somebody who has seen life from close quarters could have had. While Sunderlal travelled across India (and the world) talking about the Chipko movement and the anti-Tehri dam struggle, she stayed at the Silyara home, hosting and guiding all those who came to her.

When the October 1991 earthquake had caused damage to their home, Sunderlal was protesting against the construction of the Tehri dam from a hut on the site where the 260-metre-high dam now stands. Vimla continued living at Silyara, and slowly repaired their home. When the dam rose to its full height, the town that both Sunderlal and Vimla loved – old Tehri – went under the water of the reservoir.

She was instrumental in mobilising women for the Chipko Movement in the 1970s, a campaign that made tree-hugging a global symbol of resistance. While men were away seeking work, it was the women, under her steadfast but firm leadership, who encircled the trees with their bodies to prevent their felling. For these village women, it was a fight to protect their natural resources from being logged commercially.

“What do forests bear? Soil, water and pure air,” was the battle cry of the Chipko movement that succinctly communicated the essence of their purpose.

These same women would later rally under her guidance to oppose liquor shops that preyed on impoverished villagers, and to resist the construction of the Tehri Dam, a battle ultimately lost but one that shaped India’s discourse on large-scale development projects. She believed that protecting the environment was inseparable from protecting people’s livelihoods, particularly those of women and marginalised communities, who bore the brunt of ecological destruction.

Vimla Bahuguna’s role in the Tehri Dam resistance went beyond protest; she helped coordinate legal efforts, mobilised public support, and kept the issue alive when others had moved on. She remained firm even when faced with intimidation, advocating for sustainable development that did not come at the cost of uprooting entire communities. Despite the eventual construction of the dam, her efforts brought international attention to the environmental costs of such projects, influencing future policies and grassroots movements.

Her work extended into rural education and self-sufficiency initiatives. She taught village women economic independence by training them in sustainable agriculture, handicrafts, and cooperative businesses. Long before feminism became a mainstream movement in India, she was ensuring that women had the means to stand on their own. Many of the women she mentored would go on to become activists themselves, carrying forward her legacy in new ways.

Vimla Bahuguna worked quietly, often in the shadows of better-known figures. Yet those who knew her understood her influence. It was she who anchored her husband’s activism, she who kept communities engaged long after campaigns ended, and she who ensured that struggles did not dissolve into momentary acts of resistance but transformed into sustained social movements.

Her legacy is not that of grand awards or political power but of unshaken principle. She lived austerely, believed in the strength of collective action, and placed her faith in ordinary people. If today India’s environmental consciousness has roots in its villages, much of the credit belongs to Vimla Bahuguna, who ensured that the movements she helped build did not wither when the media’s gaze moved elsewhere. Her passing is the loss of a resolute, unshakable force, one who asked for little but gave much.

She leaves behind a generation of activists who owe their resolve to her example. The forests she fought for still stand, the women she empowered continue to organise, and the principles she lived by remain relevant in a world increasingly grappling with the consequences of environmental neglect. Her life was a testament to the idea that true change does not come from rhetoric, but from years of patient, unyielding effort – work that she carried forward until the very end.

Her death also marks the end of a generation of environmental activists who were inspired by a Gandhian ideology, learnt directly from Gandhi’s disciples.

(Published under Creative Commons from Mongabay-India. Read the original article here)