ABSTRACT
The life and work of Mohandas Karamchand 'Mahatma' Gandhi (1869-1948) have had a considerable influence on the environmental movement in India. This movement truly began with the Chipko Andolan ('Hug the tree movement'), which was founded in April 1973 to protect some trees in the Indian Himalaya against industrial exploitation. In one of the first printed accounts of Chipko. a breathless journalist announced that Gandhi's ghost had saved the Himalayan trees. Ever since, Mahatma Gandhi has been the usually acknowledged and occasionally unacknowledged patron saint of the Indian environmental movement. From Chipko to the 'Save the Narmada Movement' (Narmada Bachao Andolan) of the present time, environmental activists have relied heavily on Gandhian techniques of non-violent protest or satyagraha, and have drawn abundantly on Gandhi's polemic against heavy industrialization. Again, some of the movement's better-known figures, for example Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna of Chipko or Baba Amte and Medha Patkar of Narmada, have repeatedly underlined their own debt to Gandhi.
