A girl from Reni village saw the labourers moving towards the forest. When the men of the village were not there, whom should she inform about the presence of these strangers? She ran to the head of the Mahila Mangal Dal (MMD), Gaura Devi. She told her about the outsiders in their forest. MMD was a small organisation. Sometimes, the women would sit at the back in the Chipko meetings in this village. Gaura Devi had not been able to attend the meetings although her son had talked about them.

It was around 11 am — time for cooking in the village. Gaura left her house and rallied other women. Seeing their mothers looking grave and walking fast, seven little girls also ran after them. With Gaura were 20 women and seven girls, who marched on the Sitel forest path. Taking a shortcut, they reached where the labourers had gathered for cooking. Others were making plans to fell trees, their tools strewn all around.

They were shocked to see the women marching towards them even if they did not show it. The women told them not to cut the forest. This is our parental home, our maika, they said. We get wood, grass, herbs and vegetables from here. Don’t cut it. If this is cut, the hills will fall on our village and there will be floods. Our bagads (riverside farmland) will be washed away. Don’t destroy our maika. Don’t destroy our home. This was their plea.

Seeing the meals being prepared, the women told the workers to eat their food and then come down with them. Some of the contractor’s men and forest employees were drunk. They shouted at the women and accused them of interrupting their work and tried to scare them away. The gun-toting forest guard ambling towards the women was drunk as well! Seeing the guard approach, Gaura Devi unbuttoned her garment. “Here, shoot me and cut down my maika and take it away!”, she told him. Below the path where she stood, the Rishiganga flowed and beyond that the Nanda Devi loomed large. Her challenge was met with a stunned silence. This was an extraordinary moment in Uttarakhand’s history, comparable to January 13, 1921, when, in Bageshwar, a pledge was taken to stop begar for colonial officials, or to April 23, 1930, when in Peshawar Garhwali soldiers refused to fire upon unarmed satyagrahis. Now, in March 1974, in the upper Alaknanda Valley, it seemed as if, through Gaura Devi, not just Reni but all of Uttarakhand and forest dwellers of the country had spoken.

The labourers who had just eaten, the drunken henchmen, and the forest department employees were all rattled by the women. Somebody scolded the gun-toting guard and disarmed him. The labourers started moving out. The drunken men called themselves “high caste men” and abused the women as “low caste”. Meanwhile, the women went down to stop the labourers.

Seeing an Army vehicle going towards Malari, the rest of the forest department party thought that the activists were coming. They too started walking downwards. They picked up their sabbals (iron digging bars) and axes. Some women continued to walk with them while seven others stayed behind. These women used the remaining sabbals to pull down the cement strap and close off the approach route to the forest.

Thereafter, there was no scope for mischief. Gaura, 54, Moonga, 52, and several other women were on the road. Near the bridge lay 1,800 sacks of rations. The women sat down on the junction of the forest track and the road. The contractor’s men threatened Gaura Devi. They felt all this had happened because of her, the woman who was not scared of the gun. Gaura kept quiet. The women sat there through the night and sang songs about Nanda Devi and other deities. Gaura recalled they did not raise any slogans then. When words translate into action, there is no need to voice them.

At the dawn of March 27, as the sun rose from the summit behind Rishiganga, the women saw their forest smile. They too were relieved. By 9-10 am, Govind Singh Rawat from Joshimath, Chandi Prasad Bhatt and others from Gopeshwar had arrived. Ignorant of Karl Marx, and almost equally so of the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, these women had made these leaders proud. Hayat Singh did not lose a moment in taking Bhatt and the others to the women, who greeted them with folded hands.

Gaura stepped forward and said: “Whatever we did was the right thing. We are not remorseful or scared. We did not hit anybody. We spoke to them with love. If the police arrest us, we have no fear. We saved our maika, our fields and bagads.” She narrated the chain of events while skipping the part about the guards training their guns on them or being spat at. Perhaps they did not want the men to lose their jobs. These women had saved the face of Rawat, a Communist, and Bhatt, a Sarvodaya activist. In the evening, a demonstration was held. The labourers felt the women would get the men to beat them up. They were told that the activists had no quarrel with them, their bosses or employees. They had to save their jungle, and that had been done.

Those who had failed to cut the jungle and those who had succeeded in saving it were both listening to Bhatt. He praised the actions of the women and talked about the need to take this struggle further. Rawat said he had never been so happy as he was with this act of resistance. A decision was taken to hold a demonstration on March 31. By now, the men of Reni village had come back. They were proud of their women but found it hard to believe the chain of events. For the next four days, the activists and the labourers stayed put. Different groups were given the responsibility of guarding the forest and tending to the labourers’ needs and rations. The women came and went from the village. They arranged for food. Slogans were raised daily. There was a lot of conversation and songs were sung.

On March 31, an impressive demonstration was held. It was as if all of Dhauli valley had gathered on the banks of the Rishiganga. From all sides, wearing colourful traditional attire, men women and children poured in. Some groups were singing songs about Nanda Devi and others were raising the slogans that had been taught to the villagers in past months.

At this meeting, the villagers and activists defined and presented the movement in their own ways. The most recent victory was celebrated, with some speakers tracing the sequence from the villages of Mandal, Phata and Reni, and talking about the need to prepare for the future. Every representative of the villages called for taking forward the fight and the need to be watchful when it came to the forest that had just been saved. Those who did not know about Mandal and Phata were surprised to learn about them. Some speakers said that until constructive decisions were taken by the government, there was no guarantee for the safety of the forests. Other speakers termed this an unexpected and unprecedented event.

The Reni resistance gave the Chipko agitation a clear shape and a certain shine.

Who will not be proud of this resistance?

Shekhar Pathak, author of Chipko Movement: A People’s History, taught at Kumaon University and is now associated with Pahar Foundation. The views expressed are personal