Dive into India's eco-awareness movement

Chipko, Silent Valley, Narmada Bachao Andolan, and closer to home, the Save Aarey movement—when you think of environmental activism in India, these may be some issues that come to mind.

- Vidya Heble

Chipko, Silent Valley, Narmada Bachao Andolan, and closer to home, the Save Aarey movement—when you think of environmental activism in India, these may be some issues that come to mind. The environmental and sustainability movement in India, however, goes back much further, as far back as the 1930s and '40s, when Radhakamal Mukerjee and J.C. Kumarappa wrote about environmentalism. Ramachandra Guha "stumbled across" the works of Mukerjee and Kumarappa in a library during the late 1980s, and from there went in search of other such "early environmentalists." Having found several who preceded even these two, Guha says he ended up filling several notebooks filled with material on India's "first wave" environmentalists.