In a movement which gained its momentum in part because of the sheer potency of the word 'Chipko', who uttered it first and who first hugged a tree to save it have become matters of importance. There have been arguments, and some Chipko leaders have not been above posing with the trunk of trees for photographers.
Not everyone agrees that Bhatt was the first person to suggest the concept and use of the term 'Chipko'. Ghanashyam Raturi (Sailani), in a taped interview with Dehradun-based journalist Navin Nautiyal, claims that he was there first, in a song he says he wrote in December 1972 with the words "Chipko pedo pe jungalo bachounda" (Stick to the trees and save the forest). The song was later to become popular in the Tehri protests.
Not all claims by Chipko activists should be taken at face value, say others. H.K Singh of the Degree College in Gopeshwar, who is writing a book on the involvement of CPI workers in the forest movements of Uttarakhand, believes that nothing more than commercial motive inspired the crucial confrontation with Symonds' & Co. He says that Subedar Bachhan Singh Bist, the traditional Symonds' contractor and a Chamoli man, did not get the contract for 1973. For that reason, a meeting was called on 18 March 1973 (14 days before Chandi Prasad Bhatt is said to have come up with his ideas) to plan strategy.
"Bhatt was away at the time," says Singh, "The minutes of that meeting, which are with the Bist family, show that all the people attending threatened to stick to the trees and not let them be cut down if Symonds' brought in outside contractors." And the outsider, in fact, was another hillman named Jagdish Prasad Nautiyal, of Mussoorie.