Soda! Activism in the Uttar Pradesh hills has its origins back in the days when the British still ruled. Back then, too, the inhabitants of Kumaun and Garhwal were politically alert and active.
Over the past two decades, a wave of social movements has swept the hill region of Uttar Pradesh. These include movements againsi alcoholism and sale ofillicit liquor, againstunregulated mining, against the siting of large hydroelectric projects, and for the establishment of aseparate province of Uttarakhand within the Indian Union. Most celebrated of all is the Chipko Andolan, the ´Hug the Trees´ movement that is arguably the best known environmental initiative in the world.
These contemporary social movements have heiped place Uttarakhand firmly on the social and environment at atlas of independent India. Yet these movements have also inspired scholars to recover, from the margins of history asitwere,theheritageofearliermovcmentsin the region. Where colonial officials liked to write of the ´simple and law abiding htllman´, the fact is that the hill peasantry have been as politically active and alert to injustice as their counterparts elsewhere in India.
Mountains, Forests and Governance
The analysis of social movements in Uttarakhand must reckon with three distincti ve features of life in the hills. First, the ecological characteristics of mountain society — the close integration of agriculture and animal {husbandry with the forest, the limited availability of cultivable land, and possibilities of agricultural intensification —¦ have meant that in Uttarakhand, as in the Alps and the Andes, rural society has amore or less uniform class structure, composed largely of peasant proprietors with a relatively small proportion of big landlords or agricultura! labourers.Hence the absence of the classic agrarian conflict between landlords and landless labourers. Rural discontent has beenexpressed in different ways, however. This I will deal with presently.