Breaking down the question

The command word "discuss" invites a reasoned examination, and the framing "as an example of eco-feminism" sets the specific lens. You are asked to interpret the Chipko movement — the forest-protection agitation in the Garhwal Himalayas of the 1970s, where villagers embraced trees to prevent felling — through the theory of eco-feminism, and to weigh how far that reading holds.

Eco-feminism argues that the domination of women and the domination of nature are linked, and that women, through their closeness to subsistence and natural resources, have a special stake and standpoint in ecological struggle. The question therefore has two tasks — to show the fit between Chipko and eco-feminism, and to assess the strengths and limits of that interpretation.

How to approach it

For 20 marks, first establish eco-feminism, then read Chipko through it, then evaluate. A strong answer will:

  • Define eco-feminism and outline the movement's facts.
  • Show the eco-feminist features — women's leadership, subsistence stakes, the woman-nature link.
  • Present Vandana Shiva's celebrated eco-feminist reading.
  • Introduce critique, especially Bina Agarwal and Guha, and reach a nuanced verdict.

For related context, see our notes on the women's movement in India.

Model answer

The Chipko movement has become the paradigmatic Indian illustration of eco-feminism, though a careful discussion must both establish the fit and register its complications.

Eco-feminism in brief. Eco-feminism holds that patriarchy and the exploitation of nature spring from a common logic of domination, and that women — especially poor, rural women dependent on forests, water and land for subsistence — are both the first victims of environmental degradation and its most committed defenders. Their labour and knowledge give them a distinctive ecological standpoint.

The movement itself. Chipko arose in the early 1970s in the Garhwal hills, where commercial logging by outside contractors threatened forests on which villagers depended for fuel, fodder, food and water, and worsened floods and landslides. The signature tactic was to chipko — to cling to the trees — so that axes could not fall without striking the people. The most celebrated episode, at Reni village in 1974, saw women led by Gaura Devi confront loggers while the men were away, physically guarding the trees.

The eco-feminist reading. Several features invite an eco-feminist interpretation. First, women were often at the forefront, precisely because as gatherers of fuel and fodder they bore the immediate cost of deforestation, while men, drawn into cash and migrant work, sometimes favoured the income from felling. This gendered division of resource dependence gave women a direct material stake. Second, the movement defended a subsistence relation to the forest — as a source of soil, water and pure air, in the villagers' own phrasing — against its treatment as timber and commercial resource. Vandana Shiva, the movement's most influential interpreter, reads Chipko as an ecological and feminist revolt in which women, embodying a life-sustaining relation to nature, resisted a masculine, market-driven science of exploitation. For Shiva, Chipko expresses the feminine principle of Prakriti, nature as living and nurturing, against a reductionist model of development.

Critical scrutiny. This celebrated reading has been questioned. Bina Agarwal offers the influential alternative of feminist environmentalism, arguing that women's involvement flowed not from any innate or spiritual bond with nature but from their material position — their assigned responsibility for provisioning the household from common resources. Women protect forests because their gendered work depends on them, not because they are essentially closer to nature; to claim otherwise risks an essentialism that naturalises the very division of labour feminism should question. Ramachandra Guha, in his social-history account, stresses that Chipko was also, and perhaps primarily, a peasant movement rooted in older struggles over forest rights and against commercial exploitation of the hill economy — a livelihood and political-economy conflict as much as a gendered one. Its leadership included men such as Sunderlal Bahuguna and Chandi Prasad Bhatt, and its concerns ranged well beyond gender.

A balanced verdict. Chipko is rightly cited as an example of eco-feminism because it dramatised the link between women's subsistence roles and ecological defence, and because women's courage was central to its iconic moments. But the fuller truth is that its eco-feminism was material and social rather than spiritual and essential. Agarwal's feminist environmentalism captures this better than a celebratory woman-nature equation, and Guha reminds us of its peasant and political-economic core.

In sum, Chipko is a valid and powerful illustration of eco-feminism, provided the label is understood as grounded in the gendered division of resource dependence rather than in an essential feminine affinity with nature. So qualified, it remains among the clearest demonstrations that ecological struggle and women's struggle can be deeply intertwined.

Examiner's perspective

Examiners reward candidates who do more than assert that women hugged trees. The best answers define eco-feminism, show the specific features of Chipko that fit it, and then critically evaluate the fit rather than accepting it uncritically.

The decisive mark of sophistication is the contrast between Vandana Shiva's essentialist, spiritual reading and Bina Agarwal's materialist feminist environmentalism, supplemented by Guha's peasant-movement interpretation. Handling this debate shows genuine command of the literature.

Weak answers simply narrate the events and declare Chipko eco-feminist; strong answers discuss the interpretation, weigh its critiques, and arrive at a qualified, well-reasoned conclusion.