The Mesmerizing Power of Nonviolence

Mahatma Gandhi's life and work have had a considerable influence on environmental movements in India. In one of the first printed accounts of the Chipko movement, ‘a breathless journalist announced that Gandhi's ghost had saved the Himalayan trees’ (Guha, 1995, p. 47). Since that time, Gandhi has been the typically acknowledged patron saint of environmental activists, many of whom rely greatly on Gandhian techniques of nonviolent protest and draw extensively on Gandhi's polemic against heavy industrialization. Some of the Chipko movement's better-known figures, including Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Sunderlal Bahuguna, and Baba Amte, have repeatedly underlined their debt to Gandhi (Guha, 1995). This chapter presents the moral and philosophical underpinnings of environmental movements – from Gandhi's satyagraha to globalism, from the theory of development ethics as applied to the Narmada case to the burgeoning ecofeminist movements that remind us of our interdependence with natural resources as well as with each other.

Nonviolence, as envisioned by Gandhi, has the power to solve many of our problems, including ecological crises. Indeed, Gandhian nonviolence has been accepted by many different environmental movements as a vital principle. These movements have laid claim to Gandhian values of ecological prudence and frugality as well as decentralized democracy through village swaraj, or self-rule.