Dateline Dehradun: The pandemic claims an environmental gem from Uttarakhand. 94-year-old Sunderlal Bahuguna breathed his last in AIIMS Medical Hospital, Rishikesh today morning. He was suffering from Covid-19 induced Pneumonia.
Khaadi kurta-pyjama and a white headscarf, this man needed no introduction. Gentle, passionate, soft spoken, veteran Padmabhushan Awardee Sunderlal Bahuguna brought the Garhwal Himalaya into the limelight internationally with this headstrong campaigns against liquor mafia, the 1973 Chipko Movement of the Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda Valley and the Anti-Tehri Dam agitation which lasted nineteen years. He fasted twice: 49 days and then 74 days against the coming up of the Tehri Dam.
Sunderlal Bahuguna and his wife Bimla Devi were amongst the last residents to leave Old Tehri when it sunk in the waters Bhagirathi and Bhilangana.
Born on 9th Jan 1927 in a hamlet near Tehri, Bahuguna ji finished schooling from these hills and then moved to Lahore to finish his B.A. honours in Political Science. His love for the mountains couldn’t escape his blood and he found himself drawn to the hills where in 1957 he found his companion and greatest support in Bimla Devi his wife.
From a freedom fighter at 17, to being the General Secretary of the Congress, the octogenarian had seen it all. But being a social worker or an environmentalist gave him immense pleasure as he strongly believed that a social worker saw a vision for generations to come, but a politician was shortsighted and lived only for the moment.
In my last interview of the old sage at his abode ‘Ganga Kutir,’ next to the Tehri Lake, he spoke with a twinkle in his eyes when I asked him what kept him going? He said his magic-formula was ‘3-A formula: Austerity, Alternative and Afforestation,’ words of wisdom spoken by someone who spent his life living by example.
