Miss Conduct S03 E04: Sarala Behn

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Blog Post: 

Sarala Behn, who was born as Catherine Mary Hellman, was an Englishwoman who lived through the Indian Independence Movement and fought for the country’s freedom in her own right. 

Influenced heavily by the work of Mahatma Gandhi, Sarala came to India in 1932, and just never went back. 

In 1942, when Gandhi started the Quit India Movement, Sarala launched an extension of the non-violent movement in her newly established home in the hills – the Kumaon district of Uttarakhand. 

Her rallying cry brought so many men and women from the hills together, that the opposing British forces had to put her in jail just to shut up. 

This episode will release in the first week of June 2022, as 5th June is World Environment Day! Because one additional thing that Sarala Behn was known for… this very small thing… it is called the Chipko Movement. 

Technically a criminal in the eyes of the British Raj, since she followed Gandhi so closely and used his principles to rally the people of the hills, Sarala is also known as one of India’s earliest environmentalists. 

Her work in environmentalism included: 

  • organising women to protect forest growth

  • establishing small-scale forest industries that would not stress the forests’ natural resources

  • and most importantly, leading the Chipko Movement, which means to “hug”. In the 1970s, Sarala Behn organised thousands of supporters and volunteers in the forest of Uttarakhand to come together and each hug a tree. The physical human presence against these trees would ensure that labourers could not cut down those trees. 

  • Sarala organised this specifically to prevent excessive lumbering and tapping or resin from pine trees. 

  • Sarala also set up an Ashram at Kausali in the Kumaon Hills of Uttarakhand. She went from village to village helping the families of political prisoners, especially women impacted by this. 

In her later years, she authored a book entitled ‘Reviving Our Dying Planet’.

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