RSS-backed yatra to save trees near Gangotri stretch concludes

Among the participants were Gopal Arya, the head of RSS’s environment wing. BJP patriarch Murli Manohar Joshi and RSS senior functionary Krishna Gopal supported the yatra’s participants through a video message during the tree-worship rituals. The participants stressed that an alternative and sustainable road-building model was needed, which will account for disaster-resilience, instead of blanket widening, especially in river valleys and disaster-prone areas.

In his video address, Joshi said, “We are not opposed to defence and strategic requirements. But we must be mindful that if Himalayas are not safeguarded, nothing is safe, including our economic interests, agriculture. If Himalayas are not protected, safeguarded, then the country can never be safe.”

Krishna Gopal, joint general secretary of the RSS, said through a video message, “We will be safe only if the Himalayas are saved. If the Himalayas, our environment, our sacred trees are in danger, then the entire humanity will face a big crisis. Saving these trees will be like saving the Ganga, it will protect our glaciers and hence, this initiative is very important, which gives an important message on the current model of development that is being followed, alerts us about it.”

The yatra comes in the backdrop of former union minister Karan Singh’s initiative to draw attention to the degradation in Himalayas, especially regarding widening of roads for the Char Dham projects, with the help of a collective of environmentalists, scientists, local citizen groups, and the RSS.

In September, Joshi and Singh wrote to then Chief Justice of India B R Gavai seeking a recall and review of the Supreme Court’s 2021 judgment, allowing certain key stretches of the Char Dham all-weather project on defence and strategic grounds. On November 26, a collective under ‘Himalaya to Hum Hain’ banner, backed by Joshi and Singh, said that they will pursue an appeal against the 2021 judgement in due course.

The Uttarakhand government recently approved widening of a 20-km stretch between Jhala in Harsil valley and Bhaironghati. Harsil was one of the ground zero points of the August 5 Dharali landslide disaster, which killed 16 people.

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