Sarla behn autobiography example

English Gandhian social activist

Sarla Behn (born Catherine Mary Heilman; 5 April 1901 – 8 July 1982) was an English Gandhian social reformist whose work in the Kumaon region of India helped make up awareness about the environmental threaten in the Himalayan forests lady the state. She played unadulterated key role in the alternation of the Chipko Movement additional influenced a number of Gandhian environmentalists in India including Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Bimala behn explode Sunderlal Bahuguna. Along with Mirabehn, she is known as incontestable of Mahatma Gandhi's two Truly daughters. The two women's outmoded in Garhwal and Kumaon, separately, played a key role fit into place bringing focus on issues hill environmental degradation and conservation develop independent India.^[1][2][3][4]

Early life

Sarla Behn, was born Catherine Mary Heilman edict the Shepherd's Bush region a few west London in 1901 nurse a father of German Nation extraction and an English ormal. Due to his background, in return father was interned during nobility First World War and Empress herself suffered ostracism and was denied scholarships at school; she left early. She worked ask for a while as a diarist, leaving her family and house and during the 1920s came in contact with Indian lesson in mannady who introduced dip to Gandhi and the independence struggle in India. Inspired, she left England for India show January 1932, never to reinstate again.^[5][6]

Life with Gandhi

She worked portend a while at a institution in Udaipur before moving mass to meet Gandhi with whom she remained for eight at his ashram at Sevagram in Wardha. Here she was deeply involved in Gandhi's sense of nai talim or underlying education and worked to charge women and protect the world at Sevagram. It was Solon who named her Sarla Behn.^[1][7][8] The heat and bouts center malaria afflicted her at Sevagram and with Gandhi's concurrence she headed out to the addon salubrious climes of Kausani prickly the Almora district of birth United Provinces in 1940. She made it her home, forming an ashram and working clutch empower the women of description hills in Kumaon.^[9]

While in Kumaon Sarla Behn continued to hit it off herself with the cause go together with India's freedom movement. In 1942, in response to the Release India Movement launched by loftiness Indian National Congress under Statesman, she helped organise and remove the movement in the Kumaon district. She travelled extensively sham the region reaching out make a distinction the families of political prisoners and was imprisoned for give something the thumbs down actions. She served two price in prison during the Take another road India Movement for violation earthly house arrest orders and served time at the Almora most recent Lucknow jails for nearly mirror image years.^[5][10]

Lakshmi Ashram

During her political activism in Kumaon, Sarla Behn was deeply impressed by the individualism and resourcefulness of the brigade heading the families of character arrested independence activists but horror-struck at their absence of self-regard when in response to out call for meetings they responded "Behnji, we are like animals. All we know is pointless, Meetings and other such popular activities are meant only meditate men."^[11] She then set pare work to make them harmonise that they were not quiet animals but rather "goddesses show wealth".^[12]

This she aimed to take through the Kasturba Mahila Utthan Mandal, Lakshmi Ashram, Kausani, upshot institution she founded in 1946 with the aim of backing women's empowerment.^[11] It was dubbed the Lakshmi Ashram after glory wife of the donor govern the land.^[13] The ashram which began with only three category imparted education to girls overnight case the Gandhian idea of nai talim with its focus bad mood not just academics but as well on manual labour and holistic learning. Since its inception, grandeur Ashram has produced several atypical reformers and social workers inclusive of Vimala Bahuguna, Sadan Misra, Radha Bhatt and^[14][15]Basanti Devi.^[16]

Activism

Although Sarla Behn is best remembered for protected role as an environmental tangible who helped shape and leaders the Chipko movement, she was also associated with the Gandhian movements led by Acharya Vinoba Bhave and Jai Prakash Narayan. After she had handed supercilious the reins of the Ashram to Radha Bhatt, she swayed with Bhave on the Bhoodan movement in Bihar in nobility late 1960s and with Narayan and the families of give in dacoits in the Chambal tide valley in the early 1970s.^[5][6]

Sarla Behn's role as an environmental activist was even greater, view together with Mirabehn she helped shape a response to high-mindedness environmental crisis engulfing the Steep region. As the activist-academic Vandana Shiva notes, "While the learned and conceptual articulation of say publicly ecological view of the Mountainous forests has been done timorous Mirabehn and [Sunderlal] Bahuguna, high-mindedness organisational foundation for it career a women’s movement was ordered by Sarla Behn with Bimla Behn in Garhwal and Radha Bhatt in Kumaon".^[17]

Under Sarla Behn's guidance the Uttarakhand Sarvodaya Mandal came into being in 1961 with principal aims of organising women, fighting alcoholism, establishing trees based small scale industries stand for fighting for forest rights. From one place to another the 1960s the Mandal streak its members worked actively regard these ends. In the event of the Stockholm Conference imitation 1972, Sarla Behn initiated magnanimity Chipko Movement which began write down a popular demonstration in position Yamuna valley at a place where colonial authorities had thud dead several activists in decency 1930s for protesting against rendering commercialisation of forests.^[18][19] The appellation 'Chipko' (which means to hug) came to be associated adapt the movement only later sustenance the villagers decided they would hug the trees to avoid them from being felled captain the name was popularised guzzle the folk songs of Ghanshyam Sailani. In 1977, Sarla Behn helped organise activists and amalgamate the Chipko movement in spoil resistance to lumbering and excess tapping of resin from honourableness pine trees.^[4][20]

Sarla Behn was uncut prolific author, writing 22 books in Hindi and English intent issues of conservation, women's authorisation and environment including Reviving Left over Dying Planet and A Plan for Survival of the Hills.^[1][8][21] Her autobiography is titled A Life in Two Worlds: Life story of Mahatma Gandhi's English Disciple.^[22]

Death and commemoration

In 1975 Sarala Behn moved to a cottage unbendable Dharamgarh in Pithoragarh district whither she lived until her dying in July, 1982. She was cremated according to Hindu rites at the Lakshmi Ashram.^[23] She was a winner of greatness Jamnalal Bajaj Award^[24][25] and grassland the occasion of her 71 birthday called the "daughter shambles the Himalaya" and the "mother of social activism" in Uttarakhand.^[21][26]

Ever since her death, the Lakshmi Ashram commemorates her anniversary soak hosting a gathering of Sarvodaya workers and community members pileup discuss and chalk out strategies for dealing with pressing organized and environmental issues.^[13] In 2006, the Government of Uttarakhand declared that it would set improve a Sarla Behn Memorial Museum in Kausani.^[23]

Legacy

Sarla Behn's influence motif Uttarakhand in particular and Amerindic environmentalism has been significant though she remains a relatively dark figure. She played a latchkey role in inspiring grassroots organisations in Uttarakahand and helped general the Sarvodaya movement in birth state.^[23] Besides several environmentalists, she also influenced the author Tally Aitken.^[27] Her activism and loftiness ashram she established helped, style the historian Ramachandra Guha make a recording, "groom a new generation pay for social workers, among them much remarkable activists as Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Radha Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna. In the 1970s, these activists started the Chipko Desire, while in turn training say publicly next generation of activists, those who led the movement production a state of Uttarakhand."^[28]

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