The Ancient Legend
In India there is an ancient legend about a girl, Amrita Devi, who died trying to protect the trees that surrounded her village. The story recounts a time when the local Maharajah's tree cutters arrived to cut the villager's trees for wood for his new fortress. Amrita, with others, jumped in front of the trees and hugged them. In some versions of the tale their dramatic efforts prevented the forest's destruction; in others Amrita dies in her valiant attempt.
The Hills were being Stripped
It is this tale that inspired the actions of a group of mostly rural women who in the 1970s launched similar spectacular protest movements in India. For rural women, saving the environment is crucial to their economic survival. As primary food, fuel, and water gatherers, women have strong interests in reversing deforestation, desertification, and water pollution. The women, who eke out a living in the Himalayan foothills, using its forests as sources of food, fuel, and forage for their animals, face a particularly severe challenge. The Himalayas, a young range subject to erosion, need forests on these steep slopes to allow the absorption of water and prevent flooding. Disintegration of Himalayan forests started over a century ago. In the 1960s, India's push for national economic development cleared even more trees to export the wood to earn foreign exchange. The hill soil washed away, causing landslides, floods and silting in the rivers below the hills. Crops and houses too were destroyed, and women had to trudge further and further for their fuel, fodder and water. All in all, it was the women who were the main victims of India's deforestation policies.
(In the image: Women in the Chipko Movement in India discussing deforestation In the 1980s the ideas of the Chipko movement spread, often by women talking about them at water places, on village paths, and in markets. Women decided they were not powerless; there were actions they could take and a movement which would support them. Songs and slogans were created. )
Forestry is not about trees. It is about people
"Embrace the trees and Save them
from being felled;
The property of our hills,
Save them from being looted."
"A wise person once said that forestry is not about trees. It is about people. No one has realized this more than the women of the Uttarakhand region. Everyone by now knows about the Chipko Movement. But not many know about the women of the Uttarakhand region who have made it their lifetime mission to leave undestroyed forests for their children and grandchildren... One woman whom future generations in Uttarakhand are not likely to forget is Gaura Devi who has mobilized the women of this region to protect their natural heritage."
The early history of British expansion in India was characterised by the co-existence of two approaches towards the existing princely states. The first was a policy of annexation, where the British sought to forcibly absorb the Indian princely states into the provinces which constituted their Empire in India. The second was a policy of indirect rule, where the British assumed suzerainty and paramountcy over princely states, but conceded some degree of sovereignty to them. .. 
India, a nation that has undergone complete transformation after it got independence from the British Rule. But somehow the influence from the West never ceased to affect our culture and the growth of the Nation. The three major transforms taken from the entire lot is the way Mobiles, Cars and Malls have brought to the India nationality.
The positive role that dairying could play in providing income and employment opportunity was clear to policy-makers long time back and a set of measures were put in place to develop and protect the dairy industry. Immediately after India gained independence, the Milk Control Board was set up which controlled the supply and distribution chains.
India and space laws: A millennium perspective
India is a country with a diversity of languages. Out of more than one thousand mother tongues, only eighteen languages are included in the eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution. Development of a particular state or region, to a very great extent, depends on the development of its regional language. This was an important reason given at the time of the formation of linguistic states, though many criticized such a linguistic “division” or “re-organization”.
Past two decades have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of farmer suicides in our country. Across the nation, lacks of farmers have taken their lives in these years. Though this process is on for almost 2 decades, but it is only now that the nation is getting to know the seriousness and the extent of it. We are going through the worst ever farm crisis in the history of our nation.
3rd December 1984 Shortly after midnight poison gas leaked from a factory in Bhopal, India, owned by the Union Carbide Corporation. There was no warning, none of the plant's safety systems were working. In the city people were sleeping. They woke in darkness to the sound of screams with the gases burning their eyes, noses and mouths. They began retching and coughing up froth streaked with blood. Whole neighbourhoods fled in panic, some were trampled, others convulsed and fell dead. People lost control of their bowels and bladders as they ran. Within hours thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets.
The Emergency in India denotes the 21-month period between June 25, 1975 and March 21, 1977 when President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, upon advice by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, declared a State of Emergency in India under Article 352 of the Constitution of India, effectively bestowing on her the power to rule by decree, suspending elections and civil liberties. It is one of the most controversial periods in the history of independent India. During the Emergency, many opposition leaders were jailed, freedom of press was suspended and powers of the judiciary were curtailed
The All India Muslim League (AIML) was formed in Dhaka in 1906 by Muslims who were suspicious of the Hindu-majority Indian National Congress. They complained that Muslim members did not have the same rights as Hindu members. A number of different scenarios were proposed at various times. Among the first to make the demand for a separate state was the writer/philosopher Allama Iqbal, who, in his presidential address to the 1930 convention of the Muslim League said that a separate nation for Muslims was essential in an otherwise Hindu-dominated subcontinent.
