Environmental concerns generated a lot of debate and began to acquire centre stage in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s in India. This was also the time when many environmental movements started. The Chipko has a special place among these movements as it not only changed our way of looking at forests but also transformed our attitude towards the use of all natural resources. Above all, it forced us to reconsider carefully our developmental choices. This gave rise to intellectual as well as political debates in India. In the process, social scientists were also sensitised to the environmental problems.

The Chipko, more specifically, highlighted the environmental problems of the Himalaya in general and Uttarakhand in particular. This along with other environmental and social movements like the anti-dam and antialcohol movements in Uttarakhand drew the attention of social scientists to this region. Many scholarly works were produced on the history of the Chipko movement but, with a few exceptions, such works lacked a historical perspective. The need for an environmentally sensitive history was never felt more before. Many historians began to use environmental insights to probe historical problems in the 1980s.

The starting of my research career at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in 1989, coincided with the beginning of the study of environmental history in India. Since the environmental problems of Uttarakhand were being traced to colonial period, I was drawn to write a thesis on the environmental history of Uttarakhand.