Sarala Behn (born Catherine Mary Heilman; 5 April 19018 July 1982) was an English Gandhian social activist whose work in the Kumaon region of India helped create awareness about the environmental destruction in the Himalayan forests of the state. She played a key role in the evolution of the Chipko Movement and influenced a number of Gandhian environmentalists in India including Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Bimala behn and Sunderlal Bahuguna. Along with Mirabehn, she is known as one of Mahatma Gandhi's two English daughters. The two women's work in Garhwal and Kumaon, respectively, played a key role in bringing focus on issues of environmental degradation and conservation in independent India.
Early life
Sarla Behn, was born Catherine Mary Heilman in the Shepherd's Bush region of west London in 1901 to a father of German Swiss extraction and an English mother. Due to his background, her father was interned during the First World War and Catherine herself suffered ostracism and was denied scholarships at school; she left early. She worked for a while as a clerk, leaving her family and home and during the 1920s came in contact with Indian students in mannady who introduced her to Gandhi and the freedom struggle in India. Inspired, she left England for India in January 1932, never to return again.
Life with Gandhi
She worked for a while at a school in Udaipur before moving on to meet Gandhi with whom she remained for eight years at his ashram at Sevagram in Wardha. Here she was deeply involved in Gandhi's idea of nai talim or basic education and worked to empower women and protect the environment at Sevagram. It was Gandhi who named her Sarla Behn. The heat and bouts of malaria afflicted her at Sevagram and with Gandhi's concurrence she headed out to the more salubrious climes of Kausani in the Almora district of the United Provinces in 1940. She made it her home, establishing an ashram and working to empower the women of the hills in Kumaon.
While in Kumaon Sarla Behn continued to associate herself with the cause of India's freedom movement. In 1942, in response to the Quit India Movement launched by the Indian National Congress under Gandhi, she helped organise and lead the movement in the Kumaon district. She travelled extensively in the region reaching out to the families of political prisoners and was imprisoned for her actions. She served two terms in prison during the Quit India Movement for violation of house arrest orders and served time at the Almora and Lucknow jails for nearly two years.
Lakshmi Ashram
During her political activism in Kumaon, Sarla Behn was deeply impressed by the determination and resourcefulness of the women heading the families of the arrested independence activists but dismayed at their absence of self-worth when in response to her call for meetings they responded "Behnji, we are like animals. All we know is work, Meetings and other such social activities are meant only for men." She then set to work to make them realise that they were not passive animals but rather "goddesses of wealth".
This she aimed to achieve through the Kasturba Mahila Utthan Mandal, Lakshmi Ashram, Kausani, an institution she founded in 1946 with the aim of fostering women's empowerment. It was named the Lakshmi Ashram after the wife of the donor of the land. The ashram which began with only three students imparted education to girls through the Gandhian idea of nai talim with its focus on not just academics but also on manual labour and holistic learning. Since its inception, the Ashram has produced several notable reformers and social workers including Vimala Bahuguna, Sadan Misra, Radha Bhatt and Basanti Devi.
Activism
Although Sarla Behn is best remembered for her role as an environmental activist who helped shape and spearhead the Chipko movement, she was also associated with the Gandhian movements led by Acharya Vinoba Bhave and Jai Prakash Narayan. After she had handed over the reins of the Ashram to Radha Bhatt, she worked with Bhave on the Bhoodan movement in Bihar in the late 1960s and with Narayan and the families of surrendered dacoits in the Chambal river valley in the early 1970s.
Sarla Behn's role as an environmental activist was even greater, and together with Mirabehn she helped shape a response to the environmental crisis engulfing the Himalayan region. As the activist-academician Vandana Shiva notes, "While the philosophical and conceptual articulation of the ecological view of the Himalayan forests has been done by Mirabehn and [Sunderlal] Bahuguna, the organisational foundation for it being a women’s movement was laid by Sarla Behn with Bimla Behn in Garhwal and Radha Bhatt in Kumaon".