Shekhar Pathak

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Shekhar Pathak
Shekhar Phatak.jpg
Born1950 (age 74–75)
Gangolihat, Kumaon, India
NationalityIndian
EducationPhD in History (Kumaon University)
MA in History (Government Degree College, Almora)
BA in History (Government Degree College, Almora)
Pre-university diploma from Berinag
Occupation(s)Historian, editor, and publisher
Known forHistorian of social movements in Uttarakhand
Travels and travel-writing
Social activism
Website PAHAR

Shekhar Pathak is a historian, editor, publisher, activist, and traveller from Uttarakhand, India. He is known for his extensive knowledge of the history of colonial and postcolonial social movements and contemporary environmental and social issues in Uttarakhand, and colonial exploration in the Himalayas and Tibet. He has also been engaged in activism for various social and environmental causes since the 1970s. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Personal life

In his review of Pathak's 2020 book on the Chipko movement, the historian Ramchandra Guha, an old friend of Pathak, provides a brief biographical sketch of Pathak. [1] Guha mentions that Pathak was born in 1950 in the village of Gangolihaat in eastern Kumaon (present-day Pithoragarh district, Uttarakhand). His father was a soldier in the Kumaon Regiment and his mother was a home-maker. Pathak is married to the literature scholar Uma Bhatt. Bhatt and Pathak co-wrote a three-volume book on the life and times of the nineteenth-century Kumaoni explorer Pundit Nain Singh in 2006. [1]

Career

Academic

Pathak was a professor of History at Kumaun University in Nainital for more than three decades till he took voluntary retirement in 2007. [1]

He has been a Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi, and of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. [2]

From 2015 till 2017, Pathak was involved as an expert with the India-China Institute of The New School, USA, in its Sacred Himalaya Initiative. [5]

Travels

Pathak has undertaken a padayatra, a trek entirely on foot, from Askot in eastern Uttarakhand (near the Nepal border) to Arakot in western Uttarakhand (near the Himachal border), once every decade since 1974 [6] . The next yatras were conducted in 1984, 1994, 2004, 2014 and 2024. Each of these yatras has lasted around 45 days. [7] In these yatras, Pathak has walked from village to village with several other interested people, studying emerging trends in society, culture, economy, and environment across the length of Uttarakhand. [8] [9] [10]

In 2007, Pathak took upon a three-year project to study the Himalayan people along with Magsaysay Award winner, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, traversing the Himalayas, from Leh to Arunachal Pradesh. [11] [12] Pathak has also undertaken several explorative journeys in Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Tibet. He has been on three Kailash-Manasarovar yatras. [2]

NGO work

Pathak founded the non-profit NGO PAHAR at Nainital in 1983. PAHAR stands for 'People's Association for Himalaya Area Research'. He has also been the founder-editor of the Annual magazine 'PAHAR', published by this NGO. [13] The PAHAR magazine covers various topics related to culture, society, contemporary changes, history, exploration, etc. in relation to the Himalayas. [14] It has also acted as a chronicle of the decadal Askot-Arakot yatras. [15] This organisation also has a large online repository of colonial-era and contemporary literature of various kinds on the Himalayas, Tibet, and the highlands of Inner Asia.

Pathak was chosen as the National Coordinator of the Indian chapter of World Mountain Peoples Association, (WMPA) at the first Asia-level meeting of the WMPA, held at Yuksom, Sikkim from 9–11 April 2002. [16] In 2011, Pathak was the Vice-President of WMPA for Asia. [17]

Activism

Pathak was a student-activist in the Uttarakhand Sangharsh Vahini during his days as a university student [18] . He was an activist in the Chipko movement since its inception in 1973. [1] In November 2015, he returned his Padma Shri award, awarded to him in 2007, to the Government of India, in protest against 'the rising intolerance in the country and the neglect of the Himalayan region'. [4]

Other engagements

Pathak has frequently written opinion pieces in various regional and national newspapers in India. He has also delivered numerous invited lectures and been a part of many discussion panels in universities, literary festivals, and elsewhere.

Awards

Works

Books

Journal articles and book chapters

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Guha, Ramachandra. "'The real Chipko': How Shekhar Pathak wrote the first exhaustive, people's history of the movement". Scroll.in. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Kapadia, Harish (August 2021). "Prof. Shekhar Pathak" (PDF). The Himalayan Club. 43: 21–22.
  3. ↑ "High on the Himalaya". Outlook. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Now, historian Shekhar Pathak to return his Padma Shri". The Times of India. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  5. ↑ Institute, India China. "Sacred Himalaya Initiative Research Team". India China Institute. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  6. ↑ "On a once a decade yatra: Environmentalist, historian Shekhar Pathak shares experiences of Askot-Arakot Abhiyan across Uttarakhand". The Tribune. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  7. ↑ admin (21 February 2010). "Askot Aarakot Abhiyan". PAHAR. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  8. ↑ "A man to match his mountains: Shekhar Pathak has aptly been named `Encyclopaedia of the Himalaya', so staggering is his knowledge of his region", The Hindu , 15 August 2004
  9. ↑ Askot-Arakot presentation Archived 2007-08-07 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ↑ Nauriyal, Anjali. "The Pressure of Living | Garhwal Post" . Retrieved 12 December 2022.
  11. ↑ Padma Shri teams up with Magsaysay winner for hill recce The Telegraph, 12 March 2007.
  12. ↑ "Now, historian Shekhar Pathak to return his Padma Shri". The Times of India . Retrieved 19 March 2018.
  13. ↑ Pioneer, The. "PAHAR: 29 yrs of mirroring the multi-faceted Himalayas". The Pioneer. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  14. ↑ "About". PAHAR. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  15. ↑ "PAHAR Annual Archives". PAHAR. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  16. ↑ World Mountain Peoples Association, India chapter www.mountainpeople.org.
  17. ↑ "Summary of conclusions, WMPA board meeting, Chambery (France)" (PDF). 2011.
  18. ↑ "Shekhar Pathak, author, The Chipko Movement: 'Ecology and economy are connected'". Hindustan Times. 2 December 2022. Archived from the original on 10 June 2023. Retrieved 31 March 2025.
  19. ↑ "Chipko was never anti-development: Shekhar Pathak". Mintlounge. 8 December 2022. Retrieved 11 December 2022.
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