Updated: February 12, 2021 00:50 IST India’s leaders must recommit themselves to the ideas and activism of environmentalists involved with Uttarakhand Share Article AAA India’s leaders must recommit themselves to the ideas and activism of environmentalists involved with Uttarakhand Following flash floods at Chamoli in Uttarakhand, defence personnel are looking for missing persons in a mélange of rock, mud, water, and debris, airlifting rations to inaccessible villages, and repairing bridges and telecommunication networks. Social scientists are assessing the disaster’s impact on the region’s economy. Scientists and policy makers are debating whether climate change or unchecked development in an ecologically fragile region was primarily responsible for the disaster and the death toll. News reports of ancient temples having been swept away in the Alakananda’s raging waters are bringing back traumatic memories of the Kedarnath floods in 2013. All these developments show the profound significance attached to this region and they prompt a historian to ask two fundamental and interrelated questions: How did the Uttarakhand Himalayas emerge as a