G Rajkumar (1950–2026): Man who quietly held a movement together and walked the mountains into memory

Some people lead movements by standing at the front. Others ensure the movement does not fall apart. G Rajkumar belonged firmly to the second kind. Without him, one of Kerala’s most quietly transformative environmental struggles might never have endured long enough to matter.

Rajkumar, who passed away on the morning of January 14, 2026, was among the pioneers of Kerala’s environmental movement. For more than four decades, he travelled the length and breadth of the state’s forests, hills and plateaus, moving through shola grasslands, plantation frontiers and tribal landscapes, listening more than he spoke, organising more than he proclaimed. His deepest, most sustained concern was the fragile shola–grassland ecosystem and the rare kurinji flower, Strobilanthes kunthiana, whose once-in-twelve-years bloom became both symbol and warning.

He was the backbone of the Save Kurinji Campaign, its organiser, anchor and moral centre. Yet he was rarely visible in photographs, seldom quoted as a leader, and almost never sought recognition. He coordinated people, ideas and actions with extraordinary patience, held together a loose coalition of activists, scientists, writers, walkers and villagers across decades, and consciously stayed away from the spotlight. He disliked titles. He avoided formal designations. Only when unavoidable did he accept being called the coordinator of the Save Kurinji Campaign Council. That reluctance was not modesty as performance. It was principle.

Rajkumar was working at the State Bank of Travancore in Thiruvananthapuram when, in the mid-1980s, he became deeply involved in environmental protection activities alongside the late, eminent poet and environmental activist Sugathakumari. It was during those years that many in Kerala’s environmental circles first encountered him. From then on, he intervened quietly but firmly in almost every major nature and environmental issue in and around Thiruvananthapuram, bringing to each struggle the same ethical clarity, organisational discipline and refusal to compromise ecological truth for convenience.

The campaign to protect kurinji and its habitat eventually became one of the most significant environmental movements Kerala witnessed after the historic struggle to save Silent Valley. Silent Valley, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, had awakened the state to the idea that development could be questioned, even halted, in the name of ecology. That victory inspired a generation of resistance: Campaigns to protect marine fish resources, conserve water bodies, stop selective felling and challenge forest encroachments.

The Save Kurinji Campaign emerged somewhat later, and for a reason. Shola grasslands were poorly understood, scientifically and politically. They were routinely dismissed as wastelands, empty stretches waiting to be “improved”. Conservation discourse in those years was overwhelmingly tree-centric. Forests mattered. Grasslands did not.

By the late 1980s and early 1990s, vast stretches of grasslands and forest areas in Munnar, Vattavada, Kodaikanal and the Palani Hills were being encroached upon and destroyed at an alarming pace. Exotic plantations expanded relentlessly. Resorts crept higher up the slopes. Bureaucratic silence became the norm. The loss was visible to anyone who walked the land, but invisible in files and plans.

It was against this backdrop that Rajkumar helped shape the Save Kurinji Campaign into something far more important than it appeared at the time. What began as resistance to land grab in remote hillscapes became one of the earliest people-led ecological interventions in the Western Ghats. It brought together science and walking, poetry and protest, memory and moral pressure, into a single, persuasive argument for conservation.

At its heart, the campaign did something radical. It reframed shola–grassland ecosystems as precious, complex and irreplaceable. Rajkumar and his colleagues insisted that grasslands were not vacant lands but living systems that regulated water, anchored soil, sustained biodiversity and shaped culture and livelihood. This shift in understanding, now widely accepted, later became foundational to Western Ghats conservation thinking.

The defining moment came in 1989, when the first padayatra from Kodaikanal to Munnar was organised, largely on foot. It was inaugurated by Zafar Rashid Futehally, the renowned naturalist and former secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society. The march was born of urgency rather than structure. The Save Kurinji Campaign Council itself took shape only later that year.

Under Rajkumar’s coordination, the padayatra exposed the steady conversion of shola grasslands into eucalyptus, wattle and pine plantations. Participants came from across Kerala and Mahe, including members of the Palani Hills Conservation Council such as CJ John, Anand Felix Skaria of Sahyadri Ecology Education and Documentation, activist Israel Bhooshi, local farmers from Vattavada and surrounding hill villages, students, writers, journalists and walkers who believed that landscapes must be understood by traversing them, not by marking them on maps.

The group walked from Kodaikanal to Poompara, reached Poondi by road, crossed kurinji landscapes under active destruction, reached Koviloor via Klavara, and many continued on foot to Munnar Top Station. A similar march followed the next year. In 1990, kurinji flowered in large numbers near Munnar, lending renewed urgency and visibility to the struggle.

Rajkumar ensured that the campaign remained deliberately broad and non-institutional. It was not NGO-driven, not donor-funded, not reduced to projects and reports. That choice limited its immediate power but gave it enduring moral credibility. Environmentalist VC Balakrishnan later described Rajkumar’s contribution as “enviable”. “He worked at the grassroots as an able organiser around the concerns of kurinji. He was active against all forms of environmental degradation, but consciously chose to remain free from publicity,” Balakrishnan said.

Through padayatras, meetings, writings and sustained engagement with the media and officials, Save Kurinji slowed encroachments by making them politically visible, forced administrations to acknowledge ecological damage, and built a compelling public case for legal protection. Most importantly, it kept memory alive. The Kurinjimala Sanctuary did not emerge suddenly. It was the outcome of years of accumulated argument, resistance and vigilance sustained by the campaign.

Seminars and exhibitions held in 1991 and 1995 in Thiruvananthapuram expanded the movement’s reach, drawing poets, scientists, former legislators and senior administrators into the conversation. Marches were repeated in 1994 and 2006. Youth groups undertook almost annual pilgrimages to shola grasslands between 1994 and 2006. Scientific studies multiplied, including research by the Kerala Forest Research Institute and work by E Kunhikrishnan of University College, Thiruvananthapuram, strengthening the campaign’s intellectual foundations.

The most visible success came in 2006, when the Left Democratic Front government declared 3,200 hectares near Munnar as the Kurinjimala Sanctuary. The decision followed sustained advocacy, including political engagement by Sugathakumari and others, and the interest shown by then Forest Minister Binoy Viswam. Those who knew the history understood that without Rajkumar’s patient coordination over nearly two decades, the sanctuary would not have existed.

Rajkumar’s environmentalism was never limited to kurinji alone. In the southern Western Ghats, he played a key role in opposing environmentally destructive interventions in the Agasthyarkoodam region. Anitha Santhi of the Thiruvananthapuram-based collective TreeWalk recalled that Rajkumar “played a significant role in fighting out a massive infrastructural project that was damaging biodiversity in the ecologically rich Agasthyarkoodam region and jeopardising the well-being of the Kani tribals there. He was a champion of the environment as well as of ordinary people.”

Perhaps the deepest impact of Save Kurinji was educational. It taught environmentalism outside classrooms and conferences. People learned ecology by walking landscapes, by seeing grasslands eaten away, by listening to stories of a flower that blooms once in twelve years, and by understanding how water, soil, plants and livelihoods are inseparable. For many, it was their first lesson in land politics, state failure and the necessity of citizen vigilance.

Rajkumar never fought for nature to be known, honoured or remembered. As environmental activist Balachandran V observed, in a time when even the highest institutions increasingly sanction ecological destruction, people like Rajkumar have themselves become an endangered species.

In retrospect, Save Kurinji reads less like activism and more like prophecy. Landslides, water stress and ecological collapse now haunt the Western Ghats. The tragedy is not that the campaign failed, but that it was not listened to widely enough, early enough.

Through it all, Rajkumar remained largely invisible. He organised, connected, persuaded and persisted, but rarely claimed space for himself. His life reminds us that some of the most enduring environmental victories are not led from the front, but held together quietly, with humility, patience and unwavering faith in the land. He walked so the forests could endure. The hills will remember him.