Chinar man of Kashmir plants hope as forests fall silent

July 11, 2025 by News Desk

Bhat Yasir

In an age where development often comes at the cost of greenery, Abdul Ahad Khan, a 42-year-old labourer from Nagri Malpora in north Kashmir’s Kupwara, is quietly scripting a green resistance.

Popularly known as the “Chinar Man of Kashmir”, a title unofficially bestowed upon him by forest officials and villagers alike, Khan has spent the past 15 years planting trees—especially Chinars, the iconic symbols of Kashmir’s heritage and ecology. His dream? To plant 50,000 trees in his lifetime, a goal that grows more urgent as Kashmir continues to lose its tree cover at an alarming rate.

Just last month, a government-backed report revealed that over six lakh trees were cut along the banks of the Jhelum River, many of them to make way for flood channel expansion and other “anti-encroachment” drives. Environmentalists have called it a disaster dressed as development.

“People talk about protecting rivers,” Khan says, resting beside a two-year-old Chinar sapling outside Kupwara town. “But no one mourns the trees we’re losing. Trees hold the riverbanks in place. They are guardians, not obstacles.”

Khan’s journey began back in 2010, long before climate change became a trending topic. What started as a personal reaction to vanishing greenery in his native forest turned into a quiet mission. He planted 12 saplings in his first year; just four survived.

“That failure taught me patience,” he says with a smile. “Chinars are tough, but in their early years, they need attention, especially water. Once they root, they stand longer than us.”

Since then, Khan has walked miles—often barefoot, carrying bundles of saplings on his shoulders, to reach remote corners of north Kashmir. Even after exhausting shifts as a daily-wage labourer, he finds time to dig, plant, and water.

This year, he handed over more than 700 Chinar saplings to the Forest Department for wider plantation efforts. Independently, he managed to plant around 60 trees himself, digging pits with borrowed tools and watering with buckets drawn from streams.

“I don’t keep count for fame,” he told The Kashmiriyat last year. “I do it because these trees breathe for us. One day, when I’m gone, someone will sit under their shade and breathe easier.”

Known locally as Buen or Booyn, the Chinar (Platanus orientalis) is more than a tree in Kashmir. With its massive canopy, fiery autumn colours, and ancient roots in Mughal gardens and Sufi shrines, the Chinar is embedded in the region’s cultural, spiritual, and political identity.

But over the past few decades, Chinars have silently disappeared. Fires, unregulated construction, erratic rainfall, and now state-sanctioned clearance operations have stripped the Valley of its green sentinels.

Khan’s focus on planting Chinars is not accidental. “They are more than wood and leaves,” he says. “They are a memory of who we were. A place without Chinars feels unfamiliar—like a face without features.”

Despite the praise he receives from neighbours and passersby, support has been scarce. Every sapling costs. Every journey to a plantation site takes a toll. And on most days, Khan must still find daily wage work to feed his family.

“If someone gave me even a basic role in the Forest Department, any job, I’d be able to focus full-time on planting,” he says quietly. “Right now, I live in-between: one foot in survival, one in service.”