Gulabi GangRestoring Dignity To Women (Uttar Pradesh, India) 2012
GULABI GANG – The Warriors!
A unique movement of its kind in the country that started in the most miniscule manner in a dusty, distant village of UP. But today, it has burgeoned forth to humongous proportions.
Sampat Pal Devi, who one day saw a woman being bestially beaten by her husband and on her pleading with him, he heaped choicest cuss-words on her and others. Next day, she returned with 5 other women with bamboo sticks in hand and they beat the daylights out of the rascal.
And thus dignity was restored to his victim! The news spread like wildfire and soon many women started knocking at her doors to intervene on their behalf and teach their terrorisers a lesson.
Suddenly, a whole movement arose out of that!
She and her associate women formed themselves into a formal group, chose a costume for themselves – the pink saari… and went out, flailing Lathi’s and thrashing the perpetrators of crimes against women to redress the wrongs done!
Today, with their pink Saaris and Bamboo sticks, they call themselves, the ‘Gulabi Gang’-and the movement as taken on the proportions of a revolution of sorts. They stop child marriages, train women to defend themselves, publicly shame Male chauvinists…
It’s a Tsunami of sheer pluck & spunk!