The Gulabi Gang is an extraordinary women’s movement formed in 2006 by Sampat Pal Devi in the Banda District of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India. This region is one of the poorest districts in the country and is marked by a deeply patriarchal culture, rigid caste divisions, female illiteracy, domestic violence, child labour, child marriages and dowry demands. The women’s group is popularly known as Gulabi or ‘Pink’ Gang because the members wear bright pink saris and wield bamboo sticks. Sampat says, “We are not a gang in the usual sense of the term, we are a gang for justice.”

The Gulabi Gang was initially intended to punish oppressive husbands, fathers and brothers, and combat domestic violence and desertion. The members of the gang would accost male offenders and prevail upon them to see reason. The more serious offenders were publicly shamed when they refused to listen or relent. Sometimes the women resorted to their lathis, if the men resorted to use of force.
Today, the Gulabi Gang has tens of thousands of women members, several male supporters and many successful interventions to their credit. Whether it is ensuring proper public distribution of food-grains to people below the poverty line, or disbursement of pension to elderly widows who have no birth certificate to prove their age, or preventing abuse of women and children, the Pink sisterhood is in the forefront, bringing about system changes by adopting the simplest of methods - direct action and confrontation.

Although the group’s interventions are mostly on behalf of women, they are increasingly called upon by men to challenge not only male authority over women, but all human rights abuses inflicted on the weak.


|| What We Do :


Stop child marriages
Persuade families to send girl children to school
Train women to defend themselves
Oppose corruption in administration
Raise our voices against the dowry system
Compel the police to register cases of domestic violence
Publicly shame abusive men
Encourage women to stand up for themselves


|| About Gulabi Gang

One day when Sampat Pal Devi, a simple woman living in a village in Northern India, saw a man mercilessly beating his wife. She pleaded with him to stop but he abused her as well. The next day she returned with a bamboo stick and five other women and gave the rogue a sound thrashing.

The news spread like wild fire and soon women started approaching Sampat Pal Devi in droves requesting similar interventions. Many women came forward to join her team and in the year 2006 she decided that the sisterhood needed a uniform and a name. The pink sari was chosen because many of the other colours were monopolized by political parties.

The Gulabi Gang kept a watch on all community activities and protested vociferously when they saw any manifestation of injustice or malpractice. Sometimes they even used the stick. On one occasion, when Sampat Pal went to the local police station to register a complaint, a policeman abused and attacked her. She retaliated by beating him on the head with her lathi. On another occasion she dragged a government official out of his car to show him a crumbling road that was in need of urgent repair. After all, what cannot be endured must be cured!

The Gulabi Gang spread its wings quickly across Northern India and now has centers in Chitrakoot , Fatehpur and other places.



|| About Sampat Pal Devi

Born in 1958 in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, Sampat Pal Devi was the daughter of a poor shepherd. In early childhood she tended the goats and cattle but yearned to go to school. She taught herself to read and write, learning from her brothers who went to school. Seeing her enthusiasm for education, one of her uncles took the initiative to enroll her in school. After having studied up to the fourth standard, she was taken out of school and married off to an icecream vendor at the tender age of twelve. At 15 she became a mother and went on to raise five children in the next few years. She worked as a government health worker but resigned her job later to become a social activist.

In 2006 she started a society called the Gulabi Gang with a group of women from her village to fight various forms of social injustice. This developed into an organized women’s movement with tens of thousands of members spread over several districts in Uttar Pradesh. The women members wear pink saris and arm themselves with bamboo sticks, which they use whenever they come up against violent resistance.

Sampat Pal Devi is an ordinary woman with extraordinary resolve who brought about a revolution of sorts in rural India. Empowering women by encouraging them to stand up for themselves and others, she takes on the establishment by resorting to direct action. She strongly believes that “if a woman really wishes she can put a man in his place.”

http://www.gulabigang.in/