Many women in northern India have banded together against oppression aimed towards other women like themselves and the poor. They call themselves the Gulabi Gang, which can be translated as the Pink Gang, due to the strict dress code imposed by their leader, Sampat Pal Devi.

All members wear pink saris and fight against corruption and oppression in their region. The Gulabi Gang has become known for taking the law into their own hands by punishing those that the police will not. For example, they have stopped tractors of stolen wheat from the public distribution center, afterwards lashing those guilty of the theft.

They have exposed the corrupt government officials allowing the illegal wheat trade. They will also thrash men who have kicked their wives out of the home or beaten them. The gang has even entered a police station and attacked a police officer for letting go an allegedly guilty man due to his status as ‘untouchable.’

Gulabi leader Sampat Pal Devi considers the government to be corrupt and anti-poor, so she feels that they must take the law into their own hands.

“Frustration at not being recognized or listened to and having little control over one’s circumstances often leads to violence, especially when others are inflicting violence on oneself,” said Diana Swanson, NIU’s Acting Director of the Women’s Studies Program.

Women in this region are often beaten by their husbands, married off as early as 13 years of age against their will, traded, raped and kept from having a proper education due to their lower-class status. It comes as no surprise that the women of the Gulabi Gang feel that action needs to be taken. Although here in the West we associate the word gang with negativity, in northern India, where the Gulabi Gang operates, the word is cause for elation in the citizens.

Although Swanson said statistics seem to show that oppression against women does not usually lead to violence in women, violent resistance has proven to work in at least some cases in the past.

“The Suffragists (advocates for women’s right to vote) in England in the early 20th century who broke windows and kicked the shins of members of parliament (after decades of trying to work through the political system) did bring attention to their cause. Some historians argue that the media frenzy inspired by this kind of militant action did put some pressure on the men in power to take action, mainly by negotiating with the more moderate wing of the suffrage movement,” said Swanson.

Amanda Matlock, junior speech-language pathology major, doesn’t agree with the Gulabi Gang’s tactics. “There are better ways to protest and get the attention of the government than by using violence. If these women want the support of the government they have to earn it by being respectful. If anything the violence will just cause the government to overlook them even more.”

It usually seems as though violence cannot be justified under any circumstances, especially in the West. Until discovering the Gulabi Gang, one may tend to feel that violence is always wrong, no matter what. But where politicians are corrupt and women are uneducated second-class citizens, these women are simply fighting for equality. Seeing that the oppressors are scared of the Gulabi Gang, and some political parties have offered to fund them, the ends justify the means in this particular situation.

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