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In Focus | The Sampat Pal fan club
The founder of Bundelkhand's Gulabi Gang continues to blaze a trail in popular culture
Numerous newspaper features and television interviews, two documentaries, a reality show appearance, two books and a forthcoming movie. Few Indian feminist groups can boast of so much attention, especially within a decade of their existence. The level of interest accorded to the Gulabi Gang from Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh, whose members wear bright pink saris and carry lathis, and its charismatic founder Sampat Pal, is only going to increase this year. Journalist Amana Fontanella-Khan‘s Pink Sari Revolution, which traces the group’s rise to national prominence, will be out in August. Pal’s movie-ready transformation from child bride to grass roots crusader will reach its logical destination with the under-production Bollywood drama Gulab Gang, directed by Soumik Sen and starring Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla. Nishtha Jain’s documentary Gulabi Gang will pip both book and film to the post. Gulabi Gang, funded by the Norwegian company Piraya Film, was premiered at the prestigious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November. “In January we will release the film in cinemas in Norway and after that we will prepare for the release in India through PVR cinemas,” Jain says.
What makes the Gulabi Gang different from the hundreds of women’s groups slaving away to change rural India? “It’s not just their clever media-attracting uniform that sets the Pink Gang apart,” says Fontanella-Khan. “The organization often delivers immediate results in a part of the country that is largely considered lawless and where ordinary people have no recourse to justice.”
Jain, whose previous documentaries include City of Photos and Lakshmi and Me, heard about the group in 2008, two years after it was formed. “There were several things that had intrigued me about them—their leader Sampat Pal, an articulate, fiery, rough-and-tough woman; their unlikely location, Bundelkhand, a land very unfriendly to women,” she says. “Also I wondered why a group fighting against injustice calls themselves a gang and wields sticks.”
The group’s methodology has caused consternation among traditional women’s groups who prefer lathi-free dialogue to the threat of violence, but Fontanella-Khan says the lathis function as props to show that the women mean business. “Despite carrying lathis, the women rarely inflict any violence,” she says. “The gang achieves most of its results by attracting media attention and by mobilizing large numbers of women for peaceful protest.”
The Gulabi Gang gives a new twist to the feminist adage “The personal is political”. The organization has been created in Sampat Pal’s own image, as is evident from Jain’s documentary as well as British film-maker Kim Longinotto’s Pink Saris. Longinotto’s documentary, shot in 2010, follows Pal around as she represents women being victimized by their families. Pal’s devil-may-care attitude towards authority, combined with her own authoritativeness, makes it hard to notice anybody else around her. When Pal appeared on the reality show Bigg Boss last year—a move few self-respecting feminists would make—it didn’t surprise people who had been following her work. Pal has an instinctive understanding of what makes the headlines—and how to subvert media attention. “Sampat is definitely an impresario of image and theatre,” Longinotto says. “It’s her strength. She realizes she needs to throw light on the hidden taboos and abuses in her rural community.”
Both documentaries depict Pal and her pink posse in the present. Insights into her past are available from Moi, Sampat Pal, a recounted autobiography narrated by Pal to French journalist Anne Berthod in 2008. The English translation, which came out recently as Sampat Pal Warrior in a Pink Sari (Zubaan Books), contains fascinating insights into Pal’s philosophy and ambitions. Pal’s combative personality appears to have been shaped by her prohibitive circumstances and her desire to lead a life less ordinary.
Pal was born into the livestock-rearing Gadaria caste around 51 years ago. She got a bare-bones education and was married at the age of 12 to a 21-year-old widower. She emerged as a truly argumentative Indian as the years went by, taking on her in-laws, Brahmins in the village and naysayers who criticized her mobility and outspokenness. She schooled herself in feminism after attending a meeting organized by a local group. “For the first time, dozens of people from all sectors of society were putting those things into words that I had always instinctively felt,” she tells Berthod. “It was like waking up to life.”
In 2003, Pal set up the Adivasi Mahila Utthan Gram Udyog Seva Sansthan (Organisation for the Promotion of Tribal Women in Rural Industry), which mainly worked with women from the Kol tribe. Gulabi Gang came three years later. Why the pink saris? She tells Berthod, “We were a gang. So it seemed natural that we should have a uniform, something that would give us a definite identity and reinforce the members’ sense of belonging.” Various political parties had cornered the main colours—blue for the Bahujan Samaj Party, green and white for the Congress party, red for the Samajwadi Party. “The only colour left was pink, one that was commonly found but remained exclusive to women,” Pal told Berthod. “It was easy to find in any woman’s wardrobe and matched the colour of sindoor…. And it succeeded in getting us noticed.” Given Pal’s pragmatic attitude towards publicity and her own political ambitions—she contested the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2012 on a Congress ticket from Manikpur—she isn’t going to go fade out any time soon. “Sampat has a message that’s meaningful, especially in a cultural climate where family reigns supreme, women have no voice or choice regarding most aspects of their lives and justice from the courts is inaccessible for common people.”
Sampat Pal Warrior in a Pink Sari, Zubaan Books, ₹ 325. Kim Longinotto’s Pink Saris is available at magiclanternfoundation.org for ₹ 600. For information on Nishtha Jain’s Gulabi Gang, email raintreefilms@gmail.com.
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First Published:4 Jan 2013, 05:21 PM IST
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