"We're A Gang for Justice"

India’s Pink Posse
Neeta Lal
18 January 2008

“We’re a gang for justice,” says the leader of a crew of sari-wearing vigilantes
Banda is one of the country’s poorest and most regressive districts. Located in the heart of the populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, this region infested by dacoits, or bandits, invariably makes headlines for all the wrong reasons – drought, starvation, domestic violence, land-grabbing, killings and a thoroughly corrupt administration.

However, lately, the area’s Pink Gang, about 200 self-styled female Robin Hoods, is taking on dowry deaths, wife beating and even cases of government apathy and corruption, often fighting violence with violence.

A rambunctious and fearless posse recognizable by their pink-colored saris, the Pink Gang is the nemesis of violent husbands and inept government officials. Having personally suffered abuse, members of the vigilante club thrash abusive men, wife beaters and rapists, confront and shame wrongdoers and storm local police stations to accost lackadaisical cops.

"Nobody comes to our help in these parts. The officials and the police are corrupt and anti-poor. So sometimes we have to take the law into our own hands. At other times, we prefer to shame the wrongdoers. But we’re not a gang in the usual sense of the term. We’re a gang for justice."

Sometimes, the gang’s bravado has a happy ending. They restored 11 girls –thrown out of their homes due to dowry demands – to their respective spouses. Usually the gang’s activities range from bashing abusive men who torture their wives for not bearing sons to shaming officials who have profiteered by selling subsidized grain intended for the poor in the black market.

Broadly, however, the gang protects the powerless by mustering public support to engineer social change.

“If elected representatives refuse to heed the voices of ordinary citizens,” says New Delhi-based sociologist Dr Prerna Purohit, “then people have no choice but to take the matter in their own hands. It’s a wake-up call for the government in the world’s largest democracy.”
BBC News Clip

"Village society in India is loaded against women. It refuses to educate them, marries them off too early, barters them for money. Village women need to study and become independent to sort it out themselves," she says.