In the dusty villages of northern India, where domestic violence, dowry abuse and official indifference often collude, a flash of bright pink has become one of the most recognisable symbols of grassroots resistance. The Gulabi Gang, famous for its pink saris and bamboo sticks, is neither a charity nor a conventional NGO. It is a rough-edged, community-born women’s movement that emerged from anger, survival, and the simple refusal to remain silent in a deeply patriarchal social order.
The Gulabi Gang was founded in 2006 in Banda district, in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, by Sampat Pal Devi, a former farm labourer with little formal education but an acute sense of injustice. Bundelkhand is known for chronic poverty, caste discrimination and weak state services. For many women here, approaching the police over domestic abuse or dowry violence was pointless or actively dangerous. Sampat Pal’s early interventions were personal and improvised: confronting abusive husbands, shaming negligent officials, and gathering other women to provide strength in numbers. What began as a handful of women in pink saris soon evolved into a mass movement.
The name itself is revealing. Gulabi means “pink” in Hindi, a colour associated neither with political parties nor with traditional female modesty. The pink sari functions as a uniform, a declaration of visibility, and a warning. Members often carry a lathi (bamboo stick), not as a first resort but as a symbol that they are prepared to defend themselves and other women when persuasion fails. The Gulabi Gang’s methods deliberately blur the line between protest and vigilantism, a fact that has made them both famous and controversial.
At its core, the gang addresses issues that are depressingly familiar across rural India: gharailu hinsa (domestic violence), dowry harassment, forced and child marriages, abandonment of wives, sexual assault, and caste-based abuse, particularly against Dalit women. In many cases, Gulabi Gang members accompany victims to police stations, confronting officers who refuse to register complaints. In others, they stage sit-ins, public shaming, or collective visits to abusive households. Only when all else fails do they resort to physical confrontation, a tactic supporters see as last-ditch community justice and critics condemn as unlawful violence.
Culturally, the movement draws on older Indian traditions of collective female action. Rural women have long mobilised informally through kinship networks, self-help groups, and mahila mandals (women’s collectives). What makes the Gulabi Gang distinct is its explicit rejection of female docility. Its members speak openly about izzat (honour) not as something men control, but as something women reclaim through resistance. This reframing has resonated with women who have been socialised to endure abuse in silence for the sake of family reputation.
The group’s growth has been uneven but significant. At its peak, various estimates put membership in the hundreds of thousands across Uttar Pradesh and neighbouring states like Madhya Pradesh. Internal splits, leadership disputes and political pressures have since fragmented the movement into factions, some still loyal to Sampat Pal, others pursuing more institutional paths. This fragmentation reflects a broader tension within Indian feminism between radical, street-level action and engagement with formal politics and NGOs.
Relations with the state have always been uneasy. Local politicians have alternately courted and condemned the Gulabi Gang, depending on electoral convenience. Police officers often accuse members of assault or unlawful assembly, while quietly benefiting from the pressure the gang exerts to resolve cases they would otherwise ignore. Some Gulabi Gang leaders have contested local elections, arguing that real change requires entering the system rather than merely confronting it from outside. Results have been mixed, underscoring how resistant India’s political machinery remains to poor, rural women without party backing.
International media has often portrayed the Gulabi Gang as exotic or sensational, focusing on pink saris and sticks rather than the structural failures that made such a movement necessary. Yet within India, the gang’s significance lies less in spectacle than in precedent. It has shown that women with little money, education or institutional power can still impose consequences on abusers and officials alike. In regions where the law exists largely on paper, the Gulabi Gang has functioned as a parallel moral authority.
Nearly two decades on, the Gulabi Gang stands as both inspiration and uncomfortable question. Should women have to organise as vigilantes to access basic justice? Is the state’s failure so profound that such movements are inevitable? As India debates gender equality, from urban #MeToo conversations to rural battles over land, labour and marriage, the women in pink remain a reminder that feminism in India is not only fought in courtrooms and universities, but also in village lanes, police stations and battered homes. Their message is blunt, unpolished and unmistakable: chup rehna paap hai (staying silent is a sin).
I have spent most of my adult life arguing that violence does not fix structural injustice. Patriarchy is not dismantled with fists, and social change is rarely born from bruises alone. I still believe that. But I am also a firm believer in aatma-raksha (self-defence), and I refuse the polite fiction that women must remain gentle even when a man is trying to subdue, attack, or rape them. When your body is under threat, theory collapses. Survival takes over. And survival is not pretty.
This is where the lesson of the Gulabi Gang hits hardest. Not in the pink saris, not in the sticks, not even in the headlines, but in the brutal honesty of rural women who know exactly how unreliable the system is. Police stations that laugh. Courts that delay. Elders who advise samjhauta (compromise). Families who say chup raho (stay quiet). In that context, self-defence is not militancy; it is basic human instinct. If a man is attacking you, you are allowed to resist. You are allowed to fight back. You are allowed to protect yourself. Full stop.
But the Gulabi Gang was never just about hitting back. What outsiders often miss is the collective part. One woman alone is vulnerable. A group of women, organised, visible, and angry, becomes a force. “Call the sisters” is not a slogan; it is strategy. It is mutual protection in places where institutions have abdicated responsibility. It is sangathan (collective organisation) replacing empty promises of justice.
And here is where I get uncomfortable with my own world — the urban feminist bubble. We love our panels, our seminars, our beautifully footnoted debates in universities, cafés and teahouses. We argue language, theory, nuance. All important, yes. But all utterly hollow if we do not listen to women in rural, backward, caste-oppressed communities who live the consequences of patriarchy every single day. Their feminism is not curated. It is urgent. It smells of dust, sweat, fear and courage.
The Gulabi Gang reminds us that feminism does not begin in books. It begins where women are hurt and decide, together, that enough is enough. You may not like their methods. You may worry about vigilantism. Fair concerns. But dismissing them from the comfort of cities is intellectual laziness dressed as moral superiority. If feminism cannot speak to the most marginalised women, it has failed.
So no, violence will not dismantle patriarchy. But silence will certainly keep it alive. And the women in pink understood that long before the rest of us learned to say it politely.