Sampat Pal's Gulabi Gang fights for gender revolution in India

By the time Sampat Pal rolls out of bed at 5:30 a.m., theres already a line of people outside her door. Theyre barefoot and illiterate, sweating beneath the blistering morning sun. One is here because shes been raped; another has come because her in-laws have beaten her with a tire pump.

Theyve all come to Pal for justice.

"People know my name and theyve come because theyve heard about my work," Pal says from her home in Badausa, India.

• The Sunday Edition audio documentary: Rebels in Pink
• Day 6:Sampat Pal and the Gulabi Gang

Almost nine years ago, Pal founded the Gulabi Gang. Today its an organization with tens of thousands of members spanning the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India.It's difficult to pin down the precise size of the group, but the Al Jazeeranews organizationand Pal herself have both recently put the membership at around 400,000.

The gangs mission is to challenge the caste system, empower women and crusade for the rights of the poor. Members wear bright pink saris (Gulabi means pink in Hindi) and carry bamboo sticks, more for intimidation than violence.

Their exploits have made Pal the stuff of legend.

She herself once beat a police officer after he refused to register a rape case. Pal also stormed the office of a utility company that was withholding power from a village, and paraded a corrupt city official along a decaying road that his administration wouldnt fix.

Police as criminals

As the gangs reputation has grown, so has the number of women who turn up on Pals doorstep every day, desperate for her help.

For women in India, violent crime is common and low-caste women are especially vulnerable. Ninety per cent of the countrys rape victims are Dalit women, formerly known as untouchables, the lowest of Indias lowest caste.

The situation is particularly dire in Uttar Pradesh, a state with the most cases of sexual violence against women in the country.

And the police arent much help.

An Indian high court judge recently described the Uttar Pradesh police force as the largest criminal organization in the country.

But the Gulabi Gang is offering a way out. It is making change simply by providing positive and powerful female role models in a country where few exist.

"I get a lot of respect and dignity when I wear the pink sari," says Maya Davy, a young mother of five who says shes been a gang member for almost two years.

"Men speak nicely, they listen to me, theyre not authoritarian anymore, so its better," she says.

From zero to hero

Pal, like many women in Uttar Pradesh, is low caste and illiterate. She was a child bride and a mother at age 15.

But Pal rebelled against her in-laws, who viewed her as little more than a slave. When her eldest daughter was an infant, Pal moved out and an activist was born. She organized several empowerment groups for women, and it was one of those advocacy groups that later morphed into the Gulabi Gang.

Years later, Pals dramatic exploits have catapulted the gang from local to international fame.

In 2011, The Guardian newspaper named her one of the 10 most influential women in the world. The gang has also been the subject of numerous articles, books and several international documentaries.

But some have argued that Pals fame has gone to her head. Shes been accused of being authoritarian and more concerned with her own image than the welfare of gang members. Last spring she beat back a challenge to her leadership from a long-time colleague, with whom she has a close but antagonistic relationship.

Although Pal is now in her late-fifties, she has no intention of stepping down.

"Its only people who are like me and who work the way I do passionately that can bring changes to India," she says.

Lasting social change?

But it's difficult to know how sustainable that change is.

And thats the problem. Pal represents both the strengths and weaknesses of the gang. Shes an effective and charismatic leader who inspires tremendous loyalty, but theres also no one else like her.

Theres also the question of whether Pals brand of vigilante justice can really lay the foundation for lasting social change.

Abhilasha Kumari, the director of Apne Aap, a womans rights NGO in Delhi, doesnt think it can.

"Fear always is something which intimidates you, but I never see fear as a solution," she tells me. "Fear may prevent people from doing certain things, but it is their mindset that has to be changed."

Pal agrees.She says that for women in India, the first battle begins at home. A woman must fight the oppression and abuse she faces from her family before she can become an effective member of the gang.

After all, real change is not going to come from the end of a stick.

(Listen to Ashley Walters' audio documentary on Sampat Pal and the Gulabi Gang on CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition on Jan. 23 at 9 a.m., or stream it here.)