One Future Collective is happy to announce that Ayesha Mehrotra and Samragni Dasgupta will now formally constitute as our inaugural *fabulous* team in Bangalore. Ayesha serves as the Program Director, Sustainability Initiatives, nationally, and Samragni serves as the Program & Outreach Officer, for Bangalore.
Mapping and negotiating power
Uncuff India Episode 10: Dimensions of conflict and peace: visioning a utopian world
Uncuff India Episode 9: Civic space and dissent: A pathway to social justice
“Yes, we fight rapists with lathis (sticks). If we find the culprit, we thrash him black and blue so he dare not attempt to do wrong to any girl or a woman again,” brags Sampat Devi Pal, founder of the Pink Sari Gang, popularly known as the Gulabi Gang. Rooted in one of the poorest and most populated villages of Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh, north India, this all woman group prides in its collective identity as vigilantes and are literally, wielding sticks and fighting for women’s equality and liberty in the area.
The inhabitants of Bundelkhand have to, on a daily basis, struggle against infertility of local lands, extreme poverty, illiteracy, frequent droughts, a corrupt judicial system and an oppressive and deeply hierarchical caste system on one hand and frequent incidences of rape, child marriage, domestic abuse, dowry deaths. etc on the other. What started as a one-time saving action wherein Sampat Pal Devi rounded up a few women and along with them, beat up a neighbor who abused his wife, has now grown into a feisty network of rebellious women across over eleven districts of India’s largest province, Uttar Pradesh, each honing a stick, ready to follow and deliver Sampat Devi’s alternate model of justice. With the vision to ‘protect the powerless from abuse and fight corruption’, the gang and its agenda found resonance with much of India’s population, where reports of sex crimes, domestic violence and gang rapes blighted the smooth functioning of the society.
Every marginalized community in India faces some kind of violence or the other. However, women who hail from a lower caste face a heightened version of this marginalization. “Baichi jat” or “all women constitute a caste” best describes the status of women in marginalized communities. Caste movements and women’s movements have hitherto come into being in the Indian scenario, but this is the first time that a movement for women from the lower caste is coming to the fore.
In this case, we see that women’s vigilantism has successfully proved to be an effective and temporary strategy to combat localized instances of gender violence. However, feminist scholarship throws light upon reasons why this sort of agency in resisting patriarchal forms of culture doesn’t fit into the long-term principles of feminist action. These instances of retributive ghettoizing and attacking the perpetrators does posit us with a moral and ethical predicament as to how far are they permanently justifiable in the eyes of the law and order set in place by society. Nevertheless, the Gulabi gang and its collective acts of aggression have managed to foster new feminist linkages for these women, allowing them options of social and physical mobility which were hitherto inaccessible.
Through the various activities and issues the gang takes up, we can reach a consensus that marginalized women who have utilized such organized forms of violence in order to gain justice, actually find themselves walking the thin line between legally punishable and socially acceptable action. Atreyee Sen argues that such women’s groups that function outside the legal system ultimately end up adopting a language of politics and pacifism in order to gain legitimacy and credibility as a social movement. One can observe that female vigilantism, in disempowered communities, attains a credible space when examined through the lens of ‘ethical violence’ and other related understandings of proportionate punishment for crimes against women. Sen, quotes Shanti, a member of the gang since 2007, “In all the time that I have been with the gang, we only beat people, we have never murdered anyone”.
Deniz Kandiyoti in her essay ‘Bargaining with Patriarchy’, talks about the abstract notion of patriarchy as seen in contemporary feminist theory. She takes up a systematic and comparative examination of women’s strategies in coping with different forms of patriarchy. She says that while different forms of patriarchy assign women ‘distinct rules of the game’, women have to traditionally come up with a novel set of strategies for both active and passive resistance, ie women in different locations, spatially and culturally, have to make different kinds of patriarchal bargains to deal with the situations they are in. This study of hers leads her to opine that an analysis of different forms of resistance reflects a culturally and geographically grounded understanding of various patriarchal systems.
Members of the Gulaabi Gang during a meeting.
While there are many men who associate with the ideals of the gang and even help them out in all ways possible, there are no men who are a part of the core gang. Their biggest support, according to Sampat, is by not being obstacles. Every male member of the community who isn’t a hindrance to or who doesn’t stop a woman from being a member of the gang, is in his own way, supporting the gang. They are content with being able to contribute economically and supporting the gang and its functioning wholeheartedly and are not comfortable looking at true agency as being a core part of the movement.
Amana Fontanella Khan, journalist and author of Pink Saree Revolution says that the law and justice system of Bundelkhand being dysfunctional and unreliable, Sampat Devi’s vision of gender equality and freedom has been successful because of her bold and creative ways of protest, further empowering and helping women, thus offering an alternative means of attaining justice where the state has left a vacuum. Nishita Jain, a filmmaker whose movie ‘Gulab Gang’ sought to throw light on the tale of these women, asserts, “It is ironic that in one of India’s most backward regions, women are forced to become ‘masculine’ and aggressive in their fight against machismo and patriarchy,”
A deeper look at the various strategic choices adopted by the Gulabi Gang leads us to a more nuanced understanding of this movement’s dynamics. The Gulabi Gang goes about implementing various strategies, both innovative and creative which remarkably make them stand out in this regard. They once planted seeds and saplings into potholes after multiple complaints to the administration had failed to work. This act openly ridiculed the system and saw an instant response on the part of the officials. When the police or any official administration fails to register a complaint, even after multiple efforts to initiate informative dialogue, the gang resorts to collectively sitting outside the concerned offices, refusing to move until their demands are met. They train regularly as a group, attempting to learn defense mechanisms, trying their best to never use it but always ready and prepared to. The use of lathis or bamboo sticks when nothing else works, is also, though illegitimate, an innovative means of protest. Along with discussion and dialogue, the Gulabi Gang also uses different forms of illegitimate violence, the uses of which can be read as being threefold: subtle forms of violence allow them to attract the attention of their counterparts, engages potential members and strengthens solidarity among gang members.
While most of these variations are rooted in completely cultural and historical processes, it is often seen that women take up protectionist roles for themselves, sometimes for their fellow female members and sometimes collectively as a group. The Gulabi Gang and its birth in the fiercely patriarchal, casteist and vulnerable context for Indian lower caste, dalit women can be read as one such strategy to combat the oppressive forces around these women in Bundelkhand. This movement, though a reaction in many senses, has been successful in solving the issues of the community till date. “Our missions have a 100 percent success rate. We have never failed in bringing justice when it comes to domestic problems,” said Sampat about their resistance and its impact on the society they are a part of. Irrespective of all the shams and queries raised against the ethical nuances of the gang and its working, the truth still holds that the women in the community benefit socially and personally from the presence and working of the gang, they feel empowered to be a part of it and more than anything else, have seen a fulfilment of their needs, both protectoral and rights based, via the functioning of the gang. The Gulabi gang suffices to solve the problems of these women, at a time and scenario in which no other authority or institution easily would.
Jerin Jacob is the Chief Operating Officer at One Future Collective.
The Social Cut is a monthly column by Rishika Aggarwal that critically analyses various media shows, movies and documentaries, from an intersectionalist feminist standpoint.
If there’s one superhero that has almost been overdone when it comes to depiction on the movie screen, it is undeniably Spider-Man.
The web-slinging superhero and his civilian identity, student Peter Parker, has been the protagonist for a number of films. In the span of 12 years, there were 5 feature films and 2 iterations of the character on movie screen – Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s original trilogy, and the two films in the Amazing Spider-Man reboot in 2012, starring Andrew Garfield. Then came the Marvel movies, with Tom Holland taking over the role as a younger Spider-Man – and with it came clear indications of Spider-Man fatigue.
The Spider-Man that had first been introduced by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962 had been a breath of fresh air in the superhero landscape – he didn’t have access to expensive and high tech gear, was human and not alien or mutant (a la Superman or the X-Men), and dealt not only with super-villains, but also mundane problems like bullying and talking to girls. His powers affected his ability to hold down a job, forcing him to work for an employer who hated his masked identity, and he struggled with keeping Spider-Man a secret from the most meaningful people in his life.
Spider-Man, when first introduced, was proof that anyone could be a superhero. And while it’s true that there are parts of Peter Parker that people can relate to, it is increasingly clear that being fully represented by a superhero is difficult when the superhero in question is young white man.
This is why Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a breath of fresh air, especially on screen. This Spider-Man is no longer the young white man Peter Parker, but Afro-Latino teenager Miles Morales. He embraces his cultural background instead of being modified to appeal to white audiences – his school essays come doodled with graffiti and his form of relaxation is a combination of hip-hop and R&B (creating one of the most hilarious moments in the film when his need to hum music in order to control a part of his new powers conflicts with his need to stay silent).
Miles is a young, black boy in a city and country that has a racial profiling problem, a scholarship recipient who is an outsider in his rich (and visibly majority white) new school, a boy who yearns to return to the neighbourhood where his fits in while his parents dream of something else for him.
Yes, there is a Peter Parker in this film, but he is not the protagonist, and not the main universe’s Spider-Man – that’s Miles’ purview.
And then there are the other Spider-People that appear in the movie. Yes, Spider-Ham is played for the laughs, but the other important Peni Parker is the young Japanese-American girl who is the pilot of the SP//dr suit, Gwen Stacey is Spider-Gwen, and the Aunt May who was once nothing more than a motivation for Peter is now a technological force to be reckoned with. Even the villains get in on this – Dr. Octopus is no longer Otto Octavius, but Olivia Octavius.
Even background characters in the film are no longer majority white, but noticeably diverse, reflecting modern New York – and the world – better than older films have managed to do. Minor characters reflect this too – the momentary appearances of Miles’ Korean-American (future) best friend Ganke Lee and Spider-Man 2099, Miguel O’Hara who is of Mexican descent, help reinforce the naturalness of the diversity the film embraces.
One of the funniest – and most reflective – moments in the film is when Miles points out the head of the Kingpin’s labs to the alternate universe Peter Parker – when he points out that it’s a woman (the aforementioned Olivia Octavius) he mutters “I guess I have to reassess my preconceptions.” It’s a line that’s perhaps more reflective of the film’s effect on audiences than any other in the movie.
Into the Spider-Verse’s success is promising – a sequel has already been green-lit, and an all-female spin-off (likely starring Spider-Gwen) is in the works. At the end of the movie, Miles says that anyone can wear the mask – and it seems that the Spider-Man universe is finally catching up.
