Sampat Pal Devi sings the blues

The only thing they seem to have in common is their look: long black hair and a bright pink dress.
And destiny, too: because, if Sita – the holy wife of Sri Rama – is undoubtedly a deity, Sampat Pal Devi (“goddess”)’s name imposes a sort of duty on her, too.

But if the former has always been a metaphor for womanly perfection, the latter could arouse some suspicions. Despite her pink sari, in fact, Sampat Pal is anything but docile.

The daughter of a shepherd, married off to an ice cream vendor at the age of eleven and mother of five, Sampat Pal Devi has never stopped fighting and is not used to defeats.

She started when she was a little girl: she wanted to go to school like her brothers and, since her family wouldn’t let her, she would teach herself how to read and write, gleaning information from the boys who attended school and practicing on her house’s walls and floor and her village’s dusty streets, until she finally ended up being enrolled.

As a wife and a mother, she went on struggling to keep the home fire burning and became a government health worker, quitting the job when she realized it was not satisfying her desire to work for her people and not only to gain a salary. Her rebel, justice-thirsty spirit could not keep silent in front of her region’s desolation, poverty and backwardness.



Bundelkhand, in Southern Uttar Pradesh, kept calling her name, a goddess’ name, and Sampat Pal Devi could not ignore it: starvation wages, landless farmers forced by poverty to migrate, village societies built on feudal values, bonded and child labour practices, crops and cattle destroyed by a decade-long drought, big families who don’t know where their next meal will come from, farmers forced to suicide or to mortgage their wives and daughters to moneylenders…. This was the set where Sampat Pal Devi took her decision, a society in which women work like beasts of burden, get lower daily wages than men, have countless children, are often victims of sexual assaults exercised by upper caste men; a region where dowry demands and domestic violence are common, tuberculosis creates a number of poor young widows and female literacy rate is around 45%.

In 2006, Sampat Pal Devi formed the Gulabi Gang with a handful of women from her district, an unconventional “army” whose soldiers are illiterate low-caste women who wear bright pink saris and wield long lathis, the traditional bamboo sticks, whose function Sampat herself teaches to other women. “Pink for women, Gang for not being submissive!”, she says, adding: “We are not  a gang in the usual sense of the term. We are a gang for justice”.

The Gulabi Gang was initially set to punish boorish husbands, fathers and brothers, wife beaters, rapists, men who have abandoned their wives. Its women members would listen to their sisters’ stories of abuse and then go to the guilty men’s houses, to try to make them see sense – even resorting to their legendary lathis, if necessary (But Sampal says they carry them “only for protection”!). In a patriarchal environment, where social, religious and political rules have always been written by men, force is necessary, Sampat Pal Devi says.

“Employing techniques that shame the accused - a very effective tool in societies where honour dictates all - members of the Gulabi Gang fight what they perceive as social injustice. Not handouts by the government, but a life of dignity and respect from and for everyone. And while their techniques might be questioned by many, the Gulabi Gang continues to do what the government and its machinery should be doing in the first place.”

Today, three years after its foundation, the Gulabi Gang counts several hundreds of women members, many men fans and countless successful actions. And, although 80% of the gang’s interventions are on behalf of women, they are increasingly called upon by men, who believe in the strength of this Robin Hood-like movement, able to challenge not only male authority over women, but all abuses inflicted on the weak. 

As a young Gulabi Gang member points out, “the more you suffer silently, the more your oppressor will oppress you”: a quite ancient thought in India, where the Mahatma set his action against the oppression of British raj, and at the same time a really modern path, made exclusively by women, within a man’s world.

Then, what do Sampat Pal Devi and Sita have in common? The first has promised she will never give up the fight, and has built around herself a movement aiming at the elimination of gender and social discrimination; the latter would rather die, when her holy husband Rama – after her being kidnapped by Ravana and him killing the demon – doubts her and thus rejects her. Sampat Pal would incite her Gang against Rama, while Sita adores and loves him to death, literally.

Perhaps, what links these two women characters of Indian history is not (or not only) the common Indian setting, but the author of Sita Sings the Blues, Nina Paley, “America’s best-loved unknown cartoonist”, as her blog reads.

An interpretation of Ramayana, where parts of Nina’s personal life intervene, making it extremely topical and ironic, the movie is centred on Sita, the devoted, modest, sighting wife beloved by tradition. Sita Sings the Blues is a beautifully designed, brilliant and ironic movie, where the Hindu epic is the starting point of the author’s thoughts on gender dynamics, as historically built by a man-dominated world, and an occasion to talk about (and make fun of) her personal relation. But this is not all: Sita Sings the Blues is also a movie whose author has decided to distribute under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. That is, it belongs to everybody.

On the movie’s website, Nina Paley states it clearly, in a letter addressed to her audience: “Conventional wisdom urges me to demand payment for every use of the film, but then how would people without money get to see it? How widely would the film be disseminated if it were limited by permission and fees? Control offers a false sense of security. The only real security I have is trusting you, trusting culture, and trusting freedom.”

And this is exactly what makes Sita Sings the Blues and its author Nina Paley somehow comparable to the Gulabi Gang and its founder Sampat Pal Devi.

“This is a free speech issue”, smiles Nina. “We’re a gang for justice”, says Sampat Pal.

These two women, who live at the antipodes and have extremely different backgrounds, seem to share a similar trait, that is the will to overturn those parts of their worlds they believe to be unjust.

Nina Paley has engaged big majors and corporations in battle, and has avoided their market logics by making her film a free product, which audiences from all over the world can view, download, share, show.

Sampat Pal Devi is questioning a whole set of values and traditions, those of patriarchy; with her unconventional manners, she is telling everybody – both women and men, in her village, in her state and even beyond Indian boundaries – that a different relation between genders is possible, that sexism equals injustice and that women do have a lot to say about many issues, which have traditionally always been in men’s hands.

Set in different environments, fighting for different shades of justice, bearing in mind different “audiences” and struggling to solve different problems, Nina and Sampat Pal are both women who do not agree with the status quo and have decided to say it loudly, to stand up and do their part; women who are using their imagination and their strength to question a (male) system which we usually consider to be fixed and immutable, as if its laws were the Word of God.

One more thing these two women have in common: they’re succeeding.

Which means that this world really can become a better place. 

Citation:

[1] www.bundelkhand.in

[2] M. P. Singh, Drought Situation Grim in Bundelkhand, The Hindu, 7 Sept. 2009, www.www.thehindu.com

[3] P. Jaiswal, Parched Bundelkhand “Pawns” Wives, Daughters, Hindustan Times, 7 Sept. 2009, www.hindustantimes.com

[4] According to Census 2001, www.bundelkhandinfo.org

[5] D. G. Singh, Gang of Pink: Indian Women Fight Injustice, RH Reality Check, 6 Dec. 2007, www.rhrealitychech.org

[6] A. Chopra, India’s female Pink Gang are vigilantes, San Francisco Chronicle, 14 June 2009, www.sfgate.com/chronicle

[7] www.sitasingstheblues.com

 

Comments

Thats my girl, Sampat Pal Devi Rocks!! Someone has to take a stand on sufferage for women and all suffering people.

Sampat has a lot of work to do in her life, and maybe one day, things will change in India for the better.

Its sad to see divisions of people in race, sex,and socio/eco:(

Hopefully her work will spread to all nations that treat people like dirt, changing things for the better, and bringing equality to all.

I feel for all oppressed people, no matter where they live, its a crime against The Heavenly Creator, and all humanity.

Its time for everyone to love one another and stop the hate.

Thank you Debbie!
In my opinion, the very interest of experiences such as the Gulabi Gang lays exctely in their being "different" from what we (Western women/feminists/activists...) usually consider 'right' or effective.
I do not think there is a right way to do things, nor universal ways to act and deal with problems. For sure, we cannot assert what this supposed rightness is or means, when we talk about distant places and different contexts.
The Gulabi Gang - born in the place where it acts, made by the people who have always lived in that context and have a first hand experience of its dynamics - is one of the possible expressions of that very place/culture/situation.
I find it as sincere and direct (that is, effective) as no interventions from "outside" could ever be.
For these same reasons, I would not draw parallels with the North American interpretation of the term "gang"; once again, the meaning depends on the context in which the word is used.
It does not surprise me that the women of the Gulabi Gang have not considered the sociological implications of the term in North American culture: after all, they're not North American! :)

Thanks for your comment!
Love, Elena

Elena, you've done a good job of bringing these two ideas together along with the causes both these women stand for. As much as I applaud the reasons for their actions, I find it sad that the Gulabi Gang have been forced to employ violence in their methods. I doubt that violence combating violence will ever equal a positive outcome. It's also unfortunate that they've chosen to be referred to in English as a 'gang'. The word 'gang' in North American culture refers to a group who operate on the wrong side of the law. They are often involved in prostitution, violence and corruption...the very things that the Gulabi Gang are against.

Still, a thought-provoking read. Well done.

Debbie