Pink Gang (2010)

The documentary tells the story of the "Pink Gang", Gulabi Gang in the Hindi language and more specifically of Sampat Pal Devi, their aging founder and undisputed leader, a woman of around fifty, totally unschooled, who lives in a tin shack. The Gulabi Gang was first born in 1990, but only in 2006 it's leader Sampat Devi actually gave it a name and a precise identity. The gang operates in one of the poorest areas of India, just south of Delhi, the Banda District, on the border between Uttar and Madhya Pradesh. What distinguishes this gang is that it is made up entirely of women, all dressed in pink saris and wielding a lathi, a wooden stick. The gang fights for justice, as Sampat tends to reiterate, through specific actions that aim to establish the rights of women. At first the actions did not appear to be organized, but rather a series of sporadic and somewhat ineffectual forms of individual protest. The oral traditional, a fundamental element of Indian history and culture, has helped the fame of these actions to spread, and convinced an increasing number of women to join Sampat Devi's gang.