An Excerpt from ‘Pink Sari Revolution’ by Amana Fontanella-Khan

“You don’t know, what? I’m Sampat Pal, leader of the Pink Gang.” The station officer was not impressed with her credentials. “He told me many people come here, trying to act like netas” — referring to leaders and people with political power — “don’t think I’m going to listen to you,” Sampat recalls.

“If you don’t listen now, maybe you will when I come back with a hundred women armed with sticks?” Sampat replied testily. “Bring, bring,” he said in impatient monosyllables, and sent them away.

“If you don’t listen now, maybe you will when I come back with a hundred women armed with sticks?”

As they left the station, Sampat told Sushila to meet her at the office at eleven o’clock the next day. “Then he’ll see who Sampat Pal is,” she said angrily. Leaving Sushila, Sampat marched over to Uraiya Purva, where some of the initial Pink Gang members lived. Uraiya Purva is within walking distance from Sampat’s office; if you take a left from her patio and walk half a mile, you get to a canal with dark-green currents where those without running water bathe, wash their clothes, and rinse steel cooking pots. If you cross the bridge that goes over the canal and continue a few more miles, you reach the field-rimmed cluster of mud huts.

When Sampat reached Kodia Dai’s home, she told her to “call the others, quick,” and Kodia obliged, hobbling across the village and knocking on the doors of all the members with her gnarled, crooked hands. Once they gathered, Sampat narrated Sushila’s story. “This happened to Sushila’s husband today, but it could be you next. That’s why we have to teach them a lesson,” she said forcefully. The women nodded. Sampat instructed them to report to duty at the office at eleven o’clock the next day.

“Come wearing your pink saris and bring your sticks,” she ordered, and they promised to be there.

* * *

“That day around a hundred people gathered at my terrace,” Lakhan says, remembering the inundation of people choking the entrance of his house and overflowing onto the main road. In addition to the Pink Gang members from Uraiya Purva and Gokul Purva, dozens of passersby had crowded around the house to see what was going on, plus the media had made an appearance. The journalists, whom Sampat had called, were from Sahara Samay TV and the newspapers Hindustan, Dainik Jagran, and Amar Ujala. 

After everyone had gathered, Sampat addressed the press corps. Behind her, on the wall, was a hand-painted slogan that read, “For truth and justice our blood will always flow — The Pink Gang.”

“For truth and justice our blood will always flow — The Pink Gang.”

“A man has been taken captive by the police with no charge filed against him!” Sampat boomed to the notepad-clutching journalists and then, pointing to an anxious-lookingwoman, added, “And this is his wife, Sushila.” Sampat stood before Sushila, who wore a variegated sari with gold brocaded sleeve hems, and a gold nose stud, and pointed to a darkened bruise under Sushila’s left eye. “How did you get this injury?” Sampat asked in her demonstrative style. The woman explained that she had been hurt in a scuffle with the police. Turning to Sushila and raising her bamboo stick, Sampat said, “Out here, officials don’t listen to us, do they? But they will if we go with a laathi.”