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

Carrying rope (“You never know, you might need it,” she said), the large stick, and a bulky, black leather handbag over her shoulder, Sampat led approximately five-dozen women onto Bisanda Road, which is part of National Highway 71. Behind her was a phalanx of ten pink sari–wearing women, all of whom demurely covered their heads. Trailing the foremost ranks was a long line of around fifty peasant women, without uniforms, who had spontaneously joined in the protest but were not official gang members. “Down with the police!” Sampat yelled in a scratchy voice, thrusting her fist in the air. The pink-uniformed women raised their hands in response and echoed her chant. “Let’s make more Pink Gangs!” the women shouted.

The television journalists filmed the procession as the women made their way noisily down the street. Men watched from the edge of the road; some laughed, others looked puzzled. All, except those trying to push through the crowd with heavy agricultural loads on their pushcarts or bicycles, stopped and stared.

By the time the group arrived at the entrance to the police compound, a large crowd of male passersby had gathered (the majority of the people out on the streets in Atarra were men, as women tended to stay at home). The women stopped at the threshold of the police station and yelled, “Down with Hassan Inspector!” — naming and shaming the station officer who had mistreated Sampat and Sushila the day before.

The crowd of women who assembled that day was a motley one. Some, like Kodia Dai, were elderly, with birdlike legs, who leaned shakily on their bamboo stick weapons for support. The Pink Gang members at the front appeared the most focused — their countenances were serious and their chants the loudest. Among the non-uniform-wearing women, at least one protester, dressed in a lime-green sari, carried an infant in her arms; another was heavily pregnant; and one carried her lunch with her in a stainless-steel tiffin box. A number of women looked sheepish and shy, smirking awkwardly under all the attention; others giggled and chatted with one another between the chants.

Babuji and Lakhan had followed Sampat and the women from a distance, but when they arrived at the destination, they hung back — neither daring to get too close to the police compound. “She told all the male supporters to stay behind the group of women,” Lakhan recalls, referring to Sampat. This order was for their own protection. “Sampat didn’t want people to raise fingers at the men and say, ‘You’ve started all this.’ You see, Sampat thought the police would cook up charges against us.” She deemed women less vulnerable to police attacks. “There is no women’s jail nearby so it is hard to arrest them,” Lakhan explains. The police also “don’t do laathi charges on women,” he adds, referring to the police practice of dispersing protesters by charging at them with the large bamboo sticks. A large crowd of people gathered, blocking Bisanda Road. People living opposite the station leaned out of their windows or went up onto their flat roofs to get a better look.

The women entered the compound and then gathered in front of the veranda of the police station, under a red-and-blue plaque that read, “ATARRA POLICE STATION—1960.” “Okay, everyone,” Sampat shouted to her troops, “Don’t be afraid!”

Sampat walked across the veranda and into the narrow, crowded office of one of the policemen. She was followed by at least one cameraman and as many women who could fit into the room — the others hovered outside the door. “All of you, sit outside,” the policeman commanded, but Sampat overruled him.