Note Bene: When examining a group based on equality for women, of course the first theory any one will think of is Feminist IR—Constructivism. While I usually feel that the individual subunits that make up Constructivism are too vague or specific to be useful as devices for proper explanation, when a situation that lines up so perfectly occurs, it must be considered. Still, I find the most common themes acknowledged in many Constructivist theories—identity, the power of social norms/constructs, etc.—to be generally more valuable than sticking to any one subunit, so I will be mostly referring to “Constructivist” thought rather than "Feminist" thought in this paper.
The Gulabi Gang (Gulabi is Hindi
for “pink”) is a vigilante group that promotes feminism through protest, and
sometimes violence, in Northern India. Their leader and founder is Sampat Devi
Pal, a lifelong activist. When reading of their actions—beating men with
lathis, traditional Indian fighting sticks—and the attitudes that engendered
the actions, one might wonder why they are successful. Why hasn’t government
intervened? Why does their numerical force continue to grow despite cultural
opposition? Have they been truly successful? In explaining the actions of the
group, their leader, and opposing forces, one may think that Constructivism and
Liberalism would be the best options, since the Gulabi Gang is a feminist
institution. However, I have found that Constructivism and Realism best answer all these questions. Nevertheless, all three
theories—Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism, will be used to view the
Gulabi Gang as follows.
Sampat listening to a woman's concerns.
While Constructivism explains more
of the cultural phenomena surrounding the Gulabi Gang, the actions of the
Gulabi Gang and external forces can be seen as Realist. Even before the birth
of the Gulabi Gang as an official institution, on the very first excursion of
the embryonic Gulabi Gang, Sampat Devi Pal (Pal) used violence against a man
who would often beat his wife. Pal, as an individual, first plead with him, but
that did not dissuade him, so she gathered up a force of five women, and beat
him up instead [6, 2]. If you consider the women of India as a nation, she was
using military force as a means of protecting the security of the nation. Once
the “state” of the Gulabi Gang was formed, the state continued to use violence
as a threat to maintain security of the nation and of the state itself, when
members were threatened. Like a state, although the Gulabi Gang has been
offered propositions of joining larger political alliances, they refused,
protecting their relative political “anarchy”.
Forces outside of the Gulabi Gang
act in a Realist manner when dealing with the group as well. The Gulabi Gang
began in the village of Bundelkhand in southern Uttar Pradesh [5]. Mayawati (Maya), the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, is a highly corrupt woman from the
dalit party. Dalit is the lowest caste, and she is the first female dalit to
achieve such a high political position [1]. Maya, as a politician who runs on
the ticket as a woman and a dalit, felt Pal threatened her power: Pal was
gaining power by the month, and power is most obviously zero-sum for
Mayawati, who draws from a similar base of people as Pal, except the Gulabi
Gang turns away from Mayawati due to her corruption. After Maya was unable to
dissolve the Gulabi Gang, she attempted to stick the group under her power by
requesting that they operate under the banner of the dalit party. This way, the
Gulabi Gang’s anarchy would be compromised, so they would have little
independent power, and Mayawati’s power would be assured for when she runs for
prime minister. It would have been a very neat Realist situation, except the
Gulabi Gang also runs under Realist principles, and of course rejected the
proposal. By ignoring the Gulabi Gang, the larger government has thus far acted
in a Realist manner. The Gulabi Gang has not posed a threat to the government’s
security or power thus far; not only are they disinterested in entering
politics, but their full number is but a small fraction of the Indian
population. In addition, they are not even opposing governmental intent, for
they are pushing for equality already promised in India’s constitution. As such, it would be nonsensical and a waste of government resources for the larger government to deal with the Gulabi Gang; the group operates beneath the concern of the government.
Although less suitable, we may
still attempt to use Liberalism to assess the gang. Pal has expressed
Liberalist sentiment when she claimed: “My real strength is not in the stick;
it is in numbers” [1]. “Numbers” refers to her belief in the Gulabi Gang as an
institution that many women have joined, and she wishes more still would join.
All the Gulabi Gang’s success stories as well have come from banding together
to accomplish a goal, supporting her statement. Whether they are reclaiming
food intended for the poor, having been stolen to make a profit [3, 5], or
saving young girls from child marriages [2], her operations always succeed when
the weight of the Gulabi Gang is put behind them. Contrastingly, when she was
just one begging woman, she could not force a man to stop beating his wife. The
belief in the gang as an institution could also be seen as the impetus that has
caused more than twenty thousand women to join.
However, we must also be certain to
understand the problematic nature behind Liberalist assumptions about this
topic. In Pal’s statement, “numbers” could just as easily be used to mean the
threat of great military might. Pal has been referred to as a “self-styled vigilante
in a region where power and pelf flow[s] from the barrel of [a] gun” [3].
Violence is taken very seriously there, and Pal is not the only one to use it.
As such, it is probably more likely that the common interpretation of her
sentence would mean power from physical strength, rather than taking an
institution seriously for its own sake. In addition, while she was inefficient
outside an institution when working to end abuses and corruption, that first
successful mission of five women with lathis was also outside an institution.
It was an impromptu group that had power because they had the means for
violence and no compunctions against using it. They had no pink uniform saris,
no name, nothing. Realists would say that the uniforms and brave statements are
distracting from what their true power is: Numbers, which as a group carry many
threats. As a whole, Liberalism cannot fit because it stresses cooperation, and
the Gulabi Gang operates by force, which makes Realism fit better for
explaining most of their actions. The reasons behind women joining, however,
are perhaps best explained by Constructivism.
Sampat (on right) teaches women to fight by holding sparring sessions.
The forces of identity and social
norms cannot be overlooked in our analysis. Indeed, the entire reason Pal
created the uniform and gave the group a name was in order to construct an
identity members could assume [6]. This couples with the aforementioned idea of
Indian women as a nation, a collective joined because of a shared gender
identity and a shared de facto status/class in society, to simplify; in this
way, the female members of the Gulabi Gang would feel strong commonalities with
each other, belonging not only to the same “nation” but also identifying as
feminist, and joining a group that seeks to empower them. This strong
collective identity is one reason why women would continue to join the group,
which is currently has over 20,000 members, despite opposition from husbands
and in-laws.
Constructivism can also help
explain why the gang has not yet been stopped, despite attempts having been
made. The group has the power of ethical and legal righteousness on their side.
Although the legal contract of the Indian constitution grants them equality, as
we have already seen, this is not so in practice, which does mean they are
acting against some local social norms. Nevertheless, the same ethical and
international normative forces that likely pushed equality into the
constitution may help imbue the gang members with a sense of justice. Indeed,
these forces cannot be entirely rare, for the free media in India holds the
Gulabi Gang in high regard [1]. Those who live in the West may be perplexed by
the positive or neutral reactions to a “gang” of violent people, but the
buzz-word “gang,” which holds such negative meaning here, there “has acquired a
halo in this […] region, where the anti-hero is [considered] the real hero”
[3]. As such, while there are restrictive cultural norms that unfortunately
have triggered this group into existence, there are also cultural norms that
make is easier to belong to a pugnacious gang, no matter what it is for.
The last question I’d like to ask
is: are they successful on a broad scale? We know of their exploits on an
individual level: the police station that was forced to register a criminal
case for a man they were holding without charges, the electricity company that
reversed their decision to withhold power from the village for sexual bribes,
etc. But those are all discrete incidents along a theme. How have they affected
India? Feminist IR posits that much of the problem of sexism lies in the
problem of the gender hierarchy; because traits/actions are labeled to be
masculine or feminine, and masculine trumps feminine, women, who are supposed
to be feminine (and therefore inferior), get the short end of the stick. It
also points out that this theory logically necessitates acceptance of gender as
a social construct. These things taken together, as we see a reduction of the
emphasis on and severity of the gender hierarchy in an area, we should see a
reduction in sexism. The Gulabi Gang allows women to empower themselves by
taking on “masculine” roles: literacy, strength, refusal of a servile role, the ability to earn money
independently, and the ability to stand up to an abuser. These acts attempt to
defy the gender hierarchy. Meanwhile, we have seen the benefits of this in an
unexpected way: trans* rights in India. Hijras are male-to-female transgender persons in India, and while they have existed for centuries, only now has there
been success in allowing voting rights and legal statuses for people of
alternative genders. It is possible that the Gulabi Gang’s pushing of the
gender hierarchy has weakened it enough to allow acceptance for genders beyond
the binary, which is an incredibly positive sign, indeed.
Very interesting topic Kendal. You talk about the way that the Indian government views and reacts to the Gulabi Gang, like how they are fairly free to act the way that they do, and the attempts by Mayawati to integrate them into her party. However, I was wondering what the effects of the gang have on the structure of the government. How has the government changed in response to the actions of the Gulabi Gang in their search for greater recognition of women's issues? Has Mayawati changed her policies to reflect the growing civil society that is demanding more attentiveness to women?
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