Picture: McKay Savage (CC)
Pakistan’s Engish Language The News International has an in depth profile of Sampat Pal Devi, the leader of India’s Gulabi Gang—a group of feminist vigilantes in the rural north of India:
Seeds of rebellion were sown early in Sampat Pal’s mind when her parents refused to send her to school. But despite opposition, she learnt to read and write by watching through the boys’ classroom window without letting her parents know of it.
. . .
Resident of village Bidausa, Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh, Sampat became a child bride in a region where child marriages are common. Having her first child at the age of 13, by the time she turned 20 Sampat had five children. But that did not deter her from being on her own.
She took up a job as a government health worker and added to the family income. Her husband had by then known that his wife was an independent minded woman and encouraged her in her pursuits.
