A powerful new tale based on a real-life story about women in India fighting against women’s violence and domestic abuse is currently on tour around the UK. With viewings in Leicester, Coventry and West Yorkshire, the Pink Sari Revolution is championing women’s rights everywhere.
The Pink Sari Revolution is adapted from the book with the same title by Amana Fontanella Khan. The story is about the leader of the infamous female vigilante group, Sampat Pal of the Gulabi Gang, in Uttar Pradesh. Sampat leads a gang of 400,000 inspiring women to take on challenges such as rape, domestic violence, honour killings
etc in the region of Bundelkhand.
The name Pink Sari comes from the pink saris the gang wears as uniform, ‘gulab’ meaning pink in Hindi. The play centres around Sampat’s attempt to gain justice for a young girl unjustly flung into prison. This young girl is a rape victim, Sheelu, aged 17.
Sheelu was raped by a married man, whose wife stays by his side. One brutal scene shows a woman’s body hanging from a tree whilst a bucket of blood is
poured down a drain.
Play director Suba Das said “When we started the process, Donald Trump became the president of America. There was a moment earlier this year where millions of women were marching in pink in cities all over the world to protest this misogynist running the free world and to me, that was a very powerful and terrifying moment. I realised that
Sampat Pal had been marching in pink for years before the other marches were taking place.”
Pink Sari Revolution is a beautiful yet powerful fusion of music, drama and movement showing how all women can collectively fight for women’s rights. Find out what happens next to Sheelu, by watching the Pink Sari Revolution in Theatres before curtains go up on November 11th.
