Result of The Pink Chaddi campaign

The Pink Chaddi campaign demonstrates the potential of online social networking in

enabling women's political mobilisation and subversive organising. At the same time, the

Pink Chaddi campaign's experience also serves as a cautionary tale on the limits of online

social media platforms to support radical groups. The campaign's Facebook group attracted a

lot of attention, and gained over 40,000 members within just one week, from all over the

world. Online technology, in the case of Pink Chaddi mainly Facebook, enabled the Indian

women activists to quickly connect with thousands of other women around the world and

gain support and strength for their movement and cause. While a lot of action was initiated

offline by the group, the role of online social networking (in this case, facilitated by the

Facebook platform) cannot be ignored as that enabled the movement to grow exponentially

and gain momentum, which it would not have been able to do otherwise. The social media

platform also functioned as the medium for passing vital information to supporters on

meetings, activities, and even the logistics for the campaign on sending pink underwear to the

offices of the Sri Ram Sena. The use of social media enabled the organisers of the campaign

to bridge national and sociocultural divides, and create a community of support around the

issues of countering violence against women,and protecting women's fundamental freedoms.

Though the use of social media was initially successful in enabling the organisers of Pink

Chaddi, to build momentum around their campaign, they did face some challenges using

Facebook. For example, the organisers learned that Facebook does not allow users to send a

joint message to all group members, once a group crosses a certain threshold of members –

this is Facebook's way of curbing spamming. This feature hindered information sharing

between group founders and members, as members do not always check the group's home

page to access information, and rely more on personal messages. A more grave concern

emerging from the Pink Chaddi campaign's experience was Facebook's unresponsiveness to

requests from group members for support, when the group page was repeatedly hacked, and

racist messages and violent slurs posted. Not only was Facebook unresponsive to repeated

requests for support, it actually disabled the account of the group administrator. When asked

why she had chosen the pink panty as the focal point of her protest, Nisha Susan couldn’t

come up with a clear answer. Sometimes, she said that it was a reference to the khaki-shorts-

wearing RSS cadres who are often derisively called “chaddi wallahs” (underwear wearers).

Sometimes, she said that she chose pink because it is a frivolous colour. Sometimes, she

chose to highlight the feminism of pink against the machismo of saffron, the Sangh Parivar’s

colour of choice. She also mentioned that the gift of pink panties was a gift of love, in the

Valentine’s Day tradition, meant to shame Shri Ram Sena into backing down from its threats

to disrupt Valentine’s day celebrations. Some participants in the campaign even suggested

that the act of sending pink panties was an assertion that Indian women are ready to put aside

their sense of shame and fight for their rights. Gifting pink panties on the Valentine’s Day

was the perfect symbol for the protest against Shri Ram Sena. There are many unanswered

question at the end of the Pink Chaddi Campaign.

The first question is: was the campaign really successful?

The answer is the universally unsatisfactory “it depends”. The campaign was undoubtedly

successful in terms of creating reach and engagement but it’s not sure if it brought about any

real change. More than 50000 users joined the campaign group on Facebook. More than 300

blogs linked to the campaign blog. More than 150 news stories mentioned the campaign.

These are unusually high numbers for a grassroots online campaign in India. At the same

time, the media attention also helped Shri Ram Sena and brought its leader Pramod Mutalik

into national limelight . In terms of engagement, the campaign generated interest amongst

both men and women both in India and internationally. It also started a serious debate in both

mainstream and participatory media over who gets to define Indian culture. At the same time,

we must remember that the debate was limited to a small minority of Indian elites. However

the campaign did not change the views of the Indian mainstream and it might even have

alienated them — and we are talking about the educated, urban Indian mainstream here, not

villagers in Eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Finally, in terms of impact, the campaign did mobilize significant offline action. Getting

Indian women to send 2000 pink panties to Shri Ram Sena is no small achievement. The

public debate around the campaign also forced Shri Ram Sena to back down on its threats of

disrupting Valentine ’s Day celebrations. However, as many observers have pointed out, the

campaign didn’t really change anything. Public opinion on Shri Ram Sena is still divided in

India and most of its leaders are unlikely to be punished by law.

It’s important to note, however, that this outrage was mostly limited to a small but

increasingly vocal section of Indian society: young men and women in urban India, who are

isolated from the harsh realities of the rest of India by a lucky combination of family

background, education, and work. We come from liberal families (or have broken away from

family ties), speak English as our first language, often work in the new economy sectors of

media, entertainment and technology, and spend our free time socializing with friends and

strangers on online communities and in neighborhood shopping malls. We believe in personal

freedom and even libertarianism but don’t really consider ourselves particularly Westernized

We know that our parents, or at least some of our friends’ parents, don’t really understand the

appeal of hanging out in cafes and pubs. We also know that they actively dislike the idea of

dating, premarital sex and love marriages, especially if it involves their daughter. We know

that even the most liberal Indian politicians are closet conservatives, and many Indian

politicians are illiterate goons. Sometimes, we read stories of women being raped, burned or

killed in villages because they had an affair with someone from another caste and feel

ashamed of our country. But we close our eyes and tell ourselves that the shining emergent

India we know is not the same as the dark shameful India of illiterates, bigots and goons.

Then, Mumbai happens, or Mangalore happens, and the world as With its unconventional

choice of name, The Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women on Facebook

self-consciously appealed to this strong sense of us versus them. It reached out to the small

minority of men and women in India who are amused by the irony of a woman being called

‘Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward’ in the same sentence. It also self-consciously distanced itself

from the Indian mainstream which still wants its Bollywood heroines to be virginal and

associates ‘Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women’ with the Bollywood vamps of

yesteryears.we know it, with its clearcut boundaries between us and them, collapses around

us.