The charge of the Red Brigade

A Lucknow-based organisation is equipping girls to take on predators who are out to harass them

This year, a group of young women observed Valentine’s Day by wearing their trademark red and black outfits, and training young girls in the art of self-defence. Instead of roses and presents, they had something different in mind for men. “If your assailant grabs you from the back, you can hurt him hard like this,” said Usha Vishwakarma, demonstrating a lethal-looking move. “Perfect this move, and I’ll teach you others to be used in situations where you could be surrounded by two, even three men!”

The imagery is powerful. The festival of love is a particularly galling time for women across India, who have to put up with daily instances of sexual abuse. Many believe that the solution lies in improved policing and better policies — but members of the Lucknow-based Red Brigade believe that girls and women can, and should defend themselves against sexual predators. Red Brigade has been imparting self-defence training to women since 2013. “Indian history is full of powerful women who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with men,” its founder Vishwakarma says. “Unfortunately, modern girls are told that they’re equal to men, but not trained to really be that way!” 

To this end, Vishwakarma and her cohorts have devised a set of self-defence moves that they call Nishastra (unarmed). “Since most of us in Red Brigade are survivors of sexual violence, we teach girls how to respond in different threat situations,” says she. For example, during a training camp in Varanasi, they came across a young teen. “She was being abused by her cousin who lived in the same house,” narrates Vishwakarma. The girl’s mother was too fearful to do anything when her daughter complained to her. “At our training camp, we taught her not only how to defend herself, but also to inflict pain on her attacker,” she says. The result was amazing. The next time the cousin attempted to force himself on her, the girl kicked him so hard in the groin that he was bedridden for five days. “He hasn’t tried anything on her ever since,” says Vishwakarma with quiet satisfaction. Stories like this are common at the Red Brigade. “The confidence that girls get when they realise that they can inflict as much pain on the assailants as the assailant can on them is amazing to see.”

“In the past year, we have scoured history books for stories of brave women,” she says. That’s how they came across the story of the braveheart Uda Devi, a Dalit woman who during the 1857 war of Independence, formed a women’s army, with herself as the commander. When her husband was martyred, she took revenge by opening fire on a British company from the cover of a tree. By the time the soldiers shot her dead, she had killed 36 of them. “When we tell young girls her story, it has a huge impact on their minds,” says Vishwakarma.

Members of the Red Brigade

To date, the Red Brigade — a group of 50 women in Lucknow — has trained over 45,000 women. They are now planning to start a campaign called Hundred Days, Hundred Schools through which they will reach out to schools across the state. However, the task ahead is huge. In a recent foot march across Uttar Pradesh, Vishwakarma and others at Red Brigade saw that women’s safety remains a huge problem in the state. In rural areas, the lack of toilets makes women extremely vulnerable to sexual violence. Last year, a young girl died after being sexually assaulted and burnt when she went to the fields to relieve herself. Another common problem is that when a woman complains about sexual abuse to her family, they tend to keep quiet out of fear of social stigma and shame. “We support survivors of violence, and ensure that they are well-prepared to handle any such situation in the future,” Vishvakarma says. 

Red Brigade runs on local support and a lot of passion. In a petition to the chief minister and governor of Uttar Pradesh, the organisation has recently advocated that self-defence be made an integral part of the state’s school curriculum. “In the meantime, our aim is to impart self-defence training to every woman and girl in Lucknow,” says Vishwakarma. 

Learn more at red-brigades.blogspot.in, or visit their page on Facebook

Next fortnight, a group of India’s foremost practitioners of dhrupad are working to revive this beautiful genre of classical music