Revisiting 'Bell Bajao' campaign that urged India to ring the bell against DV

In Anubhav Sinha's 2020 movie, Thappad, the protagonist, Amrita (played by Taapsee Pannu), is a woman whose life is seemingly idyllic, a devoted homemaker married to an ambitious man. Her entire world shatters with a single, public slap. It is not the physical pain that breaks her, but the profound violation of her dignity and self-respect.

Her resolve to leave her marriage, to seek divorce over that single act of violence, became a powerful cinematic assertion that no act of violence, however minor, is acceptable or forgivable in a relationship.

On the contrary, Darlings is a dark, uncomfortable portrayal of how victims internalise abuse and hope. The film becomes truly contemporary when Badru, pushed to the limit after losing her baby due to a brutal assault, snaps out of the cycle. Aided by her mother, she moves from being a victim to actively seeking justice, not through the forgiving acceptance of the past, but through a radical act of self-defence and revenge.

The quiet despair of a woman behind closed doors remains one of the most agonising truths of the Indian social landscape. As of 2025, the numbers paint a stark and heartbreaking picture that defies all claims of modern progress. Official crime data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) may record hundreds of thousands of incidents of cruelty by husbands and their relatives annually, yet the true prevalence is far more chilling. Findings from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) reveal that approximately 32% of ever-married women in India have endured physical, sexual, or emotional violence from their husbands in their lifetime.

More alarmingly, UN Women's Global Database indicates that 24% of women aged 15-49 experienced violence in just the last 12 months.

The reason?

The persistence of domestic violence is not merely a collection of isolated criminal acts but rather a reflection of deeply entrenched social structures that perpetuate violence against women.

Before innovative campaigns emerged to address this crisis, the Indian government had taken structural action, notably passing the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act in 2005. However, institutional resources alone proved insufficient to alter public behaviour or provide meaningful protection to survivors.

Baseline surveys conducted by Breakthrough, an international human rights organisation, revealed the stark reality of legal illiteracy and cultural resistance back when the act was introduced. In Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra, only 3% of respondents were aware of the PWDVA. Even more troubling was the prevailing attitude toward intervention: 80% of respondents believed that only family members should intervene if a husband physically abuses his wife, while the remainder thought it was nobody's business.

Against this backdrop of normalised violence and cultural silence, the ‘Bell Bajao’ (Ring the Bell) campaign was launched in 2008 by Breakthrough, founded by Mallika Dutt. The campaign was conceived as a multi-year, sustained effort building upon the NGO’s established experience in using popular culture to challenge cultural taboos.

The primary objective was specifically to call upon men and boys across India to take an active stand against domestic violence. The campaign's integrated cultural, organising, and media strategy sought to make domestic violence part of the mainstream conversation, increase knowledge of the issue, change community attitudes, and, critically, alter individual behaviour.

The innovation of Bell Bajao lay in its simple, universally applicable core message: bystander intervention through a non-confrontational act. The campaign urged residents, particularly men, to ring the doorbell and ask a simple, mundane question, requesting to borrow tea, use the phone, or have a glass of water, when they overheard violence occurring against a woman.

This low-stakes action was supposed to achieve its objective by letting the abuser know that others can hear them and will act to interrupt the violence, utilising the psychological leverage of social shame and the veiled threat of confrontation.

The campaign employed a sophisticated multi-component programme design, integrating mass media saturation with intensive community mobilisation.

The campaign's high visibility was driven by award-winning Public Service Announcements, radio spots, and print advertisements, produced pro bono by the advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather. These advertisements conveyed the simple message that anyone can intervene and make a difference. The PSAs were aired on all major television channels, achieving an initial reach of over 130 million people across the country.

Mobile video vans travelled through key states, including Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh. These vans served as mobile public education platforms, employing engaging formats such as emcees, street theatre groups, interactive gender bender games, and audio-visual appeals to engage the public in dialogue about domestic violence, a topic traditionally shunned in public discourse.

The vans actively promoted critical helpline numbers, 103 and 1298, providing a direct pathway to seeking help. In four districts of Karnataka alone, these video van activities were reported to have reached over 5.5 million people. This combination of mass media exposure and deep community engagement, supported by celebrity endorsement and Champion Voices, tried to ensure that the message resonated widely and translated into actionable behaviour.

The campaign has been thoroughly evaluated and monitored, establishing its efficacy through rigorous tools and techniques. The most compelling evidence of the campaign's success lies in its measurable impact on social norms.

In a pre- and post-test evaluation, with 1,204 respondents at baseline and 1,590 at endline, a decline was observed in the deeply ingrained belief that an abused wife should remain silent. This metric dropped sharply from 15.8 percent at baseline to 5.7 percent at endline, a reduction of nearly two-thirds. This represents a profound behavioural shift and demonstrates the campaign's ability to successfully break the cultural wall of privacy surrounding domestic violence.

The campaign successfully addressed the critical gap between legal protection and public awareness. By embedding information about the PWDVA within its messaging, the campaign facilitated a 49% increase in the number of people aware of the legislation. This transformation turned the PWDVA from an obscure, largely unimplemented structural resource into an accessible tool for citizens and survivors.

The success of Bell Bajao in India established a global blueprint for social norm interventions, leading to its international expansion. On March 8, 2013, Breakthrough launched Ring the Bell, anchored by the One Million Men, One Million Promises campaign. This represented a fundamental strategic shift from an operational model of broadcasting to one of constituency-building. The global launch mobilised influencers from business, government, and media, leading to over 160,000 men worldwide making commitments to speak up against violence, advocate for institutional safety policies, and spread the message that violence against women is unacceptable.

In India, on the other hand, for decades, if we look at popular Indian cinema often reinforced the very trauma that women lived through, showing the wife as a self-sacrificing victim. But the contemporary cinema tried to show a different picture. Movies like Darlings and Thappad showed women standing up for themselves against domestic violence, which was normalised by their families in movies like Thappad.

The Bell Bajao campaign still stands as a foundational model for large-scale, culturally attuned social change interventions. By providing a simple, actionable blueprint for intervention, the campaign transformed millions of passive citizens into potential allies.

Yet a critical question emerges: Why have brands and government not launched another large-scale campaign of Bell Bajao's magnitude in the years since? The statistics by 2025 remain dire: 32%  lifetime prevalence, 24% experiencing violence in the last year alone. The numbers have not improved dramatically enough to suggest the problem has been solved or that sustained intervention is no longer necessary.

The absence of comparable large-scale campaigns raises uncomfortable possibilities. Has society become complacent, believing that the work of one successful campaign is sufficient? Have we, as a society with increasing economic privilege and access to resources, developed a selective blindness to an issue that continues to devastate millions of lives? Or has domestic violence been quietly deprioritised, relegated back to the margins of public discourse despite the persistent data showing its prevalence?