Phoolan Devi
༻✧INTRODUCTION✧༺
The year is 1974. Phoolan Devi is wearing a ceremonial sari. Her hands and feet are intricately painted with mehndi body art. Beside her, sits her groom. A 34-year-old man named Puttilal. But this day is far from a happy one. Her eyes are red and swollen from the tears she shed overnight. She can’t shake the feeling that this arranged marriage serves as a punishment for her outspokenness. For daring to use her sharp tongue. She was supposed to be obedient. Seen, not heard. But that was not Phoolan. That would never be Phoolan.
Phoolan was the girl who hurled stones at her uncle when he threatened to cut down her beloved neem tree. Phoolan was the girl who screamed insults at abusive older men, loud enough to wake the whole community. Phoolan was a fighter. But no matter how strong she was, she was only a girl. And girls in rural India were simply commodities. They were goods to be traded or sold, their fates determined by their fathers, uncles, and brothers. And so, at the tender age of eleven, her father decided to marry her off to a man in exchange for a cow and a bicycle.
Phoolan’s childhood years are stolen from her as she is abused day in and out by Puttilal. She learns quickly that this world was unkind and unjust to girls, especially those that belonged to a low caste, like her. She continued to fight. She continued to speak out, but her words fell on deaf ears. She was too small. Too young. She was just a little girl. “No” was as useless as a whisper in a storm. Phoolan tries to escape, but Puttilal’s family intervenes every time by locking her in a room until her husband returns to have his way with her. But one day, Phoolan decides she has had enough. She fights back as he tries to force himself on her by grabbing a knife and swinging it at him. She screams out as she slices his forehead and runs out of the house into the night. Phoolan eventually makes it back to her home village where her parents still live, but it is anything but a warm reunion. Her father is ashamed that Phoolan would run away from her husband and bring disgrace to their family. Her parents give her the silent treatment. The other village girls have also been told not to engage with her, as she is now considered defiled and a cautionary tale for other young girls.
Phoolan is shunned to the streets.
༻✧DACOITS✧༺
Dacoits, or gangs or bandits, date back to 18th century India, and belong to lower caste members of society. Areas that had the most dacoits were in the Chambal region. The Chambal region is also home to Phoolan’s village in Uttar Pradesh. Dacoits are primarily involved in looting, kidnappings, and abductions. The arms, food, and money they steal along the way, are then distributed amongst themselves. At age 20, Phoolan found herself part of a dacoit.
Side note: In Phoolan’s Autobiography she doesn’t specify how she became part of the gang. The media tends to be split in that some sources say she willingly went with them because she wanted to be with the group, while other sources say it was a violent kidnapping and she was forced to come with them.
Either way, life in the bandit group was not without its challenges. Immediately the gang’s leader, Babu Gujjar, with the help of his crew, rape her. She tries to escape but is unsuccessful. After three days of this horror, Vikram Mallah, the gang’s second in command happens to come across the scene and without hesitation kills Babu Gujjar and his crew.
Vikram is anointed the new leader of the gang and soon, a romance blossoms between him and Phoolan. Together, they embark on a Bonnie and Clyde journey, where they loot and terrorize wealthy villages and members of the upper caste. Vikram teaches her to keep a firm grip on her blade and to use it without any hesitation. He tells her, “If you are going to kill, kill twenty, not just one. For if you kill twenty, your fame will spread; if you kill only one, they will hang you as a murderess.” But right now, Phoolan wanted revenge on one man and one man only.
༻✧REVENGE✧༺
Putilal.
Phoolan convinces the gang to help her take revenge on her husband whom she is still under the law, married to. They return to the village where Phoolan’s childhood had been stolen and she wastes no time dragging Putilal out of the house and stripping him naked. He is now remarried and does not recognize Phoolan. He thinks they are there to loot him and tells them he cannot offer them anything valuable as he is only a low caste member. She stands above him, less than five feet tall. Her disheveled hair is tied back with her famous red bandana. Her former frightened child’s face is now grown, dull and heartless. And that is when Putilal finally recognizes her. He pleads and asks her for mercy, but she does not care. He never showed her mercy, so why should she show him? While the other gang members hold him down, she slices his belly open, and he screams so loud the other villagers watch in horror. Phoolan wants him to suffer, so the gang leaves him on the side of the road, bleeding, but still alive. As she exits the village, she warns that “any man that marries a little girl, I’ll kill him.”
Phoolan had taken her revenge. She was satisfied. Until tragedy struck again. You see, the caste system mattered more to other members of the gang than others. Especially for the Singh brothers who belonged to the Rajput upper caste. They felt disrespected and did not want to take orders from Vikram, a man of the lower Mallah caste, the same caste as Phoolan. They also resented him for killing Babu Gujjar and sought to shift the balance of power by recruiting more Rajputs. Vikram Mallah knows about this and senses chaos about to ensue, so he tries to settle it a civil way, by offering to divide the group into two. The brothers refuse and quickly a gunfight erupts. This fight ends with everyone turning against Vikram and Phoolan and they are forced to flee. But Vikram doesn’t make it far before being torn apart by bullets and Phoolan is kidnapped.
༻✧THE BEHMAI MASSACRE ✧༺
Phoolan is taken to the Rajput majority, Behmai village. She is in a house and beaten and raped by elite Rajput members called, Thakurs. For the following three weeks, she is tortured and paraded around the village naked. When she is finally rescued in the dead of the night, by Mallah members of Vikram’s old group, she vows revenge on the Rajputs and forms her own gang.
After fully recovering her strength, Phoolan Devi and her gang decide to head to Behmai with the specific purpose of seeking revenge against the orchestraters of her rape, the Singh brothers. For the very first time in her life, Phoolan was in control now. On February 14, 1981, they disguise themselves as police officers and crash a wedding ceremony. During the event, Phoolan and her gang demand that the guests, who are predominantly villagers, reveal the whereabouts of the Rajput brothers. She also promises she will not hurt any woman or child, she only wants to see the Singh brothers. But unfortunately, the brothers are not present at the ceremony, and nobody knows where they are.
But Phoolan wasn’t going to just give up and leave. She gathered twenty-two Thakur men, some of whom were among her rapists and lines them up near a well before ordering them to kneel. Once she raises her hand, her gang unleashes a burst of gunfire, killing all 22 men. This event, known infamously as the Behmai massacre, triggers widespread outrage across India. The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh resigns in response, and a massive police manhunt is initiated to capture Phoolan.
For two years, Phoolan successfully evades police. She is know widely known throughout India and has become a heroic outlaw for the lower castes. But life on the run was not easy, and one by one her gang members were being shot by police or murdered by rival gangs. Her health begins to dertiorate and so she negotiates the terms of her surrender.
1. None of her gang members will get the death penalty and their prison sentence will not exceed eight years.
2. She needs a plot of land with a house and protection for her mother and siblings.
3. She wants her entire family at her surrender ceremony.
4. She will surrender before the portraits of and the Hindu goddess Durga.
The police agree to all her requests and in February 1983, she surrenders in front of hundreds of people gathered to catch glimpse of the Bandit Queen. After laying down her weapons, she turns to the crowd and raises a fist as high as she can and the crowd cheers.
To the poor and brutalized women in the crowd, she is a hero.
༻✧LIFE DURING PRISON✧༺
But even though Phoolan Devi is known in the media today as a feminist hero, the media back then was as not kind to her. Journalists wrote about her in demeaning and belittling ways, one saying, “The gradually built up myth that has grown about a woman defending her honor is as fake as the tales of her sensational looks, the impression of her as an original, innovative, wildly daring and fearsome victor in life is nothing but a cover-up, more likely than not, for a neurotic, highly strung, evil tempered, and foul mouthed victim of life, a casualty whose life has been made more bleak by the clout and celebrity her offences have brought her.” This same journalist also goes on to write, “…it is impossible to believe that this, sad, wasted creature was capable of a large-scale butchery, countless kidnapping, and deliberate instances of cold-blooded murder.”
For some reason, this journalist, along with numerous others, predominantly male, struggled to comprehend why a woman, subjected to relentless torture by men and affluent members of society, chose to resist and fight back. It prompts us to ponder whether they would have extended their support if she were a man.
To capitalize on her popularity, several misrepresented versions of her story were created. This included the movie, The Bandit Queen, which made the filmmakers a lot of money. The film also won several national and international awards. But Phoolan did not approve of the movie, nor did she give the filmmakers permission to tell her story. She hated the representation of her rape which she had expressly prohibited. And so, Phoolan took the filmmakers to court where the judge ruled in her favor and ordered a ban on the movie. Feeling threatened, the upper caste Brahmin director, Shekhar Kapur, continued to sell his movie with false sensationalization. He claimed that it was banned by the Indian state for its sensitive content, not because Phoolan had taken them to court. And the rest of the world bought this story.
It was clear that despite achieving fame and wealth, she would continue to face mistreatment from privileged members of society. While in jail, the police were trying to erase her presence in society, leaving her confined in prison without any trial. For eleven years Phoolan lived behind bars where she continued to be mistreated. After being diagnosed with ovarian cysts, a hysterectomy is quickly ordered against her will. The surgeon’s words are: “We don't want Phoolan Devi giving us more Phoolan Devi.” In 1994, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, the leader of the Mallah community orders that all charges against Phoolan are dropped.
Finally, she is free and a new chapter in her life can begin.
༻✧LIFE AFTER PRISON✧༺
She marries a career politician named Ummed Singh and officially converts to Buddhism to escape the hierarchal barriers of the Hindu caste system. The challenges she faced throughout her sentence, led Phoolan to feel even more strongly about politics. After an intense election season, she is voted in as a Member of Parliament. She finally has the power and a voice to fight for young girls without the use of a rifle or dagger.
In 2001, a small car rolls up to Phoolan’s home in Delhi. Inside the car are three-armed masked men. Phoolan Devi is leaving her home to attend a meeting and spots the car. Her heart drops as she knows instantly who they are. Even after all these years, the men want revenge for the Behmai massacre. The hit takes place in the blink of an eye. Her bodyguard, Balinder, tries to stop them and returns fire, but the assassins’ bullets tear through Phoolan seamlessly.
She is rushed to the hospital, but it is too late. Phoolan is pronounced dead on arrival.
