Phoolan Devi – Bandit Queen, Prisoner and MP

A year into Phoolan Devi’s life of banditry, loyally by the side of Vikram Mallah, disaster struck. Two returning members of the gang killed Mallah. Some say this was due to his actions in killing their leader, who was in fact of a higher caste than him, which the returning members thought was despicable; some say the police had hired these men to capture Devi. Either way, the dramatic series of events to follow shaped the way in which Devi would be captured in the public imagination for the rest of her life.

The two men took Devi to a remote village nearby called Behmai, tied her up and locked her in a small room. Over a period of a week or so Devi was beaten, raped by a succession of upper-caste Thakur men and even paraded around the village naked. To me this all indicates a malicious attempt by these men to assert their caste and subsequent power over Devi and her association with the death of their Thakur gang leader. Thankfully, Devi eventually escaped and quickly found another dacoit gang, again becoming the lover of their leader, Man Singh. Once again, Singh seemed very much to care about Devi and in a similar way to Mallah, allowed Devi to work with his gang to bring retribution upon her torturers. The gang disguised themselves as police officers, as dacoits often did, and returned to the village of Behmai. I don’t know how much of this story has been sensationalised, but these are the events which planted Devi’s name firmly in banditry and as an enemy of the upper-castes. In the centre of the village, Devi demanded the men who had accosted her to make themselves known. When no one came forward Devi gave the signal and her gang entered the homes of the people of Behmai and dragged around 20 high caste men to the river. There they were made to kneel and all were shot. The BBC news described this as “one of the largest gang massacres in modern Indian history.” This certainly sounds like sensationalism, especially considering how rife banditry was in this area – killings of high caste people by dacoits could not have been uncommon. Perhaps this was because the movement was spearheaded by a women of low-caste, a shocking thing indeed to rural Indian society. Regardless, from this fierce act of aggression Phoolan Devi became forevermore The Bandit Queen.

Thus ensued a long police manhunt for Devi. She skillfully evaded capture for 2 years and became a heroine to the lower-caste villagers, who called her Dasyu Sundar, or Beautiful Bandit. These were arduous years for the gang, constantly on the move and never sure when their next meal would be. According to Devi most days they walked around 25 miles! During this time Devi became injured and had to enter a village in disguise to find medical help. Despite her efforts the man who helped her recognised her, but assisted her anyway – the love of her supporters evidently ran deep. But, after 2 years of constantly fighting just to stay alive, Devi and her gang were exhausted and she made the decision to give herself up. It was a highly orchestrated affair, involving a number of stipulations outlined by herself. This is how effectively she had managed to outwit the police; after all the crimes she had committed they still had to offer her compensations for her surrender. She absolutely refused to meet with the authorities from where she grew up as she had no trust for them – who can blame her. She made sure her waning gang members would be protected, that none of them could be hanged or imprisoned for longer than 8 years. She also wanted land for her family; as we recall, her childhood arrest had been due to trying to get her impoverished family more land to work on and she clearly had never forgotten them. In February 1983 she gave herself up in Bhind, Madhya Pradesh in front of the Chief Minister and around 8000 supporters. She was determined to the last to make her opinion of the system of authority in India known and laid down her weapons in front of portraits of Gandhi and the Goddess Durga, rather than physically surrendering to the Chief Minister. Thus, to calls of support from a huge crowd, The Bandit Queen gave up banditry once and for all.

Her personality emerges in accounts of her life during the time of her surrender as it would really have been the first contact she had with anyone likely to be recorded. Mala Sen described her as wildly fluctuating just before her surrender and after, when she visited her in prison. She was hysterical, distracted, sometimes friendly and all of sudden becoming angry and aggressive. Sen presents this in a sympathetic view, as I’m sure most would after having learnt of her life story. She has also been called egotistical, short-tempered, mistrusting, a front I believe one would have to assume to thrive in the dacoit world, especially as a woman. Further, the policeman who negotiated Devi’s surrender with her, who gained her trust and who remained by her side (by Devi’s request) through the whole process of surrender, was depicted by Sen as being genuinely fond of Devi and her wild nature. It would seem there were some in power that understood the injustice of her life.

Devi ended up serving 11 years in prison, never actually being tried. During this time she was given an involuntary and unnecessary hysterectomy for ovarian cysts, the doctor reportedly claiming he wanted to prevent her producing any children that could end up like her. Once more her body was violated by a male in a power. It is easy to see why she mistrusted authority. For her the lines between those living outside the law and those supposed to be working from within it were blurred; she didn’t believe anyone to have the right to judge her after the local police let her down so spectacularly as a child. Once she was released she ran for a seat in parliament on the Samajwadi (socialist) party to fight for women’s rights and lower caste interests.

She had a lot of support from the people she championed and undoubtedly raised interesting debates with other MPs.The sad thing is, as you can see from the 2 blog posts I have written about her, the information available on Devi is overwhelmingly emphasised on her time as a dacoit. It is important, undeniably, but the most amazing incident in her life I believe is her becoming an MP. We know what she stood for and what she wanted to change, yet her actual tangible achievements during this period of her life seem scarce. Whether it is because she was more of a figurehead and didn’t achieve much I do not know. Perhaps the media, which has not been much of a friend to women over the years, chose to only focus on the negative aspects of life as she was challenging the system which the media perpetrates. Her becoming an MP may not have served their purpose as well as her murdering and looting, or in fact her assassination.

Phoolan Devi was killed in 2001 by a gunshot to the head outside her home for upper-caste revenge. She was a force to be reckoned with who took command of her own life, not a small feat in the society into which she was born, and it was quite an extraordinary life to say the least.

Phoolan Devi – The Beginning

I first learnt of Phoolan Devi after having read a book by Mala Sen called “Death by Fire”. This book is about a case of sati, or widow burning, which happened in Northern India in 1987. I was studying for my Masters degree in South Asian history at this time and had spent what felt like the longest hours of my life pouring over academic journals with nothing but tea and a supportive housemate to keep my eyes open. Sen’s book was so captivating I immediately became enraptured by her prose; so much so that I ended up writing my dissertation on the sati she wrote about. Having finished my Masters (PHEW!!!!) I decided to check out her other publications and came across her book on Phoolan Devi. It was equally spellbinding and after I sadly turned the final page, I researched Devi and where her life had taken her. Her story is one of such hardship, horror and yet incredible strength and vitality of spirit I feel compelled to talk about her to anyone who will listen to me. This is my attempt to briefly depict her life that led her from a small impoverished village, to the ravines of the Chambal Valley, to prison and finally into politics.

Phoolan Devi was born in rural Uttar Pradesh in August 1963. The 4th of 6 children in a family belonging to the mallah caste (a lower caste of boatmen), they had little. At the age of 11 Devi’s father negotiated an arranged marriage for her with a man three times her age. Although child marriage had been made illegal for Hindus by British Colonial rule in 1929, these western placed laws failed to impact in the far-reaching areas of rural India. Like so many traditions that the British made illegal in an attempt to ‘better’ Indian society, they continued regardless. So, Devi entered married life with her husband. This was not a happy life; she was treated like a servant and raped. The remainder of this stage of her life in the village is complex and stories vary from book to book. She certainly escaped the household of her husband and was forced to return after he had married a second wife. Discrepancies arise as to whether her father was angered by her escape or felt terrible having to make her return. Either way, Devi is depicted as a young girl refusing to accept the life that she was given. She was passionate and fierce before even legally an adult, although one could argue that her life experiences forced her to grow up quickly.

Her refusal to give in to the role that rural India tried to place her in can seem, to the twenty-first century western writer, an indomitable act of feminism – Devi single handedly fighting for the rights of women in India to choose the life they want to lead. It is easy to place Devi’s life within this context – it certainly serves my purpose well for her to be a feminist. However, at this stage she was purely fighting for self-preservation. Initially it seemed she had made life worse for herself as her family began to turn against her for the dishonour she had brought them. After getting involved in a family dispute over some land she believed belonged to her poor father, one of her cousins had her jailed for ‘theft’ in order to keep her at bay. There she was subject to further abuse as the police raped her, but she didn’t remain there long – she was kidnapped by a gang of dacoits (bandits) from the neighbouring ravines of the Chambal Valley. Banditry was rife in this very poor area as men ran away to the ravines to form gangs of dacoits and rob wealthy villages and travellers. So this was the point at which Devi entered the world in which she would become know at the Bandit Queen.

The leader of the gang at that point intended to drag Devi around as his sexual slave, molesting her as soon as they reached the ravines. She was physically abused and molested in front of the gang for days before one of the dacoits, Vikram Mallah, had had enough. After asking their leader to desist a handful of times, Mallah went full throttle and shot him. He then became leader of the gang and he and Devi began a relationship together. The two seemed genuinely to care for one-another; Mallah perhaps recognised Devi’s fierce spirit in the face of her uncountable hardships and Devi, no doubt, was overwhelmed to find a man fighting for her quality of life. He allowed the gang to return to her village where she dragged her husband from his house and stabbed him. Mallah’s sense of right and wrong was clear and he cared enough for Devi to allow her her revenge. There followed a year of kidnappings, murders and ransacking of upper caste homes. They almost seem like a South Asian version of Robin Hood and his merry men! Devi appears to have fitted very easily into this life, such was her formidable character. Finally having found a man who respected her and a life in which she could exact revenge upon the upper castes that had made her life so incredibly dire, this was arguably the happiest year of her life to date. But things were to fall apart suddenly and irreversibly.

To be continued…