Many do not know of Phoolan Devi, who was once known as the most feared bandit of India to the point where she was called the “Bandit Queen.” Yet to many, she was also thought as India’s modern Robin Hood because she would only steal and attack the upper-caste and making sure that the lower-caste, women, and children did not suffer under her gang’s hands. One obvious difference between Robin Hood and Phoolan Devi would be that Robin probably never existed and Phoolan did. The story of Phoolan Devi, whose name means ‘goddess of flowers’, is a fascinating one, and one must start from the beginning.
On August 10, 1963, Phoolan Devi was born to a poor lower-caste family, that was from a community where the lower-caste people were called Mallahs. Most Mallahs owned no land and worked for Thakers, a higher-caste of landowners and businessmen. Mallahs often were harassed and abused by Thakurs. Her childhood was barely a childhood as she had to work and be abused at an extremely young age by Thakurs. At eleven years old, a man who was three times her age, asked her parents for Phoolan’s hand in marriage. They agreed as they managed to get a cow out of the trade. As one could imagine, Phoolan was terrified to be married off to a complete stranger and having to leave her family for the unknown. With her husband, all she knew was rape and more abuse. A few years later, her husband abandoned her and sent her back to her village. One would assume that she must have been thrilled to be freed from her tormentor, but the fact is that to be abandoned by a husband was considered shameful and a dishonor. Thus, the woman ends up being treated even worse by the Thakurs.
This is where the second chapter of her life began. In the late 1970’s she was kidnaped by a gang of both Mallahs and Thakurs, sent by Thakurs to remove her from the village for good. The gang leader, Baboo – a Thakur, wanted to rape Phoolan but was unable to because of a Mallah known as Vickram, who took it upon himself to protect Phoolan. One night when Baboo attempted to rape her, his reward was a bullet in his head, sent by Vickram. With Baboo dead, Vickram became the leader of the gang and declared that Phoolan was to not be touched ever again.
Vickram’s gang along with Phoolan traveled from village to village until they reached the village where her husband lived at. They found him and beat him. Phoolan made sure to stab him where he previously stabbed her and led him down the road while naked and bleeding in front of the villagers. Afterwards, they left him laying near death by a road with a note that said, “Warning: this is what happens to old men who marry young girls!” After Phoolan got her revenge, she decided that she would do everything she could to prevent young girls from experiencing what she had to. Vickram taught her how to handle a rifle and to disappear into the ravines whenever needed. They would loot villages and announce themselves through a megaphone: “The rich are the real enemies of the poor! You’ve made life miserable for these poor people, and now we are going to make you pay! I am Vickram Mallah and Phoolan Devi is with me!”
Later on, Shri Ram, a dacoit who was Vickram’s prison friend, got out of prison and claimed the status as the leader of Vickram’s gang. Shri was a Thakur which did not please the men of the gang and nor did it please Phoolan how he would make attempts to be sexual toward her. Vickram managed to make him apologize but the tension would increase as the days passed by and to make matters worse, Shri would beat and insult Mallahs at the villages that they would loot at. Many men began to stand behind Phoolan instead of Vickram or leave the gang altogether, sensing that things were going to end badly. As the Mallahs left the gang, Shri got a dozen fo Thakurs to join. Vickram then suggested that they divide the gang into two but Shri refused. Shortly afterwards Shri and his Thakurs attempted to kill Phoolan and Vickram, they succeeded at shooting Vickram but they managed to escape before the Thakurs got their hands on the two. Unfortunately later on, they successfully killed Vickram and took Phoolan as their slave. Phoolan was repeatedly abused, beaten, and raped by Shri Ram and his men. She was also dragged by rope, naked, from village to village. One night a lower-caste man took pity on her and helped her and two Mallahs from Vickram’s gang, escape into the night.
After Phoolan recovered, she gathered a new gang of Mallah bandits that she led along with a former member of Vickram’s gang, known as Man Singh. They returned to the life of the bandits, looting the rich and giving to the poor. On February 14, 1981, her hang entered an isolated village to loot the Thakurs who were preparing a wedding. Yet once they arrived, Phoolan recognized the village as the home of Shri Ram and the very place where she was humiliated by Shri and his gang. According to many reports, Devi ordered her gang to bring all the Thakur men out of the village and line them up by the riverbank. The bandits opened fire and left twenty-two dead. Phoolan denies that she was responsible for this murdering rampage in her autobiography.
After the murders, the police set out to find Phoolan Devi and her gang. Phoolan and her gang were able to outsmart the police over and over which delighted the poor villagers. After two years, the prime minister Indira Ghandi told law enforcement that if it was impossible to catch Phoolan, they should cut her a deal on her terms for her surrender. In February 1983, with most of her gangs members dead, Devi agreed to surrender on the conditions that she was not to be hanged, that her men would serve no more than eight years in prison, that her brother would be given a government job, that her father would receive a plot of land, and that her entire family would be escorted by the police to her surrender ceremony. There were thousands of peasant supporters at the ceremony, showing their respect for Phoolan Devi.
Phoolan Devi was charged for 48 crimes, including the alleged massacre of the twenty-two men back in 1981. Her trial was delayed for eleven years until a lower-caste political party won election, the new chief minister ordered Devi to be released on bail, saying that she suffered enough. By then, there was already a movie about her, “Bandit Queen” directed by Shekhar Kapur. Phoolan was appalled to find out what was shown in the film and denied the accuracy of the film. She composed an autobiography: “The Bandit Queen of India: An Indian Woman’s Amazing Journey From Peasant to International Legend” with the help of Marie-Therese Cuny and Paul Rambali as she was illiterate. Five months after she got out of jail, she married a New Dehli business contractor and for the first time in over a decade, stopped being a bandit.
Instead of being a bandit, she started to get involved in politics and somehow became a member of the lower house of parliament in 1996. She focused on the rights of the lower-caste men, women, and children. In 1998, Phoolan lost the next round of parliamentary but bounced back to win in 1999. On July 25, 2001, she was shot to death in front of her house in New Dehli. It is said by Sher Singh Rana that the killing was a retribution for the massacre of twenty-two men. However, the police are skeptical of his claims. To this day, it is unknown who killed Phoolan.
Phoolan Devi was loved, feared, and hated by many. There are debates about wether Devi is really the hero that people paint her as. I won’t write about that but I must say that one cannot deny the fact that Devi rose back up again and again despite all the abuse she faced. I believe that many of us would have crumbled after experiencing a quarter of what she did. In the 37 years Phoolan Devi lived, she went through more than thousands of us ever would. I have grown to admire Phoolan simply because of her ability to not accept the rules of the society that she grew up and knew was wrong, no matter how many people tried to hammer the idea that there was simply nothing one could do but accept her or his fate as a lower-caste.
Reference:
- Another St. Valentine’s Day Massacre: www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/phoolan_devi/index.html The End of Phoolan Devi: www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1816/18161180.htm Phoolan Devi links: www.people.virginia.edu/~pm9k/gifs/ZoForth/Pholan/phoolan.html
