Devi, Phoolan

▪ 2002

      Indian bandit and politician (b. Aug. 10, 1963, Uttar Pradesh state, India—d. July 25, 2001, New Delhi, India), was the notorious “Bandit Queen” who became legendary for both her acts of revenge on those who had abused her and her Robin Hood-like activities to aid the lower castes. After being imprisoned, however, she became a member of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, where she continued as a champion of the poor and oppressed. Devi's life story was a mixture of fact and legend, beginning with her arranged marriage at age 11 to a man three times her age. A year later, having been brutalized by him, she returned home, an act her family considered disgraceful. By the time she was in her early 20s, she had joined (or been kidnapped into) a gang of dacoits (bandits), been sexually assaulted numerous times—once by upper-caste landowners, Thakurs, in the village of Behmai—and left barren, and become the mistress of a dacoit leader. On Feb. 14, 1981, Devi led a notorious act of revenge known as the Saint Valentine's Day massacre; some 20 of Behmai's Thakurs were rounded up and shot in retribution for her gang rape. This act intensified both her status in modern folklore and the police search for her. In 1983, in poor health and exhausted by the struggle to stay hidden, Devi negotiated her surrender to avoid a death sentence. Although she agreed to 8 years' imprisonment, she ended up being jailed for 11 years, without trial, and gained release only through the efforts of the lower-caste chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. In 1994, shortly before her release, she was the subject of the Bollywood film Bandit Queen. In 1996, Devi took advantage of her cult status and, as a member of the Samajwadi Party, won election to Parliament. She lost her seat two years later but regained it in 1999. Devi was killed when masked assassins opened fire on her outside her home.

▪ 1996

      After her release from prison in 1994, India's folk hero Phoolan Devi abandoned her life of crime, married, and converted to a form of Buddhism. In June 1995 she launched a new political party for the lower castes, Eklavya Manch, and opened the prospect of a new career in politics. But the news reported in the West was the release (over Devi's objections) of Bandit Queen, a movie based on her life. To Westerners its plot—including rape, murder, and retribution—was characteristic of high Hollywood style.

      Devi was born in 1957, the second daughter of a low-caste illiterate farmer. At the age of 11, she was sold by her hapless father into marriage for the price of a bicycle and a cow. Ill, much abused, and humiliated, she soon returned home. As an errant married woman, she was shunned by the villagers, but she could not seem to stay out of trouble. Picked up on trumped-up charges and further humiliated by the police, she was eventually returned to her husband. Ultimately, at the age of 20, she was abandoned. Shortly thereafter she was kidnapped by one of the many dacoit (armed bandit) gangs that roamed the ravines of Uttar Pradesh's Chambal River valley. The episode took an unexpected turn when Devi became one of them, finding herself more at home in the company of bandits than she had ever been elsewhere.

      She became the mistress of Vikram Mallah, one of the gang's leaders, and learned to defend herself. After a year, however, Mallah was treacherously killed by a former friend, who also had Devi captured. She was held for several weeks in a hut in the village of Behmai and nightly was raped and humiliated by several men of the high Thakur caste. When she escaped, she was taken in by another gang, and her notoriety grew. After participating in robberies and ambushes (and badly beating her abusive first husband), Devi had become both one of India's most wanted criminals and a heroine of the oppressed, who called her Dasyu Sundari ("Beautiful Bandit"). She underlined her defiance by her involvement in the Feb. 14, 1981, shooting of 22 Thakur men of Behmai, all but two of whom died. She and her gang taunted the authorities, evading capture for two years. Finally, after negotiating terms, she surrendered on Feb. 12, 1983, in a dramatic ceremony witnessed by thousands of her admirers.

      While imprisoned for 11 years in Gwalior Central Jail in Madhya Pradesh, she was befriended by Mala Sen, who wrote her story in India's Bandit Queen (1991), the basis of 1995's most-talked-about foreign movie release.

      (KATHLEEN KUIPER)

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