How Phoolan Turned into a Bandit Queen

Phoolan Devi, who is also known as the Bandit Queen, was a woman right activist. People might consider her as someone dangerous, or someone needed to be captured. But, for a woman specially for those from the lower caste, she was the incarnation of the Goddess Durga, who took revenge for all the brutalities meted out to lower caste women. On her birth anniversary, let's delve into the snippets from her life, to understand how a young illiterate lower caste girl transformed into a woman who challenged caste and gender prejudices, and all other societal norms. 

First rebellion at the age of 10

Phoolan Devi’s first rebellion came at the age of ten when she confronted her uncle and cousin who had stolen her father’s land by falsifying village land records. She publicly humiliated them, and she then gathered a few village girls and staged a sit-in on the land, and did not budge even when the family elders tried to use force to drag them home. In return, she was beaten unconscious with a brick. 

In retaliation for being humiliated by Phoolan, Maya Din went to the local police and accused Phoolan of stealing from him. The police kept her locked up for three days, physically abused her, and then let her off with a warning.

Forced into marriage

At the age of 11, Phoolan was sold into marriage to a 23 year old widower for a bicycle and a cow. After getting sexually abused by her husband, she decided to fight and refused to be his slave. To control such vocal act of a young bride, her father-in-law locked her for days in a dark shed with rat feces as punishment. After all the torture she went through at her in-laws place, when she returned to her family she was taken as a disgrace. For her family it was better if she was drop dead, or would have jumped in a well or drowned herself in the Jamuna, then returning to her father's home. At the tender age of 12, Phoolan Devi was marked as ruined.

Rape and Revenge:

At the age of 18, she was gang raped by high caste outlaws after the gang she belonged to was assailed by rivals. She was locked up in Behmai, an obscure Thakur town. For two weeks, a group of Thakur guys gang raped Phoolan, multiple times until she lost consciousness.

After all the sexual tortures, Phoolan chose a path of courage and leadership and ended up being a gang leader in her own right and also waited to avenge. Phoolan Devi started as a burglar, but soon transformed into a dacoit. In 1981, Phoolan and her gang returned to the village where she had actually been raped and recognized two men who took part in that gang rape. When they refused to tell the whereabouts of the remaining members, an agitated Phoolan Devi opened fire and killed 22 of them.

It was the biggest bloodbath by a hooligan in India's record, catching the attention of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The upper caste power had actually not just been endangered, it was embarrassed and repelled. While uppers regarded Phoolan as a callous murderer, for countless untouchables, this gun-slinging criminal had become a devi - Phoolan Devi an incarnation of the Goddess Durga.

Her surrender 

The massacre was headline news throughout India. How could a low caste woman go on a high caste male killing spree? The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh resigned in disgrace and the Indira Gandhi government sent the military in search of Phoolan and her gang. After two years they couldn’t find her, but when the government threatened Phoolan’s mother and father, she negotiated a surrender that kept her parents safe and prevented her and her gang members from getting the death penalty. Her life of crime was over.

On a chilly February day in 1983, Phoolan Devi walked out of the forested ravines of the Chambal River valley and handed over her gun. She bowed to images of Gandhi and the goddess Durga and surrendered herself to the Chief Minister and Chief of Police of Madhya Pradesh. The cheering crowd of 8,000 people gathered that day—journalists; politicians; some 300 cops; and others from across the dry, impoverished center of the world’s largest democracy—knew Phoolan Devi as a hero, a bandit, a murderess, and a goddess long before they saw her in the flesh. Phoolan Devi, India’s celebrated Bandit Queen, was not a woman, but a legend.

Hysterectomy

While she was still in jail, Phoolan was rushed to hospital bleeding heavily because of an ovarian cyst. Her womb was removed. When asked why this had been necessary, the prison doctor laughed and said "We don't want her breeding any more Phoolan Devis." The State removed a woman's uterus without asking her, without her knowledge. It decided to control who was allowed to breed and who wasn't.

Election to the parliament

Phoolan stood for election to the 11th Lok Sabha from the Mirzapur constituency in Uttar Pradesh. She contested the election as a member of the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose government had withdrawn all cases against her and summarily released her from prison. 

For low-caste people, her ability to rise to a position of political power, to hold elected office despite the fact that she never learned to read or write, was a dramatic disruption of the structures of political power. It cleared the way for other politicians, most notably Mayawati, a Dalit who became chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, the same state where Phoolan Devi served.

- Smriti Choudhary