PHOOLAN DEVI: THE BANDIT QUEEN
Oppressors in India murder a symbol of resistance
By Sara
Flounders
Phoolan Devi, a militant leader known as the "bandit
queen" and famous as a symbol of the struggle of lower-caste
and oppressed Indians, was assassinated in New Delhi on July
25. She was 44 years old.
India was oppressed as a British colony for hundreds of
years. Winning independence in 1948, capitalist India had a
modest amount of independence maneuvering between the
socialist USSR and U.S. imperialism.
The new U.S.-ruled world order of unrestrained capitalism
has increased the already wide gap between rich and poor
within India, where the caste system provides a deeply
ingrained form of prejudice akin to racism.
This caste system, which Devi fought, is used to justify
extreme discrimination and oppression in every area of social
and economic life.
Leaders of the Samajwadi (Socialist) Party, the party Devi
represented in the Indian Parliament, claim that her
assassination is a political conspiracy of the elite. It
comes at a crucial time when the right-wing nationalist BJP
Party faces a close election against the Samajwadi Party in
the biggest state in India, Uttar Pradesh.
Devi's rallies had been drawing many thousands of angry,
oppressed people.
Phoolan Devi rose from an illiterate peasant girl to an
internationally known bandit to a famous political prisoner
freed by a rising mass movement to a representative in the
national parliament. Her assassination sparked rebellions and
mass demonstrations.
As The Times of India wrote on July 28, "Phoolan Devi was
a phenomenon like no other in Indian politics."
Devi is known in the West through a 1994 movie about her
life called "Bandit Queen." Its graphic portrayal of caste
and sexual violence against women created an uproar in
India.
In India Devi was a legend before the age of 20 as the
leader of a gang of dacoits--robbers who preyed on the rich
upper castes and shared the spoils with the impoverished
lower castes. She made international headlines in 1981 when
she was charged with the biggest murder of upper-caste male
landowners in modern Indian history.
A threat to the social order
As described in the biography "India's Bandit Queen" by
Mala Sen and in the movie "Bandit Queen," Devi's early life
experience was similar to that of millions of Indian
women.
As a girl in a large, impoverished family of the oppressed
"mallah" caste, she was considered only a burden. She was
married off at age 11 to an abusive and brutal man of 33.
She escaped at age 12 and traveled alone, hundreds of
miles, back to her village. But an unattached young woman who
had abandoned her marriage was considered a threat to the
whole social order.
In an isolated village, she was the prey of other powerful
men. Her determination to speak out against the theft of her
father's tiny plot of land and her effort to take the matter
to court earned further attacks.
She wound up in a band of dacoits or bandits, becoming the
gang's leader by the age of 16. Many hundreds of bandit gangs
lived in the treacherous crags and narrow eroded ravines of
rural Uttar Pradesh. Gang life was part of the upheaval in
the decaying feudal social order.
Even the gangs were divided by caste. Some gangs acted as
protectors of the landlord classes and in league with the
police worked for payoffs, like paramilitary gangs in Latin
America. Others gangs of poor and landless rebels offered a
kind of protection for the peasants who were abused by the
corrupt and higher caste police.
Not that the gangs were revolutionary guerrillas. Their
struggle was not aimed at overturning the social order or
even at organizing the masses to demand their rights. But
they represented class hatred and outrage at the injustice of
a rotting, caste-ridden, class society.
A symbol of resistance
Phoolan Devi became famous. Newspapers across India wrote
tirelessly of her exploits.
A Phoolan Devi doll with a bandoleer of bullets strapped
across her chest and a red bandana was one of the
hottest-selling toys in India.
In 1980 she was captured. Her lover was killed. She was
turned over to the upper-caste men of the village of Behmai.
There she was held and gang raped for weeks.
She was almost dead when friends smuggled her out of the
village.
After her escape she reorganized a gang and allegedly
returned a year later for revenge. Twenty-two men of the
elite Thakur caste were gunned down.
The act sent shock waves through the elite of India. Many
Indian politicians and business owners belong to this
caste.
The state launched the biggest dragnet ever conducted.
Thousands of police were assigned to the case. For three
years Phoolan Devi eluded capture.
Press coverage was intense. There was enormous political
pressure for her capture.
The killings were considered an outrageous act for a woman
and especially a woman of such a low caste.
Surrender on her own terms,
then betrayal
Finally Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered that if
Phoolan Devi couldn't be captured, surrender on her own terms
could be arranged. In February of 1983, with most of her gang
dead and her health failing, she surrendered.
The agreed terms were that her family be given a plot of
land, that she not be hanged, and that she and the rest of
the gang serve eight years in prison, then all charges be
dropped.
Her surrender became the occasion of a mass outpouring of
tens of thousands of cheering peasant supporters. Emaciated,
standing only 4 feet 9 inches tall, she stepped before the
crowd carrying her rifle and wearing a bandoleer of bullets
over her shoulder and a red bandana on her forehead.
Her picture was on front pages worldwide.
Once she was in prison, the government reneged on all
deals. For 11 years she languished until an upsurge in the
mass movement in Uttar Pradesh in 1994 forced her
release.
Devi was a symbol of resistance. Her election to the
national Parliament was an assertion of the rising mass
movement. Although still illiterate, she became an astute
political leader.
But the old propertied classes hated everything she stood
for. In an effort to wear her down, for the next seven years
they continued to heap over 70 criminal indictments against
her, including murder charges.
Phoolan Devi faced constant death threats. She traveled
with security. In the month before her death the ruling
right-wing BJP had ordered the security cut back. She then
applied for a license to carry a gun but was refused,
supposedly due to her criminal record.
Phoolan Devi said it was her early anger and outrage at
the endless acts of submission demanded of poor, low-caste
women that fueled her rebellion. Millions of rural poor
rallied to Phoolan Devi because she had taken the law and the
gun into her own hands and gained revenge for acts of
horrendous brutality.
Her struggle revealed the real conditions of life for tens
of millions of poor women. The capitalist market in India and
the pressure of corporate globalization has intensified
poverty, feudal caste oppression and class antagonism. The
assassination of Phoolan Devi will only heighten this growing
anger.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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