Feministory: Phoolan Devi, "The Bandit Queen of India"



The least-disputed facts are these: Devi was born in 1963 in Northern India to a lower-caste family. She was married at 11 to a man in his 30s, but was abandoned by her husband and birth family as a teen when the marriage fell apart. Over the next several years she was assaulted unremittingly; for her caste, for her gender, for her marital status. By the time she was 20, she was living a life of dacoity, leading a group of bandits (hence her colloquial name "The Bandit Queen of India"), and evading capture. In the movie dramatization of her life, it is a brutal scene of gang rape that leads to Devi's slaughter of 22 men, a real-life crime for which she was charged, imprisoned, and eventually murdered. After being released from prison (and just after the release of Bandit Queen, the movie), Devi sought and won a seat in Parliament. In 2001, at the age of thirty-seven, Devi was shot repeatedly at point-blank range as she approached her front door, where she died. Apart from this information, though, very little is known for sure.


Devi on the day of her surrender, 1981 (age 18)

That's an enormous part of Devi's celebrity. She was illiterate for her entire life; hence any writing about her was dictated at best. Arundhati Roy's scathing indictment of Bandit Queen's filmmakers ran under the name "The Great Indian Rape Trick" in 1994, and is an incredibly passionate, detailed account of the ways Devi's caste and educational background were used as vehicles to exploit her and sell her story. Perhaps most notably, Roy's essay was instrumental in the creation of a judgment in India that states the rape of a still-living woman cannot be depicted in any form without her permission.

This permission, of course, did not exist when Bandit Queen was made. The movie (and book) goes into horrifying, graphic detail in a scene where Devi is captured by a gang leader and raped and beaten by he and his followers for days. That Devi was raped is not in question. She did not speak often about her assault, but referred to the movie's depiction as akin to "being raped again." Keep in mind: she was BANNED from the movie's premiere. Millions of people were granted access to a fictionalized account of her life, and particularly a series of rapes she survived, but she was not. Nor was she, according to Roy, consulted in any way during the film's conception, filming, or marketing.

There is no shortage of cultural capital lent to Phoolan Devi and her complicated history, even today. The most problematic aspect of her situation to me is that the drama of the story has obscured her treatment (in death as well as life) as a real person. Her murder has still not resulted in prison time for the men who confessed. Two survivors of the Valentine's Day Massacre for which she was imprisoned for 11 years corroborate her claims to have been absent that day, but she has never been officially cleared. In fact, every article I've encountered (with the exception of Roy's) was written as though she were definitively guilty. Of course, it's possible she WAS guilty. But the issue is that there is very little concerted effort to find out for sure.


As a Parliamentarian, she fought for women's rights, an end to child marriage, and the rights of India's poor. In a Che Guevara-type revision of history, though, Devi is remembered as a romantic Robin Hood figure, robbing the rich to help the poor, and not as a politician working to enact structural change in India's social hierarchies.

History itself is a version of what happened. Every account is a narrative. For a woman who couldn't read or write AND who spent most of her life engaged in criminal activity or imprisoned for it (and the rest a child or a politician), facts are easily, perhaps inevitably, sensationalized. Everyone wants to know a definitive version, THE definitive version, but there is none. Devi was murdered in the midst of, and because of, this ambiguity. There are still questions to be asked and answered. There is accountability to be established, and there is above all a life to be remembered. Devi was a remarkable woman who led a remarkable life, and her story (in its multiple incarnations) deserves to be told.

by Katie Presley
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3 Comments Have Been Posted

Growing up in India, Phoolan

Growing up in India, Phoolan Devi was one of my heroines. She was one of the few rebel-role-models available to young (rebellious) girls like me. At the same time, her life was something I could not imagine. I was so proud when she won her Parliamentary seat, and I wept when she was killed.

The Hindu festival of Navrathri is coming up, the nine nights of the Goddess Durga, when nine forms of the Goddess are worshiped. Every Navrathri I honor not only the deities, but the women who inspire me. Every year I honor Phoolan Devi. We may never know who Phoolan Devi truly was, or what her life was truly like...but I know what she was to me.

I remember trying to explain

I remember trying to explain ten years ago to a video store owner in Minnesota why he shouldn't have her movie in his store. He was confused and affronted even though I tried to explain to him calmly and rationally the history of the movie and her life. He even became angry so I just left the store. It is time her story was told.

What an amazing story! Thank

What an amazing story! Thank you for sharing this with me. I had before never heard of Phoolan Devi, but her story needs to be told.

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