Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen is, supposedly, a tribute to
the life and times of Phoolan Devi, an Indian outlaw who left a trail of terror
in the Chambal Valley in central India during the early 1980s. I say
“supposedly” since the film opens with “This is a true story” but then proceeds
to tell a story which doesn’t hold up to external accounts of her life, as
mentioned most notably in Phoolan Devi’s biography India’s Bandit Queen: The
True Story of Phoolan Devi by Mala Sen from which the film is adapted.
The film begins with an adolescent Phoolan, born to a poor
low-caste family, being sold into marriage with a man three times her age in
exchange for a cow and an old bicycle. At her new home, she’s outcast by
higher-caste villagers and treated not unlike a slave around the house. Her
husband beats and rapes his 11-year-old child bride even as his mother listens
in from another room. Eventually, Phoolan runs away and returns to her parents’
home where she’s chastised for leaving her rightful place as a married woman
but is nevertheless allowed to stay.
Unwanted sexual advances continue to be heaped on Phoolan
(Seema Biswas). A few years older now, when she refuses the advances of a group
of young Thakur (high-caste) men, the local governing council banishes her from
her village. An angry Phoolan goes to the police for justice and, in return, is
arrested, beaten and raped while in custody. Thereafter, the village Thakurs
secure her bail by bribing a gang of bandits led by Baba Gujjar to kidnap her.
While on the run as their hostage, she develops a bond with a sympathetic
bandit named Vikram (Nirmal Pandey). This bond soon turns into gratitude and
love when Vikram shoots Gujjar dead after catching him raping Phoolan. Vikram
replaces Gujjar as gang-lead and helps Phoolan exact revenge from her husband.
Soon after, Vikram is killed in a coordinated attack by
Thakur Shri Ram (Govind Namdeo) and Phoolan is abducted, brutally gang-raped by
Thakurs and paraded naked to an entire village. A battered Phoolan takes refuge
with her cousin Kailash (Saurabh Shukla) before deciding to take up banditry in
her own right. She teams up with Man Singh (Manoj Bajpai) to form a new gang
and returns to the village to gun down all
twenty-two Thakur men associated with her earlier attack. Her infamy
grows and she becomes India’s most wanted outlaw. After a protracted run from
the law in the deep ravines of the Chambal region, Phoolan finally surrenders
after negotiating her terms with the police.
In reality, Phoolan’s troubles with the law began on grounds
of family disputes over farming land. Her cousin Mayadin cooked up a story that
landed a young, spirited Phoolan in jail for questioning her relative’s
take-over of her family land¹. He was also instrumental in abetting her kidnap
by a gang of bandits which aided her journey to banditry. Moreover, she was neither
sold into marriage nor raped as many times as depicted in the film. In fact,
the real Phoolan Devi fiercely contested the depiction of her life and
attempted to get the film banned in India. ²
The film depicts banditry in excess but fails to show Phoolan’s
active role in it. Too often, she’s shown only as the meek victim, mostly of
rape by upper-caste men, and rarely as an aggressor or leader. This is a woman
who not only dared to rise above her rank in a deeply patriarchal society but
also went on to command her own army and become an outlaw for 48 counts of
crimes including murder, kidnapping and banditry. Hers was a life made in spite
of, not because of, the tremendous events that marked it. Kapur could have
better applied his artistic license with a more versatile approach to plot and
character. Instead, the film was limited to a one-dimensional plot of sexual
politics amid caste warfare, and Phoolan was reduced to something almost
inhuman after a lifetime of rape and beatings.
SOURCES:
• [1] John
Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders and Bandits: How Masters of Irregular Warfare
Have Shaped Our World (2011), Ivan R Dee, Inc
• [2]
Arundhati Roy, The Great Indian Rape(1994), SAWNET -The South Asian Women’s
NETwork
Seema Biswas gives a haunting portrayal of the vagaries of
Phoolan’s tumultuous life. The final scene of surrender in front of a massive
crowd of supporters saluting and celebrating a low-caste woman brings us
much-needed catharsis for Phoolan’s sake, perhaps more than she feels herself.
However, I couldn’t help but notice the irony of the shabby treatment of the
real Phoolan Devi at the hands of the very people who were attempting to pay
homage to her life. It also made me question whether an artist has any ethical
responsibility to a living subject when telling their story.
At the end of the day, art is that which enlightens by
illuminating the truth. Bandit Queen may not capture the truth of Phoolan
Devi’s life but it does expose a more universal truth of deeply rooted gender
and caste-based discrimination issues in a society that continues to tolerate
them. That’s the film’s greatest achievement. Nowhere is this better
illustrated than the scene where Phoolan is stripped, beaten and paraded to a
crowd of villagers. Men and women avert their children’s eyes but continue to
stare mutely at the ensuing onslaught. Recent events of sexual violence against
women in India only reinforce why movies such as Bandit Queen shouldn’t be
forgotten, even if you can only bring yourself to watching them once.
Richa Rudola
Source : staticmass.net
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