Phoolan Devi (Goddess of Flowers) was only born in 1963 in Utter Pardesh in a small village on the banks of Yamuna river. The village was Gohra Ka Purwa. She was born to a very poor family whose income came from fishing. But all that changed pretty soon into her early twenties and by her mid twenties she became one of the most famous outlaws in Indian history.

Why? What happened?

Early Life

Well, it is well known that she was beginning to show defiance as early as the age of ten when she organised sit-ins on some land that her father had been swindled out of. For this she received many beatings.

Like many girls of lower casts Phoolan Devi was married at the age of 12. Women of lower casts were and to some extent still seen as just objects for bearing children and not much else. Her husband was a widower who was in his 30s. Her marriage was never a healthy or happy one. She suffered much abuse as well as rape. However, she escaped this by running away and returning to Gohra Ka Purwa.

In lower caste Indian society this is seen as a taboo if not a sin indeed. As a result her family refused to accept her deed and expelled her. She then went on to become an out caste travelling from village to village.

Held in custody

In the meantime she continues to fight for the land that her father lost. She even takes legal proceedings in Court. Her case is heard in Allahabad. But later she is arrested on trumped up charges of burglary and theft. It is at this stage that her rebellious streak is given air.

It is believed that she spends about a month in jail but is repeatedly abused and raped by police. But that is nothing new as lower caste women were often arrested expressly for that purpose.

She becomes an outlaw

Upon release she is again kidnapped; only this time it worked in an odd sort of way. One of the gang of kidnappers shoots the leader of the gang hired to kidnap her. After being tortured and beaten for two days the leader (Babu Gujar) is shot by Vikram Mallah who then goes onto take command of the gang. He also makes Phoolan Devi his own personal lover.

It is at this stage she learns to live outside the law. It is here that she experiences her first taste of power. She is suddenly in a position of strength even though it is outside of the law. It also has to borne in mind that she, being from a low caste family, probably only knew of the unfair advantages that the higher castes held over the poor. Rape is often a weapon used by the rich and powerful against the poor in a society which is caste ridden. In an Indian society honour is everything. She becomes a decoit, an outlaw. She learns to shoot and becomes very good with the rifle. Gradually through time she began to have influence over Vikram Mallah. He listened to her and she wisely reminded him that he too was from a lower caste background.

Through time Mallah and Devi conduct various raids and attacks on upper caste homesteads and property. Interestingly, like Robin Hood, they dished out some of the loot to the poor in the local villages. The only difference being Robin Hood was a ficticious character and she being very much real. As time went on the gang became quite notorious and powerful. They became known for their raids in UP and Madhya Pardesh.

Vikram Mallah dies

In 1980 two brothers Sri and Lala Ram were released from jail. These two unsavoury characters had been members of Babu Gujars gang. They had developed a hatred for Mallah and were now looking to establish their own gang but in order to do that they had to fight it out with Mallah and Devi’s gang. They managed to ambush them and in that fight Mallah was killed. Phoolan Devi was once again kidnapped. She is held in a village called Behmai although she is not aware of this at the time.

She is raped repeatedly by the members of the Ram brothers’ gang. She is raped until she is left unconscious. It is also known that she was stripped naked and forced to get water from the village well. In her eyes that is the ultimate degradation; something that would come back and haunt the residents of Behmai. She is raped each night for a fortnight until she is rescued by a Pandit from a nearby village.

Retribution in Behmai

It is thought that a couple of years later her and her gang returned to Behmai and took terrible revenge on the villagers and some of the Ram brothers’ gang. However, that was by misfortune of the villagers because Phoolan Devi was not aware she was in Behmai until she recognised two of the men who had raped her whilst being held there. The villager did not inform her where the Ram brothers could be found. The men folk from the village were lined up and shot. It is known that 22 men died that day with a further eight wounded. This was the biggest ever known massacre in modern India’s outlaw history.

The Bandit Queen gives up

In front of a very large crowd, some say as many as 12,000 people, Phoolan Devi gave up. She was by this time tired of life on the run and her gang was depleted; illnesses and violent death being the major cause. Peace activists and journalists from around the globe helped her. She had some conditions to her surrender, one being that a portraite of Mahatma Ghandi and one of Durga Devi too be present at her surrender. Her father’s land was also to be returned to him as well as no further persecution of her gang members was to be enforced other than they serve eight years in jail. She herself served eleven years in jail. She was pardoned in 1994.

She entered Indian Politics in 1996.

She was murdered on 25 July 2001 in New Delhi.





Sources

Books
I, Phoolan Devi: The Autobiography of India's Bandit Queen.

Indian Prisoners and Detainees: Phoolan Devi, Binayak Sen, Subhas Chandra Bose, Sanjay Dutt, Raghuraj Pratap Singh, Shiney Ahuja, Gopal Godse

Internet links

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/160166/Phoolan-Devi#tab=active~checked%2Citems~checked&title=Phoolan%20Devi%20--%20Britannica%20Online%20Encyclopedia


http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/phoolan_devi/index.html


and  other links on this page

http://people.virginia.edu/~pm9k/gifs/ZoForth/Pholan/phoolan.html

Also some Wiki reading.