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NEWS & LETTERS, August-September 2001 On July 25, Phoolan Devi, known the world over as the "Bandit Queen," was brutally gunned down in broad daylight in front of her home in the highest security zone in India's capital, New Delhi. She was only 37. Phoolan Devi struck terror in the hearts of the ruling class. Born into the lowest caste, she was married off at the age of 11 to a man who raped and abused her. She ran away, was brutalized by both bandits and upper-caste men, and eventually rose to become one of the most feared and revered outlaws in India. She was accused of ordering a massacre of 22 men in the village of Behmai, where she was gang-raped and paraded naked. In 1983, she surrendered and was imprisoned for 13 years, though she always denied ordering the massacre. In 1996, with dozens of cases still pending, Phoolan Devi became a Member of Parliament as a representative of the Samajwadi Party, a moderate socialistic party. The police have arrested several men who claim to have killed her in revenge for the massacre in Behmai, but many are skeptical. Some believe her husband, who is now in a bid to take up her political mantle, ordered the hit, while others believe the the murder was motivated by the upcoming assembly elections in the state of Uttar Pradesh. It's clear in any case that the right-wing Bharatiya-Janata-Party-led government did little to provide Phoolan Devi the protection she needed in the face of repeated death threats. Phoolan Devi's legacy goes well beyond the corrupt Indian government. She shook up the caste structure in India and never separated gender from caste and class in her ongoing struggles to transform the conditions that she braved and survived. "I was discovering piece by piece how my world was put together: the power of men, the power of privileged castes, the power of might. I didn't think of what I was doing as rebellion; it was the only means I had of getting justice," she wrote in her autiobiography, I, PHOOLAN DEVI. In her short life, she made an indelible mark on Indian history that will not be forgotten. -Maya Jhansi |
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