For me Phoolan is something special because
while working for the State Bank, my longest posting was at Bhind Branch where
I was Manager of the Personal Banking Division between 1991 and 1995, a period
of 4 years. That was where Phoolan surrendered in 1983 some 8 years before I
joined the branch. I have lots of memories of my tenure at Bhind which are
experiences to remember. I only read of Phoolan after 1982 when I was posted in
MP in the Bank. Hers was a story that nobody could ignore at that time and some
thought her to be a great heroine who gave back esteem to the lower backward
castes.
What was Phoolan? People call her a Bandit
Queen, but to me she always appeared as just another woman who was at the
receiving end of casteism and male chauvinism. She suffered all the more
because she fought against being discriminated. I pitied her for the life she
lived and then died. She was just 37 years old when she was shot and killed and
life never gave her any respite at any point of time. No doubt she gave
sleepless nights to her tormentors as well, but that fact did not help her to
remain happy in life.
She was born in 1963 into the Mallah caste
(Boatmen or fishermen) at a small Village named Ghora Ka Purva in the Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh. Her family
was terribly poor and of course there is no chance for her family to get her educated;
she had 4 sisters and one brother so her parents could hardly give their
children any food let alone think about anything else.
Phoolans father had a brother and he and his
son stole some land belonging to Phoolans father by bribing the land records
office and changing it in their name. Not only have they stolen the land, they
harassed Phoolans family and also stole their crops with an intention to drive
them out of the village and takeover whatever land that was left with them.
Phoolan was a rebel and not one to take things
lying down. When she was just 10 years old, she and her sister Rukmini sat on
the land grabbed by her uncle and ate the crop growing there stating that the
crop belonged to her family. Her uncle ordered her to leave the land but she
refused and was beaten till she lost her consciousness. On top of that the
village leader also ordered that her parents too should be beaten.
Phoolan Devi and her sisters used to look after
their cow and make cakes out of cow dung. After the above events relating to
Phoolan at the age of 11, her parents married her to a man who was 3 times her
age and who offered her parents Rs 100, a cow and a bicycle. It was agreed that
Phoolan would go to live with him after 3 years, but he came and took her away
after 3 months.
She refused the sexual advances of her husband
and fell sick. Her parents went and took
her away from her husband but she then lived with them for some time and in
such a small village leaving the husband is considered a scandalous thing. Phoolan
was sent to stay with a distant relative at another village where she met her
married cousin Kailash who ran errands for the dacoits. Phoolan and Kailash
then had an affair and Kailash’s wife kicked her out and Phoolan went back to
her village.
In her village, the village headman’s son took
a liking to her and when he made sexual advances she did not submit and he attacked
her. Her uncle’s son Mayadin pressurized her family to send Phoolan back to her
husband’s house which they finally did. In the meantime her husband has taken
another wife and that lady ill-treated Phoolan Devi. Finally her husband left
her by the side of River Yamuna. So again she had to come back to her parents.
In 1979 her cousin Mayadin destroyed the crops
standing on their land and was felling a neem tree on their property when
Phoolan threw stones on him which wounded him in the face and the local police
arrested her and detained her for one month. That was when she was just 16
years old. In the police station, the Police beat her up and also sexually
assaulted her.
6 months later a gang of bandits lead by Babu
Gujjar for some reason kidnapped Phoolan from her house. Gujjar raped her
repeatedly which was not liked by Vikram Malla who was the 2nd in
command of the gang. Malla too came from the same community as Phoolan and had
a sympathy towards her plight. He objected to the manner in which she was being
treated, killed Babu Gujjar and became leader of the gang.
He then trained Phoolan in using the rifle and
they fell in love. Phoolans favourite weapon was the Mauser semi-automatic gun.
The group robbed vehicles, looted higher caste villages also using stolen
police uniforms on some occasions. The gang was living in the Chambal ravines
which are made of red sand cut by River Chambal and stood 20-25 feet tall. They
extended for a large terrain and it was impossible for the police to track
anyone in them.
The gang located Phoolan’s husband and punished
him violently. Slowly as Phoolans exploits spread, she became popular with the
lower castes who celebrated her as their Robin Hood. They called her Dasyu
Sundari. Of course from her picture Phoolan was no Sundari, but she had a never
say die temperament and was always a rebel. She was seen as Goddess Durga by
the lower castes.
But this ascendancy of Phoolan did not last. A
year later in 1980 a former leader of the gang Sriram Sigh along with his
brother Lalla Ram Singh were released
from prison. They were Thakurs and when they re-joined the gang, a power
struggle took place and Sri Ram Singh killed Vikram Malla and took control of
the gang.
With that Phoolan lost her security and she
became a prisoner to the Singh brothers. Sri Ram Singh took her to the Village
of Behmai where she was repeatedly raped by many Thakurs. After the rape she
was forced to fetch water for Ram Singh from the village well naked right in
front of the villagers watching.
In 1981 Phoolan managed to escape and met Man
Singh who became her lover. Together they formed a new gang. She returned to Behmai
that year and announced in headphones to the villagers to surrender Ram Singh
and his brother to her. Her gang members went around and looted the house of
Thakurs. When the 2 men were not found, her gang rounded up 22 men thought to
be Thakurs. They were lined up by her gang near the Yamuna and were shot. 2 of
them survived while 20 died.
She was celebrated by the lower castes for
fighting against the higher caste exploitation and when she could not be
captured, her fame grew. The killings made the then Chief Minister of UP, VP
Singh to resign. Later it was known that of the 20 men killed, 17 were Thakurs,
1 Muslim, 1 Dalit and 1 OBC. The later 3 were mistaken for Thakurs and were
killed by her.
The Thakur community were insulted and they pressurized
Indira Gandhi to act against the gang. Phoolan was on the run but could evade
the Police. Her mother was picked up by the Police and was detained in a prison
for 5 months to pressurize Phoolan to give herself up.
Finally, after the surrender of her gang was
negotiated by a Police Officer named Rajendra Chaturvedi, Phoolan surrendered
at Bhind along with her gang members in 1983 to the Chief Minister of MP Arjun
Singh with 8000 people watching.
Among her surrender terms were; no death penalty to any member of her gang, no
handcuffs to the gang members, maximum custodial sentence of 8 years to her
gang members, being imprisoned as a group and being imprisoned in Madhya
Pradesh and not in Uttar Pradesh. If the government has agreed to all those conditions
to imprison her, that means they merely failed to catch her and were desperate
for her surrender.
Of course, it was very difficult to catch her
because all the people from the lower castes saw her as their heroine and helped
her whenever required. She was seen by them as a tool to oppose higher caste
domination.
Phoolan Devi faced 48 criminal charges and her
gang was imprisoned at Gwalior where I worked between the years 1985 to 1988 starting
2 years after her surrender in 1983. I was not aware that she was imprisoned at
Gwalior then, else I could have visited her in jail.
The state reneged on their promise and
imprisoned Phoolan for more than the maximum 8 years that was promised to her
at the time of surrender. She was let out of jail only when the charges against
her were dropped by Mulayam Singh Yadav who was then the CM of UP in 1994.That
means she was in jail for 11 years.
Phoolan then joined the Samajwadi Party, contested
the 1996 Loksabha election on a SP ticket and won with a margin of 37000 from
Mirjapur in UP. She pulled over 300,000 votes in all. She was utterly illiterate, could not speak
well yet people voted for her.
She married Umed Singh in 1994 and the couple
became Buddhists. Later however, Phoolan Devi renounced Buddhism.
The Kanpur district court set aside her exoneration
by Mulayam Singh and the decision of the lower court was upheld by the
Allahabad High Court in 1996. The SC finally ruled that Phoolan need not be
jailed before her trial.
She lost her MP seat to the BJP candidate in the
1998 elections, but again won it back in 1999. At 1.30 PM in July 2001 she was
shot dead by 3 unknown assassins outside her house in Ashoka Road, Delhi when
she was an MP. She was shot 9 times and her bodyguard was hit twice as he
returned fire. Probably the assassins were acting on behalf of the kin of the
Behmai massacred people.
Thus ended the life of Phoolan, but perhaps it
is only fitting that as she lived by the gun, she should also die by the gun. When
a movie was made on her she became internationally famous and became a
legendary figure; an unlettered and utterly poor girl from a small interior
village who was always tormented but who fought back despite the heavy odds she
faced. Her biographies were written by Roy Moxhom, Mala Sen, Richard Shears, Irene
Frain and Dimitri Friedman.
I remember reading about her a narration by one
Indian reporter. He was shocked by her behaviour when he met her and found her
to be extremely foul mouthed. It is said that she first used an abusive word before
she talked about anything. Life had been bitter to her and she could not
suppress that bitterness. Maybe her later tenure as an MP and as a famous
person tempered her a bit, but whoever can lead the life she led and not be
bitter about it.
