Let me begin with a childhood memory. A family trip to see the Taj Mahal. A time when Taj Mahal was famous (only) as the eternal monument of love. The train journey cut across the Chambal ravines. I and my brother were informed about the stories of dacoits or dakus. Our imagination was fuelled by the train robbery scene in the movie Sholay which we had seen many times. Both of us watched with excitement as the train entered the Chambal ravines, expecting a horde of dakus to follow our train. Chambal ravine was the place which led to the birth of Phoolan Devi aka the female Robinhood of the Chambal. Sher Singh Rana, her assassin talked about how he remembered the killings she did in Behmai. She remembered how she was kept as a captive in the village and she took revenge on her attackers. In Kerala, political parties remember the crimes committed against them and take revenge after many years. The religious majority in Amritsar never forgot Operation Blue Star and that memory killed the first woman PM of India. The ethnic majority in the Eastern Province never forgot IPKF and this memory led to the killing of a PM few kilometres from where I live today. Phoolan Devi was a heroine to India’s outcasts, the subject of movies, books, comics. She even became an elected MP. Her crime was to defy an ancient system. She reminds me of the Afghan girl who killed two Taliban militants when they attacked her parents. Phoolan Devi was worried about the way women were treated in India. She told her interviewer that the women are treated as ‘secondary citizens’. She was illiterate but she was able to recollect her life and convert it into a 2000-page typescript. Lest we forget her - The Bandit Queen - Phoolan Devi was born today.
References:
1. The Bandit Queen of India: An Indian Woman's Amazing Journey from Peasant to International Legend - Book by Marie-Thérèse Cuny, Paul Rambali, and Phoolan Devi.
2. Outlaw: India's Bandit Queen and Me by Roy Moxham.
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