Bandit Queen: Cinematic representation of social banditry in India

Abstract

Its long history and destabilising impact notwithstanding, banditry has received scant academic attention in India. Confined mostly to occasional and incident-driven media reportage, the socioeconomic factors that fuelled insurgencies and banditry and the milieu which provided a context for the operations of these outlawed movements received little attention. Cinematic representation of the social banditry phenomenon in the country, based on little or no first-hand research, as a result, suffered from ingenuousness and failed to emerge from the romanticised depiction of insurgency and terrorism which Bollywood, India's movie industry, is known for. Bandit Queen, the biopic of Phoolan Devi, in contrast, stands apart. Scathing criticisms regarding its use of sex as a tool for commercial success notwithstanding, the movie succeeds in drawing the viewers' attention to the persisting social cleavages in India. Using rape as its central theme, it shocks its audience into acknowledging the reality and relevance of social banditry in a country where governance remains an absent entity for a vast majority of its people. That most Bollywood movies depicting social issues have continued to remain aground in romanticism and irrelevance makes Bandit Queen even more relevant in times to come.

Keywords::

• social banditry
• India
• Phoolan Devi
• insurgency
• Bandit Queen

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. The thugs ‘were a fraternity of ritual stranglers who preyed upon travellers along the highways of nineteenth century India’. See Wagner, Thuggee, 1.

^2. Hobsbawm, Bandits, 20.

^3. It is, however, possible for some movements to display characteristics of banditry as well as insurgency. For example, in Colombia, the peasant-based rebel insurgency, which has continued for over half a century, demonstrates both bandit and Marxist characteristics.

^4. Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits, 242.

^5. Hamnett, Roots of Insurgency, 65.

^6. Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits, 242.

^7. Hobsbawm, Bandits, 64.

^8. Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits, 244.

^9. Ghosh, ‘The Subaltern at the Edge of the Popular’, 463–464.

^10. According to Arquilla, ‘such gangs exist because the attraction of easy access to wealth and emotional release through violence have an appeal that goes well beyond the poor and dispossessed’. See Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits, 245.

^11. Weaver, ‘India's Bandit Queen’.

^12. ‘Phoolan Devi Murder Case: Sher Singh Rana Sentenced to Life Imprisonment’, IBN Live, 14 August 2014, http://ibnlive.in.com/news/phoolan-devi-murder-case-sher-singh-rana-sentenced-to-life-imprisonment/492123-37-64.html (accessed on 29 December 2014).

^13. Entitled India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi, the book explores Phoolan's life from her childhood till her surrender. Sen died at the age of 63 in 2011.

^14. Mala Sen, Telegraph (London), 30 May 2011, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/8546445/Mala-Sen.html (accessed on 20 January 2015).

^15. Under the procedure, a rejection by the censor board's examining committee can be challenged by the filmmakers with a revising committee of the board, then with an Appellate Tribunal, and thereafter with the courts. See Kapoor, ‘A New Lease of Life for Bandit Queen’.

^16. Jain, ‘The Truth on Trial’.

^17. Kapur, ‘Is Bandit Queen My Best Movie?’

^18. Quoted in Kishwar, ‘The Bandit Queen’, 36.

^19. Kapur, ‘Is Bandit Queen My Best Movie?’

^20. Dahlburg, ‘“The Bandit Queen” Still an Outcast in India’.

^21. Singh, ‘With Malice Towards One and All’

^22. Kapoor, ‘A New Lease of Life for Bandit Queen’.

^23. Dahlburg, ‘“The Bandit Queen” Still an Outcast in India’.

^24. Weaver, ‘India's Bandit Queen’.

^25. Jain, ‘The Truth on Trial’.

^26. Ibid.

^27. Roy, ‘The Great Indian Rape-Trick I’.

^28. Ibid.

^29. Gabriel, ‘Reading Rape’, 153.

^30. Ibid., 159.

^31. Ibid., 158.

^32. Kishwar, ‘The Bandit Queen’, 36.

^33. Ibid., 34–35.

^34. Ibid. p. 37.

^35. Roy, ‘The Great Indian Rape-Trick I’.

^36. Jain, ‘The Truth on Trial’.

^37. Ibid.

^38. Masih, ‘An Actress Remembers’.

^39. Hobsbawm, Bandits, 34.

^40. Devi, Cuny, and Rambali, I, Phoolan Devi, 221.

^41. Blok, ‘The Peasant and the Brigand’, 496.

^42. Devi, Cuny, and Rambali, I, Phoolan Devi, 319.

^43. Ibid. 502.

^44. Arquilla, Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits, 248.

^45. Quoted in Wagner, Thuggee, 4.

^46. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, 25–26.

^47. Devi, Cuny, and Rambali, The Bandit Queen of India, 396.

^48. Ibid., 398.

^49. Bhattacharya, ‘The Curse of Chambal’.

^50. Wilson, ‘UP Cops Kill India's Most Wanted Bandit’.

^51. Chakraborty, ‘Grenades Get Chambal's Last Bandit King’.

^52. Ibid.

^53. Ibid.