Bandit Queen
Shekar Kapur’s Bandit Queen is according to Priyamvada Gopal (Gopal 73-102) “loosely” based on the real life story of an out law called Phoolan Devi. She was a lower caste woman from central India who underwent a series of travails that are depicted in the Bandit Queen. Phoolan Devi became a gang leader and a popular figure in India who later surrendered herself to the government and went to jail for several crimes she had committed. The film depicting Phoolan’s life brought about many controversies in India; critics have argued whether or not Kapur’s film brings forth the degradation faced by Phoolan or is it yet another exploitative measure? Some have accused the film of being another money making depiction, which further victimizes Phoolan, while others including the director of the film saw it as necessary to shed light on issues surrounding women that are usually ignored (Gopal 73-102). To add to these notions, this essay will discuss the very crucial issues that the film brings up through its characters and imagery by examining the role of authority, and the structural societal power that goes beyond the story of just one woman’s rape to looking at patriarchy system of oppression as whole and its consequences. Leela Fernandes in her article “A Trans/national Feminist Perspective on the Discrepancies of Representation” points out that “the film’s emphasis on rape shifts Phoolan from a legendary figure_ a woman dacoit, both heroic and notorious to the status of a rape victim (Fernandes 141). This claim comes from a valid point considering even Phoolan herself accused the film of making rape her entire story. Both Gopal’s and Leela’s article talk about the idea of depicting rape and charge Bandit Queen of “raping” Phoolan Devi once again; that by depicting it in such a graphic manner, that in fact the film makers and us as an audience have participated in exploiting her all over again. However, if this were not depicted, it would have become the kind of rape that people talk about but don’t really see or understand the meaning of sexual violence. Writing Phoolan’s story would not have hit people of realities like showing it did. Even though Phoolan Devi accused the film of putting her in people’s minds only as a rape victim, as a member of the audience and of this generation, Phoolan did not appear as a victim but as a symbol of strength and resilience, as someone who rose against all the atrocities and became somebody despite everything especially in the last scene where she is standing in front of a crowd, which is cheering her. This makes her less of a victim and more of someone challenging society’s oppression. And so, saying that telling her story is actually victimizing her is not entirely true. The film does go back and forth in depicting Phoolan in position of violence and injustice and also in position of power. On one hand, it is undoubtedly problematic to make one woman the marker of so many systems of oppression, violence and graphic imagery. On the other hand, it is also problematic that this happened and not showing it does not change the reality that there are women who are victims of sexual assault and violence as we speak. Therefore, ignoring it does not make it non-existent. The film might not have been fair in telling Phoolan’s story but it does tell the story of not every woman but many women. It brings home the kind of brutality and extent to which women live with violence. There is a lot of power in what it is depicting that seems to be lost in argument of whether or not it exploits.
The film through the story of Phoolan Devi highlights the structures of power, the access to power and the ways in which patriarchy makes complicit women in it. The story starts with Phoolan being married off as an 11 years old (Shekhar). This was not the start of her problems, which made her susceptible to all the atrocities she had to deal with later on but rather, the first blow on her life from an already problematic societal structure. The issue of child marriage is something that the film brings up that is not unique to Phoolan’s story. It may have been the same for many other women including her mother-in-law but she fought back instead of just taking it and laying low with it. Phoolan in her husband’s house was punished for talking back at the mother-in-law. The punishment takes the form of beating her and eventually rapping her while the mother-in-law stood there and did nothing as if she was almost siding with patriarchy. Why is it that a mother figure that is supposed to love and protect a child instead asks for her to be punished? For the first time in her life, she has access to power unlike ever before. Therefore, this goes beyond just being evil to a matter of the structural use of power. The mother-in-law in this instance is in some ways a representation of the mother nation and what patriarchy has brought her to.
Also, the film does a lot with the idea of authority, who gets to exert power and how. Simply being wearing a police uniform or being a Thakur or being a man who has paid dowry, gives the power to commit violence. We see this in the film not just when Phoolan was raped by her husband or harassed and humiliated by Thakurs but also at the scene in the police station (Shekhar). The police are supposed to protect but instead side with the upper caste. The police asking her degrading questions in a blank scene full of darkness where you can only hear the voice gives that voice a very powerful position in the narrative. It is not the voice of a single person but the voice of everyone who has humiliated her_ the voice of society, a voice with immense power. To have this blankness where she is being sexually harassed by those who are supposed to protect her shows the level of dysfunction in the society. The first time she’s rapped was by her husband and the second was by the police_ the state, all of these are legitimate structures of authority and power over her and in positions that should be protective but rather, become these menacing figures.
Further, the film goes beyond telling the story of Phoolan to pulling the blinds on society, its structural powers, the system of patriarchy deeply engraved in it and its consequences. In the scene where Phoolan is asked to walk naked across the village to the well, we see her at one point for a few seconds standing in stack contrast to the white walls of the village around her; Phoolan’s dark skin with blood all over it against the clean walls of the village (Shekhar). This sets up a real contrast between what society is supposed to be and what it actually is and the kind of atrocities and violence it is built on. You see respectable women and their husbands and children standing on top of the white walls looking holy and pure however, through it all, the one jarring image is the wounded body of Phoolan which represents in many ways the violence that goes on behind the white walls of society. This scene on the one hand is Phoolan being humiliated in the village after being brutalized and on the other hand, is shedding light on the ways in which society has so clearly erected white walls_ the idea of being pure when that’s not the case. What is seen on Phoolan’s body is the violence and oppression on which these larger structures of patriarchy, state, society, authority are built on and the price people who do not have the access to these powers have to pay. Another imagery in the film worth paying attention is the figure of the crying baby through out all the great scenes of violence. The child in some ways represents the future of the nation_ India. The crying child who at one point walks across the blood signifies a cry to society to think about the way in which its actions might affect its future and the future of its children who witness these brutalities.
In conclusion, the film certainly does portray Phoolan Devi as a victim of rape and sexual assault but it also shows her fighting against not just rape but many other reasons of injustice. She’s fighting against the caste system, against child marriage and against female oppression. It shows her as a heroic figure, a vigilante who was brutalized in the first place because of her lack of submission to oppression in the patriarchy system. And whether or not the film exploits Phoolan further does not undermine the fact that it does bring to light important social issues and the brutality that women still face today not just in India but in many places around the world that should not be looked over. It is certainly not the story of every woman in India as it is important to not generalize this to be all of India but it does show the realities of countless women and the realities of structural power abuse, patriarchy and oppression so much so that the story is larger than Phoolan Devi.

Work Cited
Gopal, Priyamvada. "Of Vigilante and Vigilantes." "Bandit
Queen"Controversy. 4. (1997-03): 73-102. Print.
Fernandes, Leela. ""India's Bandit Queen":A Trans/national
Feminist Perspective on the Discrepancies of
Representation." 141. Print.
Shekhar, Kapur, dir. "Bandit Queen". 1994. Film. 5 Mar 2014.