TOO many lies have been told about my life. I cannot read or write, so others have chosen to do so for me. This book ismade up of my words—my truth about myself, Phoolan Devi, born in the heart of Uttar Pradesh, central India," she says in I, Phoolan Devi, The Autobiography of India's Bandit Queen.
The record, then, is set straight. Or is it? That most controversial episode—Behmai—remains disappointingly unilluminated.
The book is important for other reasons. Simply written but rich in detail, it forgoes objectivity and succeeds far better than Mala Sen's journalistic endeavour in drawing the reader into Phoolan's life. We witness, and understand, the transition from victim to outlaw. Her brutalities, however outrageous they appear in isolation, flow inevitably from remembered brutalities. Phoolan recalls in stark, ugly detail her marriage, at 11, to a sadistic 35-year-old widower. He raped her repeatedly, even threatening to slit her with a knife to make intercourse easier. So, when she has him at her mercy, she aims her crop at his crotch, at the 'serpent' which had 'beaten' a defenceless child. Later, another rapist has his 'serpent' cut off. Compelling stuff, but all the more anticlimactic in its treatment of Behmai for that.
Phoolan's mother, Moola, is central to the story. She comes across initially as a cold, bitter, unloving martinet in contrast to the gentle, affectionate father, Devidin. Later, Moola's strength, her reserves of controlled anger and defiance, are mirrored in Phoolan: "I was like my mother, there was too much anger in me." In Vickram the Mallah, she encounters her first strong man, who protects and even kills for her. From him, she derives the power to make her persecutors grovel.
Several details here are inconsistent with Mala Sen's account, on which Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen was based. Sen graphically described repeated rapes by dacoit Baboo Gujjar after he abducted Phoolan. According to Phoolan, although Baboo lusted after her, "he hadn't been able to rape me. I was the last woman he saw and the only one he hadn't been able to possess."
After Vickram was shot, Sen says he convalesced in bustling Kanpur, where Phoolan also saw her first movie. Phoolan describes, instead, an idyllic interlude in Nepal. Her 'marriage' to Man Singh, which Sen recounts, never happened. Phoolan claims he was a brother and devoted lieutenant, never a lover or co-gangleader. There are other differences: Vickram marries her before they, consen-sually, become lovers. She doesn't become his mistress out of fear of being killed, as Sen quotes her as saying. Nor does she ever do chores like cook for the gang. She denies having had a fling with her cousin, Kailash. Her husband, Puttilal, did not buy her as Sen alleges—he was paid dowry. To be fair to Sen, there seems to be a fair amount of wishful thinking in her tale.
This book has another focus. Upper-caste oppression is incredibly barbaric; her revenge is proportionately savage and the repentance of her persecutors, when she appears as queen of the ravines, suitably abject. The objective, transparently, is as much to build up Phoolan as to indict caste. Take, for instance, the (this time friendly) serpent which protects and guides her. The association of snakes with saints comes irresistably to mind, especially given the deification of Phoolan in parts of central India. She loses herself in self-admiration: "The demon struck me with lighting and I became lightning for others. "