Phoolan Devi: Beyond the Bandit Queen - How Her Hometown Remembers Her
Phoolan Devi died 23 years ago. Like many survivors of sexual assault, reduced to epithets or hashtags, she too was defined by the most heinous incident in her life. But unlike most, she was much more: a bandit in her teens, a convict in her twenties, an MP in her thirties. Besides the multiple narratives binding her life, she told its different versions to different writers. They produced competing profiles across films, articles, and books—each presenting a different Phoolan. But how do the natives of Sheikhpur Gudha remember her: as a survivor, a baaghi, a leader or someone else?
