Phoolan Devi: Divine Dacoit

On the day she was mourned, all were out on the streets,
to grieve or just bid her adieu…
The passing of a legend, the new Goddess Shakti,
the beautiful and bold Bandit Queen.

- R. W. Fullilove [1]

Phoolan Devi, India’s Bandit Queen, was not born into royalty or deity, but into the lowest caste of India in the village of Gorha Purwa in Uttar Pradesh. Not only was she part of a very poor family, but she was also female in Indian society. These two factors, poverty and gender, seemingly destined her to a life as an outlaw, an idealistic warrior for the demoralized and downtrodden and, finally, a legend.

Director Shekhar Kapur attempted to explore these aspects of Phoolan Devi’s life in his 1994 film, Bandit Queen. However, his efforts proved woefully ham-fisted, mean-spirited, and lurid. Moreover, he missed an opportunity to reveal through Phoolan’s story the mistreatment and subjugation of rural, low caste women in India. As Amy Laly notes in her review, he created a film that is “essentially a never-ending sequence of rapes and the mindless violence of a one-dimensional Rambo-lina on a righteous rampage.”[2] Not only is Bandit Queen a bloodbath replete with gratuitously violent rape scenes, it is also factually inaccurate and leaves the audience wondering who Phoolan Devi really was. Combine that with the controversies the film garnered – which included Phoolan’s legal challenge to have it banned and the Indian government’s objection to its explicit sex, language, and nudity – and Kapur only produced a self-indulging mire when he created his own version of the Bandit Queen.

While considering Kapur’s motivation in making this film, it is interesting to note that he did not see a reason to consult with Phoolan, insomuch that he stated that “he did not feel the need to meet Phoolan Devi after he embarked on the film because that would interfere with his ‘conception’ of Phoolan Devi,” according to film reviewer Madhu Kishwar.[3] Without at least speaking with Phoolan, Kapur was free to conjure his own version of the Bandit Queen, which resulted in portraying her as a hardcore, ruthless killer set out to avenge every man who raped her or was at least present while she was being raped. He claims that the film is based on The Goddess of Flowers, the diaries Phoolan Devi dictated while she was in prison, but he apparently selected with prejudice the parts of Phoolan he wanted and reinvented the rest as needed. As Arundhati Roy explains, according to “Shekhar Kapur's film, every landmark - every decision, every turning-point in Phoolan Devi's life, starting with how she became a dacoit in the first place, has to do with having been raped, or avenging rape. He has just blundered through her life like a Rape-diviner.”[4]

Rather than a rape-diviner, though, Kapur sees himself as a man getting in touch with his feminine side through the Bandit Queen. Addressing how he shot the excruciatingly long gang rape scene – which lasts for almost three minutes on the screen – Kapur writes this on his blog:

“I merely locked myself in a room and tried to imagine what being raped was [like]. I went into myself and realized that the body, the mind and the soul must escape the body to escape the utterly humiliating and defiling act … When I was filming I kept throwing up because I was recalling the emotions that I was experiencing imagining myself being raped.”[5]

Truly, the revolting scene evokes the need for gastrointestinal cleansing (not to mention the need to take a shower) as Phoolan is repeatedly smashed, smacked, punched, and hideously violated by man after man who enter her barn-like cell. They reduce her to less than an animal and, even after this torture, she is forced to draw water from the village well, stripped bare and morally destroyed, while men watch and jeer.

Before the film gets to this nasty scene, 11-year-old Phoolan is traded by her parents to a man for a rusty old bike and a starving cow. The child bride is subsequently raped by her 33-year-old husband in a dark and seedy scene described by Laly as “disingenuous.” It’s her first rape, one of many to come. Unwilling to live in his household, Phoolan runs back home, where she is not easily received. She has “taken her life into her own hands. Now she’ll be blown like a leaf,” her father says. She’s not really as light as a leaf blowing in the wind, though, as Kapur continues with his heavy-handed depiction of her.

The story jumps forward to Phoolan as a teenager, apparent fodder for the higher caste Thakur boys. “She must be itching for a fuck,” they say as she passes by. When she fights off the headman’s son, he accuses her of trying to trap him, shouting, “She’s like a bitch in heat. Break her bones.” She’s beaten in the village streets and forced to leave Behmai by a tribunal that rules she is “bad for our boys.” Rapes number two and three occur when Phoolan is arrested for returning to the village and the police brutalize her in jail.

After that, the violent sex seems to connect scene to scene. Phoolan is kidnapped by evil bandit Babu Gujar who rapes her again and again, until Gujar’s next-in-command, Vikram, kills him while Gujar openly defiles her. Phoolan and Vikram become lovers, although, at this point, one wonders how she could ever willingly allow a man to touch her. The agonizing gang rape arrives next at the hand of another evil bandit Sri Ram, but not before she retaliates for her first rape by beating with wrathful conviction the ever-loving crap out of her husband. That vengeance is carried forward when she returns to Behmai with her gang of dacoits on February 14, 1981 to avenge herself again by murdering 22 men in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. By this time in the film, the raping is over, but more blood is shed until Phoolan finally surrenders after a lengthy flight from authorities.

Kapur begins the film with this quote from Manu Smriti, a book of Hindu religious scripture: “Animals, drums, illiterates, low castes, and women are worthy of being beaten.” Instead of producing a film that disputes this belief, Kapur actually reinforces it. Because he has convinced himself that his film embodies the “unadulterated truth”,[6] then the merits of his art and talent cannot be argued. “If it were a work of fiction,” notes Roy, “if the film-makers had taken the risk that every fiction writer takes, and told a story, then we could begin to discuss the film…[i]ts artistic merit, its performances, its editing, the conviction behind its social comment.”[7]

Folklore and historical accounts alike tell us that Phoolan Devi “had a larger-than-life image,”[8] “the subject of great fame and notoriety throughout India…a popular cult figure, a vigilante liberator and a symbol of empowerment for the lower-castes of Bihar,”[9] who eventually was elected to the Indian Parliament as a representative for lower caste constituents. But one cannot see that Phoolan Devi in Kapur’s film. Furthermore, her association with Hindu deity, her fight for the return of family land, and her admiration of Mohandas Gandhi are all lost because in “the film there is very little else to Phoolan’s life except rape and beatings,” as Kishwar notes.[10] Indeed, by the film’s end, one is left feeling beaten up and downright sore.

Notes

[1] Fullilove, R. W., The Ballad of the Bandit Queen, composed September 30, 2001
[2] Laly, Amy, Bandit Queen Film Review, Planet Bollywood, http://www.planetbollywood.com/Film/banditQn.html , originally published in International Examiner, Seattle, Washington

[3] Kishwar, Madhu, The Film Bandit review, Manushi, September-October 1994, no. 84, pp. 34-37
[4] Roy, Arundhati, The Great Indian Rape Trick I, August 22, 1994, http://www.sawnet.org/books/writing/roy_bq1.html
[5] Kapur, Shekhar, The Gang Rape Scene in Bandit Queen, Shekhar Kapur’s Blog, August 1, 2006, http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/my_files/bandit_queen/

[6] Ibid

[7] Roy, Arundhati, The Great Indian Rape Trick II, September 3, 1994, http://www.sawnet.org/books/writing/roy_bq1.html
[8] Tripathi, Purnima S., The end of Phoolan Devi, Frontline, India’s National Magazine, Vol. 18, Issue 16, August 4 – 17, 2001, http://www.flonnet.com/fl1816/18161180.htm
[9] Aujla, Angela, Caste as woman: izzat and larai in Northern India, The Peak, Simon Frasier University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Volume 96, Issue 9, June 30, 1197, http://www.rediff.com/search/2001/Jul/25ter2.htm
[10] Kishwar, Madhu, The Film Bandit review, Manushi, September-October 1994, no. 84, pp. 34-37

References

Bruno, Anthony, Phoolan Devi – the Bandit Queen of India, The Crime Library, http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/cops_others/phoolan_devi/index.html

Fullilove, R. W., The Ballad of the Bandit Queen, composed September 30, 2001

Kapur, Shekhar, The Gang Rape Scene in Bandit Queen, Shekhar Kapur’s Blog, August 1, 2006, http://www.shekharkapur.com/blog/archives/my_films/bandit_queen/

Kishwar, Madhu, The Film Bandit review, Manushi, September-October 1994, no. 84, pp. 34-37

Laly, Amy, Bandit Queen Film Review, Planet Bollywood, http://www.planetbollywood.com/Film/banditQn.html , originally published in International Examiner, Seattle, Washington

McAlister, Linda Lopez, Bandit Queen, a film review on "The Women's Show"
WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL, July 22, 1995

Pinch, William R., The Bandit Queen, The American Historical Review, Vol. 101, No. 4 (Oct., 1996), pp. 1149-1150

Roy, Arundhati, The Great Indian Rape Trick I, August 22, 1994, http://www.sawnet.org/books/writing/roy_bq1.html

Roy, Arundhati, The Great Indian Rape Trick II, September 3, 1994, http://www.sawnet.org/books/writing/roy_bq2.html

A Country Full of Dead People

In an interview with PBS’s Frontline, Philip Gourevitch, author of We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda, says that what is
“so astonishing when one comes to this now…is...how thoroughly [the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis by Hutus] was scripted, how thoroughly it was announced, how thoroughly it was a genocide foretold, how thoroughly the signs were on the surface. They were on the radio. They were in the newspapers. You could buy them at any street corner. You could hear them at any rally. You didn't have to go looking. This was not a top secret program that was coming forward. It was something that was really quite conspicuously announced.”[1]

The Rwandans knew the plan was in the air. The west was warned months ahead. Therefore, in hindsight, any mindful student of the global community, such as author Philip Gourevitch, can only ask in earnest, “How could the massacre of 800,000 people in 100 days occur” when their killings were forewarned and broadcast not only in Rwanda, but in other parts of the world as well? On average, 8,000 people were literally slaughtered per day from April until June 1994. As BBC correspondent Fergal Keane notes during his interview with Frontline, those numbers essentially meant nothing to those of us who heard them on the radio on the way to work or read them in our newspapers over coffee. They are too big to comprehend. He admits that before he visited a church in Nyarubuye in eastern Rwanda, he didn’t really understand the meaning of massacre. Like most of us, all he knew about massacre was what he read in books.

Gourevitch begins his book with his 1995 visit to that church in Nyarubaye. There he stepped into a classroom where at least 50 “mostly decomposed cadavers covered the floor, wadded in clothing, their belongings strewn about and smashed. Macheted skulls had rolled here and there.” Keane, who visited the same place the year before said of the massacre, “Books don’t smell. Books don’t rot. Books don’t lie in stagnant pools. Books don’t leach into the earth the way those bodies did.”[2]

Through this shocking scene at Nyarubaye, Gourevitch begins his recording and explanation of the historical events that led to and culminated with (if one believes in timelines) the 100-plus days of inexplicable carnage, which includes a history of civil segregation that dates back to tribal rivalries exploited by European colonization. Indeed, western arrogance and domination, whether accepted in the collective consciousness in the twenty-first century or not, should extol a high price for its contribution to this event. Diplomats have apologized and expressed regret for their inactivity and all-but-apparent apathy during Rwanda’s hell on Earth, and have promised to never allow humanity to permit without action another loss as such. These sentiments have been expressed in modern history after the Holocaust, Bosnia, Somalia, and soon-to-be final words for Darfur and, perhaps, Kenya - yet one can hear the unanswered silent appeal during the scene in Hotel Rwanda when Don Cheadle, as Paul Ruseabagina, and his loath and defiant hotel employee, Gregoire, played by Tony Kgoroge, drive into Kigali proper for supplies, and return to the Hotel Mille Collines along the unexpectedly rugged road of slaughtered human bodies, strewn as far as the eye can see.

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The title of Gourevitch’s book serves to explain the circular reasoning of the events in Rwanda in the spring and summer of 1994. We wish to inform you reveals the facts that were presented to worldwide powers. In hindsight, it’s easy to see that certain communiqués, as revealed by Gourevitch, might have given bureaucrats the fuel they needed to plea and insist upon a humanitarian effort to prevent the widespread death of Tutsis by Hutus in this small, central African nation. At the same time, the letter that begins with “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families” displays the reserved plea, the silent scream that journalist Keane describes after the authors of this letter were actually murdered at the “safe haven” church in Nyarubaye. Keane has found that during the immediate aftermath “Rwanda was a country in pain, but wasn’t screaming. Silence, that’s what I remember most. Silence, just this endless screaming silence.”[3]

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The confusion of the those in the world that piqued their ears about this event is carried on in this statement: "It is impossible to show what really happened," according to Kenyatta Nkusi-Kabera, who lost family members in 1994. "Nobody could watch what really happened. Their eyes would be closed."[4] Philip Gourevitch, through his book and his interviews, wants to open the eyes of the world. He wants an understanding of the past – of the separation between Hutu and Tutsi and of their present existence together as Rwandans – which brings their history to the here and now so much so that their past must be excused but at the same time “written in their blood.”[5]

[1] Frontline: The Triumph of Evil, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil
[2] Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil
[3] Frontline: , http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil
[4] Lacey, Marc, At real “Hotel Rwanda” invisible scars linger, February 28, 2005, http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/27/news/hotel.php
[5] Gourevitch, Philip, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, p. 48-49.

Healthcare isn't for whimps

As Zinat uses a knife to perform a tracheotomy on a young girl unable to breathe, her husband looks away. Not only did he want to leave the girl on her death bed – “A child’s death is not for watching,” he says. “You know if something happens to her what a disaster [it] will be? If she dies…she’ll destroy our family” – but he also displays a degree of faintheartedness as his wife uses her training as a health visitor to save the girl’s life. Here is the climax of Zinat, Ebrahim Mokhtari’s film about a young Iranian woman caught between the expectation for her to be a traditional wife to Hamad and her sense of obligation to continue providing healthcare for the people of the seaside village where they live. She is needed by her neighbors whether or not she is a wife and, fortunately, after this scene, Hamad recognizes her importance as a health care provider to the village. He is ready to support her work.

In the closing scene, as Hamad jumps on the truck carrying Zinat and her young patient, his disapproving mother stands in the road watching them drive away. Hamad has decided to defy the laws of tradition so that his wife may continue to take care of the village’s health. The union between Zinat and Hamad in this film could foretell a future in which Iran will release certain prejudicial thoughts and allow women and men to work together to improve their communities – in this example, to provide adequate healthcare, especially for women and children. Unfortunately in this film, it is still up to Hamad to make Zinat’s mission realistic. We look for a more sovereign time when Iranian woman can decide on their own – without input from male relatives – to pursue a career in any field.

Zinat Film Review - Bethany Haye

Cannes - May 14, 1994
Critics Week

Ebrahim Mokhtari is one of Iran’s more controversial directors, handling potentially stereotypical subjects with restraint and insight. In Zinat, he deals with several pressing questions at once - health care for Iran’s urban population, the place of women in society and the related issue of utilising the country’s full human potential by allowing women to work. In view of Iran’s stringent Islamic traditions, these issues are now highly politically charged, but Mokhtari has chosen to treat them in human terms.

The issues are explored through the main character, Zinat, a young woman who works in a health center and is about to be married. In fundamentalist Islamic Iran, this implicitly - but absolutely - means she will give up her job to dedicate herself to her husband, his family and eventually to their children.

Zinat is determined to continue working-not so much through desire to build a career as through dedication to her patients and to their overwhelming need for health care and education.

Mokhtari is painfully aware that centuries-old traditions are both the glue holding this society together and the barrier keeping them from benefiting from even the most rudimentary medical advances, such as vaccination for babies, which we see is so new and strange for most people, that many children die of easily preventable diseases because tradition-bound parents refuse it. In her family life, she is in constant and essential opposition to her own family and to her husband because of attitudes and desires that seem incredibly tame to western eyes.

Her husband, who appreciates her sensitivity and intelligence, can’t make the step of recognizing her need to use it constructively. For him, “as long as you (persist), you belong to other people, not to your husband.” That she should and must “belong” to her husband is never questioned, either by him-or by her. It is in these unsaid dictums that the full force of age-old attitudes is felt-there cannot be discussion if the basic premise is silent and invisible.

Zinat’s parents are convinced they are looking after her well-being when they pressure her to conform. Even when her father beats her, it is “for her own good.” Without pointing a finger, or drawing mean or stupid characters, Mokhtari has fashioned a scathing accusation theocratic tyranny-but also of hope and belief in human nature through the courageous and generous character of Zinat.

See Director Ebrahim Mokhtari's web site at http://www.ebrahimmokhtari.com/

Two Sides to Every Story

Director Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now won the 2005 Golden Globe Award for best foreign film and was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film. This controversial film, arriving during highly political times, examines the lives of two young Palestinians who decide they must fulfill their destinies by executing a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv. Their conviction that their cause to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank is justified at any cost, and their hesitancy to act on it without doubt, frame this story of their desire to find righteousness in a world that offers them no solace. We are given the chance to observe terrorists as real people who must deal with their unfortunate situation.

Some have argued that allowing Paradise Now to act as a vehicle for the justification and legitimization of terrorism is injurious and distasteful and petitioned the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science to withdraw its nomination. “By ignoring the film's message and the implications of this message,” states the petition, “those that chose to award this film a prize have become part of the evil chain of terror and accomplices to the next suicide murders.” It is understandable that Israelis who have experienced suicide bombings would find Paradise Now objectionable. To them, Palestinian militants who kill innocent people in acts of self-indulgent terrorism should not be given any voice. Media attention lends great power for political gain.

Conversely, Paradise Now also offers people an opportunity to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict through the eyes of two young Palestinian men, Said and Khaled, who have to live with the consequences of others' political decisions. Like all humans, they want a home. Here we are able to find common ground as we recognize that these men are not necessarily evil terrorists who kill without conscience. As the counter-petition states, Paradise Now is a “story about the suffering of Palestinians and how a life of desperation can lead to an act of desperation.”

There are two sides to every story, as the counter-petition also notes. I believe that Abu-Assad brilliantly reveals that truth in Paradise Now. Said and Khaled are not heroes nor are they demons. As such, there are no easy answers, nor are there any offered in the film. Which is what makes it so compelling, and yet so tragic. Paradise Now does not glorify terrorism. As an art form, it reveals to us without judgment a part of humanity and makes us begin to contemplate an answer.