PHOOLAN DEVI - A REAL STRUGGLER

By Anthony Bruno

Another St. Valentine's Day Massacre

On February 14, 1981, 18-year-old Phoolan Devi had only one thing on her mind: revenge.   Waiting outside the remote village of Behmai on the Yamuna River in northern India, a band of about 20 dacoits (bandits) waited for her instructions.  The dacoits were from three different gangs, but their goal was the same: to hunt down the treacherous Ram brothers, Sri Ram Singh and Lala Ram Singh.  Sri Ram was a vicious gang leader who had spent time in prison.  He was the focus of Phoolan Devi’s lust for justice because he had murdered her lover, Vikram Mallah, as she slept by his side.

Phoolan Devi wearing bandit gear

 Slight in build but strong and agile, Phoolan wore a military-style khaki jacket, denim jeans, and zippered boots.   Her dark, straight hair was cut short, ending at her neck.  By some accounts, she was wearing lipstick and red nail polish.    A wide red bandana—the symbol of vengeance— was tied around her head, covering her hairline and brows.  She carried a Sten rifle and a bandolier across her chest.  While she mourned for her lover, she did not want to be treated as a woman.  She wanted her comrades to think of her as a man because she wanted the kind of revenge only a man could achieve in India’s caste-bound society. She had told them to call her “Phool,” the masculine version of her given name.
She and her band of dacoits had spent the night in the nearby hamlet of Ingwi.   As morning broke, Phoolan, her close lieutenant Man Singh, and Baba Mustakim, a fellow dacoit leader, planned their attack on Behmai. Most of Behmai’s population was thakurs, the land-owning caste and the second highest in the Indian system.    Sri Ram was a thakur, and though he had once been allied with Phoolan and Vikram, he had always looked down upon them because they were mullahs, the fishermen’s’ caste and one of the lowest.
Though just a teenager, Phoolan Devi had been victimized by the caste system her entire life, treated as either a servant or a sex object.   Because she was so outspoken in her objections to the men who oppressed her, she had been frequently beaten, bound, imprisoned, and raped.  A dacoit gang had kidnapped her from her village, but she soon became one of them, showing that she could be as ruthless and bloodthirsty as any man.  But unlike the other bandits who infested the northern states of India, Phoolan Devi did not steal for her own enrichment.  Like Robin Hood, she stole from the rich and gave to the poor, particularly poor women.  Her inspirations were the Durga, the Hindu goddess of shakti, strength and power, and Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Indian statesman and humanitarian who had fought for equality among all people.
Dacoit gangs have a long history of preying on travelers and looting villages in the northern states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, which borders on Nepal.   The region is characterized by its wild and rugged landscapes—mountains, maze-like ravines, desolate valleys, and uncharted jungles.  To this day, buses travel in armed caravans to fight off likely raids.  Some believe that the bandits who thrive in these states have been driven to criminality by extreme poverty and the inability to overcome the strictures of the caste system.  Others believe that they are just the dregs of society, criminals by nature that, like the Mafia, has learned the benefits of organization.
But Phoolan Devi was unique. She was an idealist who sought to right the wrongs of society.   She was also a passionate woman who had never known love or respect until she met Vikram Mallah.  She swore never to rest until she avenged his murder.   Now, after months of searching for Sri Lam, she had finally found him.
One of her men had learned that he was hiding out in Behmai, and she was determined to capture him there.   She and the other bandit leaders decided to split their force into three units.  One would take the direct path to the village and attack head-on while the other two would lie in wait on the flanks.  When the villagers fled from the frontal attack, the flanking units would intercept them and isolate the Ram brothers.  Sri Ram, after all, would not be hard to spot, Phoolan reasoned.  He had distinctive red hair, a red beard, and bloodshot red eyes.  To her he was the devil incarnate.

The Neem Tree

Phoolan Devi's father Devidin

 Phoolan Devi was born in the village of Gorha Ka Purwa in Uttar Pradesh, the second child in a family of four sisters and a younger brother.  Her father, Devidin, worked as a sharecropper and was considered cursed for having had so many daughters.  Although they were very poor, Phoolan’s family was not the poorest in the village because her father owned about an acre of land and the huge Neem tree that grew on it.

A Neem tree

  In her autobiography, I, Phoolan Devi, she recalls that the Neem tree’s trunk was so large, she and two of her sisters together could barely encircle it with their arms.  The valuable timber that could be derived from the tree was, in effect, the family’s nest egg.  Phoolan came to love that tree for its beauty and majesty and would often rest under its shade.

Phoolan's cousin Mayadin

   Her father should have been richer, but his crafty older brother Bihari had seized his inheritance of 15 acres with the empty promise that he would care for Devidin and his family.   When Bihari died, his estate was left to his oldest son, Phoolan’s cousin Mayadin.  Though just a child at the time, Phoolan distrusted Mayadin.  “He had the face of a lizard: a flat nose with big wide nostrils and lying eyes,” she wrote.  After his father’s funeral, Mayadin went to his uncle Devidin and told him that he was now the elder of the family and would be accorded all the respect that position deserved.  But it wasn’t long before Mayadin showed his true colors.
While Phoolan’s parents were away for a night, Mayadin sent a crew of workers to cut down Devidin’s prized Neem tree and sell the wood, taking the proceeds for himself.   When Devidin returned to find his tree gone, he did not protest.  After living so many years under his brother’s subjugation, he knew the futility of trying to fight back.  Phoolan was stunned and appalled by her father’s passivity.
In Indian society, a woman would never dare challenge a man, no matter how offensive his behavior, but Phoolan Devi was fearless, headstrong, and provocative.   Though only ten years old, she already had a reputation for promiscuity and was known to bathe naked in the river in broad daylight, unconcerned with who might be watching.  She confronted her cousin and demanded that he compensate her father for the Neem tree.  He tried to ignore her, but she taunted him in public, called him a thief, and staged a sit-in on his land with her older sister.  Mayadin finally lost his patience and struck the impertinent girl with a brick, knocking her out cold.
The beating did not silence her.   She continued to harangue Mayadin, demanding justice.  To get rid of the little nuisance, Mayadin arranged to have her married to a man named Putti Lal who lived several hundred miles away.  Putti Lal was in his thirties; Phoolan was eleven.  Her reputation for promiscuity was totally unfounded, and after she was married, she had no idea what was expected of a wife.  Fearing his “snake,” as she called his penis, she refused to have sex with him.  Since he already had another wife, he accepted Phoolan’s refusal and relegated her to household labor.  She was so miserable she ran away from her husband’s house and walked home.  When she arrived in her village, her family was horrified.  A wife simply did not abandon her husband, they believed.  It was unheard of.  Phoolan’s mother, Moola, was so ashamed, she told her daughter to go to the well and jump in to kill herself.  Phoolan was so confused and distraught she contemplated it.
In time, Phoolan recovered her sense of self and rejected her family’s condemnations.   She continued to challenge Mayadin, taking him to court for unlawfully holding land that should have been her father’s.  In court she seldom contained her emotions, and her dramatic outbursts often left the courtroom stunned.
In 1979 Mayadin accused Phoolan of stealing from his house.   She denied the accusation, but the police arrested her anyway.  While in custody, she was beaten and raped repeatedly, then left to rot in a rat-infested cell.  She knew that her cousin was behind this injustice.  The experience broke her body but ignited her hatred for men who routinely denigrated women.
In July of that year a gang of dacoits led by a notorious bandit leader named Babu Gujar set up camp outside Phoolan’s village.   The people of the village naturally feared for their lives and their property.  Babu Gujar was apparently told of Phoolan Devi’s stubborn impertinence because he sent her a letter in which he threatened to kidnap her or cut off her nose, a traditional punishment for women who got out of line.
What happened next is the matter of some debate. Phoolan herself has given conflicting accounts of the event.   The dacoits took her from her village and brought her into the rugged ravines.  As Mary Anne Weaver writes in her article “India’s Bandit Queen,” “Perhaps she had indeed been kidnapped.  Perhaps Mayadin had paid the dacoits to take her away.  Perhaps she was trying to protect her young brother, whom she adored.  Or perhaps she simply walked away...” She was brought to Babu Gujar who “brutalized” her for seventy-two hours.  Gujar’s lieutenant, Vikram Mallah, could no longer stand the young girl’s torment, so he shot and killed the dacoit leader.
Tall and unusually thin with a pale complexion and long black hair, Vikram Mallah admired Phoolan since he first set eyes on her.   In her autobiography she recounts her feelings about her rescuer:  “I felt strange—happy but still frightened.  A man had touched me softly, he had stroked my hair and touched my cheeks...  I felt I could trust him, something I had never felt about a stranger or a man before.   Gradually I stopped sobbing, and my tears dried.  If I stayed with him, perhaps I would be happy: no more beatings, no more pain, no more humiliation.”

Bonnie & Clyde

 Vikram took over as leader of the gang, and he and Phoolan became lovers.   The killing of Babu Gujar was considered shocking because Vikram belonged to a lower caste than Gujar.  It wasn’t long before Vikram and Phoolan were as notorious as Bonnie and Clyde.  According to Weaver, Phoolan was so enthralled with her new life with Vikram, she had a rubber stamp made that she used on all her letters.  It identified her as “Phoolan Devi, dacoit beauty; beloved of Vikram Mallah, Emperor of Dacoits.”

Back from Heaven

Vikram was Phoolan’s mentor in the ways of the dacoits.   She learned how to use a rifle and started carrying one wherever she went.  She dressed in the khaki, pseudo-police uniform that the bandits favored, and for once in her life, her bold and fearless behavior was valued as Vikram showed her how to kill, steal, and kidnap for profit.  Traveling an 8,000 square-mile area of jungles, ravines, and sandy ridges, their gang raided upper-caste villages and looted trains and bus convoys.

Statue of the goddess Durga

 Phoolan, however, was not in it solely for the money.   She saw banditry as a way to correct social inequality by toppling the oppressors and redistributing their wealth.  Like a pair of later-day Robin Hoods, she and Vikram gave away much of their ill-gotten gains to the poor.  She was motivated by the spirit of the goddess Durga, and before and after every raid she would find a temple and pray to Durga for strength and success.
Their life together was a romantic dream filled with adventure, derring-do and tender intimacy, not unlike the extravagant, popular, Indian films Phoolan came to love.   Vikram took her to her first movie, and she instantly became enraptured with the spectacle and splendor—as well as the bombast—of “Bollywood” cinema.  Vikram bought her a cassette recorder, and she cherished listening to the soundtracks from her favorite films.
But like Bonnie and Clyde their run didn’t last forever.  While the law finally ambushed the American bank-robber couple, Phoolan and Vikram were undone by one of their own.
Vikram’s “guru” in crime was Sri Ram, an older bandit who had run with Babu Gujar until his arrest.   Vikram had spent time in prison with Sri Ram and was an eager pupil. Vikram’s sentence was shorter than Sri Ram’s, so when he got out, he scraped together 80,000 rupees to bail out Sri and his brother Lala Ram.   After Sri was released, Vikram invited him to join his gang, telling his men that Sri would now be their leader.  But many of Vikram’s bandits were leery of the change in administration.  Sri Ram was a high-caste thakur while most of them were from lower castes.  Suspicion and mistrust were inevitable, and Phoolan shared these feelings.  Though the gang stayed together, they split into two factions: Vikram’s men and Sri Ram’s men.
Some time after Sri Ram’s return, Phoolan and Vikram were invited to a wedding in a remote village.   The poor frequently invited them to wedding ceremonies, and Phoolan would often give money to impoverished parents who did not have proper dowries. On this occasion, Phoolan, Vikram, and their men were preparing to hike to the village. At the last minute the Ram brothers and their men decided to join them.  They set off after dark, marching by torch light.
Along the way they stopped at the edge of field where a man was selling melons.   As Vikram was taking his first bite of melon, Phoolan heard two gunshots nearby.  She looked to Vikram, but he had dropped his melon and had collapsed to the ground.  He had been shot twice in the back.  Phoolan suddenly realized that Sri Ram was not with the pack.  He had fallen back and was still in the field.  Though she didn’t actually see it, Phoolan had no doubt that he was the one who had shot her lover.
She ran to Vikram.   “There was blood bubbling out of his back, his clothes were burnt, and there was a stink of sulfur,” Phoolan says in her autobiography.  But despite the severity of his wounds, Vikram never lost consciousness.  Phoolan tied a cloth around his torso to staunch the bleeding.  He was taken to a doctor who, after examining him, declared that it would be too risky to remove a bullet which had lodged next to his spine.  The doctor did what he could, but he doubted that Vikram would survive.  Rumors spread through the region that Vikram had already died, and for the moment police efforts to locate him were suspended.
After a period of recovery, Vikram defied the doctor’s prognosis and was able to get out of bed and walk.   With Phoolan by his side, he slipped back into the jungle and returned to his gang.  Oddly, despite Phoolan’s firm but unproven belief that Sri Ram had fired the shots, Vikram would not sever ties with the old bandit because Sri Ram still owed Vikram money for bailing him out of prison.  Though weak and in pain, Vikram was now determined to get back to business.  He had a rubber stamp made that   proclaimed, “PHOOLAN AND VIKRAM ARE BACK FROM HEAVEN”, and he stamped it on the doors of the wealthy “like a curse.”
The gang picked up where it left off, raiding and looting through the Chambal River Valley, but tensions within the gang festered.  Phoolan slept very little, staying vigilant through the night with her rifle close at hand.  On a doctor’s advice, she and Vikram slept apart so that he could regain his strength.  Despite their love for one another, they felt that this sleeping arrangement would be safer since they could not be ambushed together.  But one night after an exhausting raid on a village, Vikram asked her to stay with him.  She didn’t want to put him in jeopardy, but she desperately missed lying by his side, so she agreed to spend the night.  Gentle rains pelted the canvas of their tent and lulled the weary lovers to sleep.
Sometime later Phoolan was roused from a deep sleep by the “deafening explosion” of gunfire.   “My head was spinning as though I had been drugged,” she wrote of the incident.  She reached for her gun, but she was groggy and lethargic.  Vikram whispered to her, “Phoolan.  It’s him.  The bastard shot me...”
She looked up and saw the shadowy figure of Sri Ram holding a gun.   Phoolan was confused and disoriented.  She smelled something that made her nauseous.  Then she realized what it was, chloroform, which the gang kept on hand for kidnappings.  She later learned that Sri Ram and his men had chloroformed Vikram and his contingent to prevent retaliation.
Sri Ram and two of his men picked her up and hauled her out of the tent.   She tried to fight back as best she could, but Sri Ram clubbed her with his rifle butt, knocking her to the ground.  She was stripped naked and tied up.  They carried her to the river and tossed her into a rowboat.  As the boat pushed off the shore, she could see Sri Ram’s face looming over her.
“Why didn’t you kill me, too?” she asked
“Oh, you can still be a great deal of use,” he said with a smirk.
She could hear the oars cutting through the water and feel the rain on her body.   She tried to fight the effects of the chloroform, but she couldn’t make sense of what was happening to her.  Where are they taking me? she wondered.  What is the red-eyed devil going to do to me?

"They Passed Me from Man to Man."

Phoolan Devi's I, Phoolan Devi

They arrived at a village on the river, and Phoolan Devi’s humiliation continued.   Still naked, she was taken to the center of the village where Sri Ram publicly declared that she had killed her lover Vikram.  He incited the men of the village, many of them thakurs like himself, demanding that she be punished. He was the first to rape her.  After he was finished with her, he offered her to everyone else.  “They passed me from man to man,” she wrote in I, Phoolan Devi.
They beat her and cursed her.   In the days that followed, Sri Ram took her to other villages, Phoolan couldn’t remember how many.  “I was paraded in front of the villagers.  Each time, Sri Ram called me a mallah whore.  He said I was the one who killed Vikram and, hurling me to the ground, told the villagers to use me as they pleased.”

Phoolan Devi after three weeks of torture

This torture went on for more than three weeks.   Throughout the ordeal she prayed to Durga for strength and liberation, all the while wondering how and when this could possibly end.  On the twenty-third day, she found herself in the thakur village of Behmai where Sri Ram led her around on a leash like a dog.  She was bruised and filthy from head to foot.  Sri Ram dragged her listless body to the center of the village where a group of thakur men had gathered and demanded that she fetch him fresh water from the well.  When she refused, he beat her mercilessly, tearing off her only garment, a blanket, and kicking her over and over again.   Finally, to stop the onslaught, she got up and limped to the well to do as he asked as the thakurs mocked her and spat on her.
That night an old Brahmin came to her rescue, quietly releasing her from the shed where she was kept and sneaking her out of Behmai in a bullock cart.   He took her to the jungle where she wandered until she was found by a shepherd woman who nursed her back to health.   But her hatred for the Ram brothers, especially Sri Ram, was the one wound that would not heal.  When she was well enough to travel, Phoolan began to plot her revenge.
Eventually she joined a gang of dacoits made up of men from the gadariya caste, but she wasn’t interested in working for another master.   She stayed only long enough to kidnap two wealthy merchants and earn 50,000 rupees in ransom.  She wanted to start her own gang.
Another dacoit leader, a Muslim named Baba Mustakim, offered to help her when he heard of the indignities she suffered at the hand of Sri Ram.   Mustakim offered to give her ten of his own men to start her gang, and she could pick whomever she wanted.  Man Singh was one of the men she selected even though she initially found his appearance “frightening.”  He was tall and bearded, and he wore his black hair to his shoulders.  “Deep lines ran across his heavy brow; he had a penetrating gaze and the nose of an eagle,” she recalls in her autobiography.  He was the most experienced bandit in Baba Mustakim’s gang, and so he became Phoolan’s lieutenant (and later her lover).   Man Singh gave her the red cloth to tie around her head to symbolize her quest for revenge.  With a formidable gang behind her, the hunt for Sri and Lala Ram began in earnest.
Phoolan Devi, the self-anointed Queen of the Dacoits, led raids throughout Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh where she was also the self-appointed avenger for women’s rights.  Whenever she heard of a rape, a forced abortion, or the coerced suicide of a disgraced woman, Phoolan took it upon herself to punish the men responsible.  “Whenever I heard of it, I crushed the serpent they used to torture women.  I dismembered them.”  She tracked down a particularly lecherous old thakur who tortured women and had sex with young boys and animals.  “His serpent first, then his hands, then his feet... I cut them off.”  Her gang was “sickened” by her blood lust, but her act of retribution was performed before a picture of the goddess Durga, and Phoolan Devi felt thoroughly justified doing it.
As the gang terrorized village after village, Phoolan’s focus remained on the Ram brothers.  She interrogated villagers, desperate for any information that would lead her to Sri and Lala.  On several occasions these leads brought her close, but every time she thought she had them cornered, they managed to slip away. Finally, she received information that Sri Ram and his gang were hiding in Behmai, the thakur village where she had been treated like a dog.   She led her gang to the outskirts of Ingwi, a nearby village, and set up camp.  She was eager for revenge, but she was also determined not to let her targets get away again.  This time she would be patient and come up with a foolproof plan.
The plan she and her gang came up with—a frontal attack by one third of their force with two flanking groups waiting for anyone who tried to flee—did not yield the results Phoolan had hoped for.   Thakur villagers did flee from the attack, but the Ram brothers were not among them.    The flanking forces converged on the village and searched everywhere for their targets, but the Ram brothers couldn’t be found.  Phoolan was losing her patience.  She grabbed a bullhorn and made a declaration from the town square.  As reported by Mary Anne Weaver, the bandit queen shouted, “...I know that Lala Ram and Sri Ram are hiding in this village.  If you don’t hand them over to me, I will stick my gun into your butts and tear them apart.  This is Phoolan Devi speaking.  Victory to Durga the Mother Goddess.”
Her men ransacked the village as she waited by the well where she was forced to fetch water for Sri Ram.   After an hour her men returned and reported that the Ram brothers were not there.  Phoolan refused to believe that they had slipped away.  She was convinced that the villagers were hiding them.  She ordered her bandits to round up all the young thakur men and bring them to the town square.  The bandits lined up the thakurs, and Phoolan dressed them down, threatening to “roast” them alive if they did not tell her the truth.   She punctuated her threats with blows to the men’s groins with the butt of her rifle.  The thakurs pleaded their ignorance, but this only enraged Phoolan more.  She ordered her men to march the thakurs to the river where they were forced to kneel on the banks.  Gunfire from multiple weapons shattered the air.  Bodies keeled over and fell lifeless into the mud.  When the shooting stopped, 22 of the 30 young men were dead.

The Bandit Queen Surrenders

The massacre at Behmai was the most heinous crime ever committed by a dacoit gang in the history of modern India.   The nation was shocked.  A low-caste woman leading a killing rampage on a group of high-caste men was unthinkable.  A crime of this magnitude demanded the authorities’ full attention as Phoolan Devi suddenly became the most wanted criminal in India.
Phoolan and her gang went into hiding, but when she learned that the authorities had arrested and imprisoned her parents—in effect holding them hostage—she decided to negotiate for her surrender.   Over a period of nearly a year, she haggled over the terms of her surrender with Rajendra Chaturvedi, the police superintendent of the district of Bhind.  With the cunning of a criminal defense attorney, she hammered out a deal that guaranteed that she and her gang would surrender in Madhya Pradesh and would never be extradited to Uttar Pradesh where Behmai was located.  Her other demands included that she would be tried for all of her crimes at once and in Madhya Pradesh; that she and her gang would not be handcuffed; that if convicted, they would not be hanged; that they would spend no more than eight years in prison; and that the prison would be an “A-class jail.”  She also wanted portraits of Durga and Ghandi displayed when she surrendered.  Furthermore, she insisted that the authorities force her cousin Mayadin to give back the land he had taken from her father; that they resettle her parents in Madhya Pradesh on government land; and that they guarantee a government job for her little brother.  The government agreed to it all.
On a February evening in 1983, almost two years to the day from the massacre at Behmai, Phoolan Devi emerged from the ravines with her gang and finally turned herself in.   It was a spectacle worthy of a movie.  A crowd of 8,000 cheered for their Robin Hood, the Bandit Queen of India.  Festive music blared from loudspeakers.  Legions of uniformed police stood by in formation, waiting to escort her into custody.  All this ceremony for a five-foot-tall, illiterate woman barely out of her teens.

Phoolan Devi in her bandits garb at her surrender

She was wearing a khaki uniform and a red shawl.   A wide red bandana was tied around her head, covering her brows.  She carried a .315 Mauser rifle on her shoulder, a curved dagger in her belt, a full bandolier across her chest, and a small silver statue of the goddess Durga in her breast pocket.  She bowed before portraits of Durga and Ghandi and gave herself over to the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh.  Before they led her away, she turned to the crowd and raised her rifle over her head.  “Finally,” according to Mary Anne Weaver, “with hands folded in the traditional gesture of greeting, she demurely lowered her eyes to the ground.”  The crowd went wild, vociferously showing their support.

Phoolan Devi in jail after her surrender

Ultimately the authorities disregarded the terms of the agreement, and Phoolan Devi spent more than eleven years in prison without trial, more than any of her gang members.   Some of them, including Man Singh, agreed to be tried in Uttar Pradesh against her wishes but were acquitted because no witness dared come forward to identify the bloodthirsty crew.  While she was “rotting” in prison, as she put it, a feature film based on her life called Bandit Queen was released.  She disliked it so intensely she sued the film’s producer and director.

Phoolan Devi after her release

  An ambitious lower-caste politician took up her case and secured her release from prison in February 1994.   To the astonishment of the country, the skinny girl who had terrorized two states and committed multiple criminal acts announced that she would be running for office.  Heavier and rounder than she had been when she was known as the Bandit Beauty, Phoolan Devi announced that she would run for a seat in the Indian Parliament’s lower house, promising to be a strong voice for women and for the poor.  Running her campaign with the same shrewdness, ruthlessness, and passion that she had used to run her gang, she won   the election in May 1996.

Phoolan Devi with husband Ummed Singh

 On July 25, 2001, three assassins in front of her New Delhi home gunned down Phoolan Devi in broad daylight. She had walked home from Parliament after the morning session, intending to have lunch there.  The leader of the assassins—a man named Pankaj, a.k.a. Sher Singh Rana—admitted to the murder. He said he was seeking retribution for the Behmai massacre.  But the police were suspicious of his connections to Phoolan’s last husband, Ummed Singh, who was reportedly upset with Phoolan’s threats to cut him out of her will.
As for Sri Ram, the red devil whose merciless torture of Phoolan had caused the massacre of the thakurs at Behmai, Phoolan had the satisfaction of receiving a note before her surrender from Lala Ram, Sri’s brother.   Lala had informed her that her archenemy was dead.  Lala himself had killed Sri in a dispute over a woman.

Photo Gallery

Phoolan often wore a military-style khaki jacket, denim jeans, and zippered boots. Her dark, straight hair was cut short, ending at her neck. A wide red bandana-the symbol of vengeance- was tied around her head, covering her hairline and brows. She carried a Sten rifle and a bandolier across her chest.

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Phoolan Devi's father, Devidin, worked as a sharecropper and was considered cursed for having had four daughters.

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In her autobiography, I, Phoolan Devi, she recalls that the Neem tree's trunk was so large, she and two of her sisters together could barely encircle it with their arms. The valuable timber that could be derived from the tree was, in effect, the family's nest egg. Phoolan came to love that tree for its beauty and majesty and would often rest under its shade.

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After his father's (Phoolan's Uncle) funeral, Mayadin went to his uncle Devidin and told him that he was now the elder of the family and would be accorded all the respect that position deserved.

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Vikram took over as leader of the dacoit gang which had kidnapped Phoolan, and he and Phoolan became lovers. It wasn't long before Vikram and Phoolan were as notorious as Bonnie and Clyde.

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Phoolan Devi was motivated by the spirit of the goddess Durga, and before and after every raid she would find a temple and pray to Durga for strength and success.

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After Sri Ram murdered Vikram he, and other villagers beat and tortured Phoolan Devi for over three weeks until she was rescued by an old Brahmin man.

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When Phoolan Devi surrendered she was wearing a khaki uniform and a red shawl. A wide red bandana was tied around her head, covering her brows. She carried a .315 Mauser rifle on her shoulder, a curved dagger in her belt, a full bandolier across her chest, and a small silver statue of the goddess Durga in her breast pocket.

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Ultimately the authorities disregarded the terms of the surrender agreement, and Phoolan Devi spent more than eleven years in prison without trial, more than any of her gang members.

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After her release from prison in February 1994. Heavier and rounder than she had been when she was known as the Bandit Beauty, Phoolan Devi announced that she would run for a seat in the Indian Parliament's lower house, promising to be a strong voice for women and for the poor.

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Police were suspicious of Sher Singh Rana's (he admitted to the murder of Phoolan Devi) connections to Phoolan's last husband, Ummed Singh, who was reportedly upset with Phoolan's threats to cut him out of her will.

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Munni Devi, Phoolan Devi's sister

Bibliography

Burns, John F.   “Bandit Queen Returns, as Angel of the Oppressed.”  New York Times, Feb. 23, 1994: A, 4:3.
Burns, John F.   “India’s ‘Avenging Angel’: Candidate of Low Castes.”  New York Times, May 6, 1996: A, 3:1.
Devi, Phoolan.   I, Phoolan Devi.  London: Warner Books, 1996.
McCord, Andy.   “The Bandit Queen Runs.”  The Nation, May 20, 1996: 4-5.
Sahay, Tara Shankar.  “Dacoit-Turned-MP Phoolan Devi Shot Dead in New Delhi.”  Rediff.com, July 25, 2001.
Sen, Mala.   India’s Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi.  London: HarperCollins, 1991.
Tripathi, Purnima S.    “The End of Phoolan Devi.”  Frontline, Aug. 4-17, 2001, vol. 18, issue 16.
Weaver, Mary Anne.   “India’s Bandit Queen.”  Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1996: 88-94.

Yes, my review can be condensed into three words: READ THIS BOOK!!!

Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

Thats 1 HEAVY BOOK given to me by one of my friend!..
the cover attracted me very much so my as my blog entry i want to share my views on this book..

"The book picks up not too far after Genesis left off." And this fictitious chronicle of the Buendia household in the etherial town of Macondo somewhere in Latin America does just that. Rightly hailed as a masterpiece of the 20th century, Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude" will remain on the reading list of every affected college kid, every under-employed author, every field-worker, and indeed should be "required reading for the entire human race," as one reviewer put it a few decades back.

I can only hint at a few of the striking features of the work that are so novel, so insightful, and which make it such a success in my opinion.

By far and away the most inspiring element of the work is the author's tone. He reportedly self-conscioulsy wrote in the style that his grandmother back in Columbia used to tell him stories. Thus there is a conversational, meandering, but indeed succinct and perfect narrative voice to whisk the reader through the years of Macondo's fantastical history.

Not unrelatedly, the tone has ample visual imagery, with superb attention to detail (and just the right quantity and nature of the detail that surrounds everyday life) to help prod the story along. The dolls of the child-bride treasured by the mother-in-law and heroine Ursula. The paranormal and mundane contrivences of the gypsies that are celebrated in the opening pages and which close the book. The tree to which the mad genius who founded the town and Buendia line is tied and dies in. The pretentious suitcases of the returning emigre. The goldfishes that are the relicts of a disillusioned but celebrated warrior. And the ubiquitous ants. All these objects have their proper place among the daily going abouts of the Buendia family, and serve to weave into the story a sense of BOTH the ordinary and the surreal.

There is ample space in this world of Macondo and the Buendias for a sad commentary on that world South of the Rio Grande. Incessant, pointless civil wars. A rigid political and ecclesiastical hierarchy shoved down the throats of decent folk. The rampant exploitation of the tropics by outsiders, both foreign and domesitc. And perhaps most significantly, the strangely marginal and uncomfortable space occupied by technology in daily life in the Latino world. I am surely not alone in uncovering some facet of the work that speaks so boldly and loudly to me. This rich yet surprisingly elegant novel has, it seems, on every page the germinating seeds of an exciting conversation that speaks directly to an observation and experience everybody, and especially those coming to or from Latin America (or any underdeveloped nation), has had.

And of course there are the brilliant characters, and the sense one gets of how they are affected by, and in turn affect, their setting. The story is aided by a pedigree one keeps referring to in the beginning of the book, as its immense scope (yes, 100 years) and maddening array of characters demand of the reader to conjure up visualizations of what exactly is going on. It is no wonder that this work is celebrated for being almost in accord with the Bible in scope.

One night with this book @ my home

This book was gifted to me on my birthday! 1 night @ call center; here are my views... 


One thing strikingly remarkable about this book is that it keeps the reader hooked till the end. Maybe the reason for this is its small size but more importantly, it is realistic. One can relate with each of the characters. Their problems depicted are certainly not worth being in the news but these are common problems we common people often come across, maybe in our own lives or in the lives of people around us.


Of course, the ’call from God’ is impractical, but isn’t this fiction? The author undoubtedly has the right to present his imagination in his own creation. On the contrary, ’the call’ can also be interpreted as ’the inner voice’ which called out when the characters were on the verge of death asking them to analyse what all they have done in life.I liked the story the author built up about the train journey and the beautiful lady pestering him to make her story his next book. It makes the readers feel that it is a true story and the author is simply relating it. Only in the epilogue, it is evident that even this incident is a figment of his imagination.   


This is a better attempt than his previous book atleast in aiming at the youth and their issues. However, the language used is too simple which is why, this book may not be counted among the best ones in a bookworm’s library. But who cares anyway. His work appeals to the masses and therefore it ends up as a bestseller.

Media a bane

Media a Boon

How media intervention helped solve impending criminal cases- Jessica Lal and Priyadarshini Matto

Citizen journalism

Citizen journalism (also known as "public", "participatory", "democratic",^[1] "guerrilla"^[2] or "street journalism"^[3]) is the concept of members of the public "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," according to the seminal 2003 report We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information.^[4] Authors Bowman and Willis say: "The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires."

Citizen journalism should not be confused with community journalism or civic journalism, which are practiced by professional journalists, or collaborative journalism, which is practiced by professional and non-professional journalists working together. Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content.

Mark Glaser, a freelance journalist who frequently writes on new media issues, said in 2006:^[5]

The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others. For example, you might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum. Or you could fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog. Or you might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online. Or you might videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube.

In What is Participatory Journalism?,^[6] J. D. Lasica classifies media for citizen journalism into the following types:

1. Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, personal blogs, photos or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community)
2. Independent news and information Websites (Consumer Reports, the Drudge Report)
3. Full-fledged participatory news sites (NowPublic, OhmyNews, DigitalJournal.com, GroundReport)
4. Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin, Newsvine)
5. Other kinds of "thin media." (mailing lists, email newsletters)
6. Personal broadcasting sites (video broadcast sites such as KenRadio).

New media theorist Terry Flew states that there are three elements "critical to the rise of citizen journalism and citizen media": open publishing, collaborative editing and distributed content.^[7]