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COVER STORY: PHOOLAN DEVI
Was She A Real Bandit Queen?
In the Chambal valley,
there are still many who would like to recast her myth and reappropriate
what they see as their rightful place in the folklore of dacoity. Malkhan
Singh, a feared bandit whose surrender preceded but was overshadowed by
Phoolan's, says, "The gang used her name because it had become part
of the folklore of the ravines. She never had an encounter with the police
or any other gang so where is the question of her being a Bandit Queen?"
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POLITICAL TOO: Rajnath (above left) and Advani face flak for security
lapses
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As the news of Phoolan's death spread, the people
of Behmai celebrated, not just the widows but also one of the youngest
victims. As a six-month-old baby Sita was flung against the wall of a
well by an angry Phoolan. She is a badly crippled 20-year-old today. She
would have crawled miles to distribute sweets the day Phoolan died. "It
should have happened much earlier," she says.
There are a few more chapters in Phoolan's story
to be written. The Uttar Pradesh elections are imminent and now more than
ever, Phoolan as political pawn will come into play. As a "reformed"
dacoit who evoked constituencies of caste and gender in a single sweep,
her celebrityhood was cleverly used by Mulayam to craft out a vote bank
in the dispossessed heartlands of eastern Uttar Pradesh, an SP counter
to the Bahujan Samaj Party's Mayawati. Now her death is being touted as
a "political" conspiracy by her party, their underlying accusations
pointing to Phoolan's old adversaries, the Thakurs, all said to be solidly
ranged behind Rajnath Singh.
While her family wanted her to be cremated in
Delhi, the partymen insisted on holding the ceremony in Mirzapur, making
it a political spectacle. Shiv Narain, the younger brother whose security
was one of her preconditions to her surrender in 1983, tried to explain,
"There was a lot of pressure from her constituents to have her funeral
there. We had to respect the people's wishes." Her mother and sister
didn't think so which is why they were conveniently removed after the
pyre was lit to prevent interaction with the media.
Then again, if the BJP leadership in Uttar Pradesh
is to be believed, she was about to cross the floor and lead a rebellion
against her political godfather Mulayam. On the day of the funeral, SP
activists ran riot in Varanasi, Mirzapur and Bhadoi, blocking traffic,
torching a police outpost, two police jeeps, setting a power substation
on fire and disrupting train movement. On the cremation ground, Amar Singh
shouted into TV mikes, accusing Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Rajnath Singh
of being responsible for the assassination by reducing her security cover.
The day before, he had advised Home Minister L.K. Advani "chullu
bhar paani mein doob marna chahiye (drown himself)". For the SP,
the death of Phoolan has come in very handy to try and neutralise the
BJP's political gains from creating a sub-quota of reservations for the
Most Backward Classes (MBC). If the MBCs, or so the calculation went,
felt threatened by Thakurs gloating over avenging Behmai, the gains of
social engineering wouldn't accrue to the BJP. But the calculations could
come a little unstuck if it is established that the murderers had links
with local units of the SP.
As in life, so in death: the persona of Phoolan
Devi has become a battleground for a caste war all over again. But this
time the stakes are much higher-control of India's most populous state.
Phoolan couldn't have asked for more. But she would have happily settled
for much less.
—With Lakshmi Iyer, Neeraj Mishra
and Subhash Mishra
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