Bandit Queen

"There may never be a truth that is final, absolute or infallible. But the life of Phoolan Devi, as told by Kapur in Bandit Queen, is an apt metaphor for some of the most troubling and inescapable truth about
India".

[Jain, India

Today, 1994:93]



Prologue or A Dialogue with Self

The voices of human rights and feminism at The Hague seem light years behind. The murmurs of social equality at New Delhi appear to be from a distant land. These are the ravines in interior Madhya Pradesh where several cults of dacoits are an important element of the folklore. This is the Bandit Queen’s country, not far away from where I grew up and witnessed the phenomenon of social change amidst stagnation and inertia.

A song is rising in the backdrop. Village women are praying for water. A rich land- owner is driving a tractor in the vicinity too. Bandit Queen, who? Each one has heard of Phoolan Devi, indeed. Some heads rise in fear, some in awe but no one in indifference. Phoolan Devi Phenomenon has left an indelible mark on the canvas of rural, north India.

Shall we ever understand why a teenage girl took to guns? Shall we ever understand why a woman, so violent, got so much support and protection in rural India and made it to Parliament? Shall we ever unravel the mystique of power of illiterate, landless masses in bringing about so profound a change?

This paper will never be able to answer many of these questions. But for me, it’s a journey towards findings those answers, so important to me, some day.


Controversies or An Inventory of The Real Issues?

The Day of Judgment arrived rather too soon, almost prematurely though, for the much talked about Indian film ’ Bandit Queen’. The social kaleidoscope portrayed on celluloid spilt so much bad blood in the media even before it lit the silver screen that every world churned out by the film critics was consumed with unmitigated passion by Indians, an almost unprecedented phenomenon in India. Yet, ’Bandit Queen’ sketched out a new streak in Indian cinema firing the creative imagination of others and setting several new trends.

Although flouted by feminists and film critics alike for its vulgarity, nudity, crudity, chilling violence and twisting of the truth, the film marked a watershed in bringing out from the cultural closet the absurdities and excesses of Indian Caste system, exploitation of women both within the hallowed precincts of family as well as the Zamindar (landlord) dominated rural structure and impotency of the legal system in dealing with these issues and deceitful complicity of cultural system in abetting it.


’Bandit Queen’ was indeed one of the rare Indian films that triggered off a debated cutting across the artistic, cultural, political and feminist spaces encompassing as diverse issues as nudity in cinema to backward class uprising, emancipation of women to resilience of the Indian democracy and the West’s cultural hegemony to structural re-alignment in Indian Society.

An attempt is being made in this paper to present a kaleidoscope of the issues raised about this film and synthesize them to present a larger picture. Is ’Bandit Queen’ simply a gory tale of sex and violence in a feudal society caught in the time wrap or a symbolic depiction of the ongoing class struggle of backward castes in India to capture political power? Does the film portray turbulence of a society unable to come to terms with the new political realities or resilience of Indian democratic polity in absorbing violent aberrations of protest from its neglected sections and re-adjusting itself to accommodate them so as to emerge stronger? How far can the film-makers go in depicting sex and violence both in the name of creative freedom or responding to mass appeal? How relevant or otherwise has been the role of art films vs. commercial in general and ’Bandit Queen’ in particular in shaping liberal values in India? Is the Western stereotype being imposed on the cultural domain of other societies through films like ’Bandit Queen’ or is it a phenomenon even the western societies have to contend and fight with? Has the film only used Phoolan’s story to depict sex or made an attempt to put forward the feminist issues of ’silent majority of rural women’ on the social agenda? And finally; Is the film worthy of a distinct place in the Chaotic celluloid cultural space of India?


A Portrayal Or Betrayal Of Truth?

Thematically, ’Bandit Queen’ was occupying no different narrative space than used by several other film makers belonging to the popular cinema. Such box-office hits as ’Mujehe Jeene Do; ’Reshma Aur Shera’; ’Mera Gaon - Mera Desh’ and countless other films had brought to silver screen the social injustice perpetrated on landless, low caste rural poor forcing them to become outlaws to seek revenge and justice. What set ’Bandit Queen’ apart is the form of creative expression employed and ’no holds barred’ depiction of reality that the popular film makers had earlier conveniently hedged. The sensitivity to the human exploitation issues portrayed in ’Bandit Queen’ was so transparently powerful that it could not be ejected out of the viewers’ mind as in the case of mainstream formula films.

"The high cinema in India has never been particularly sensitive to the growing threats to life styles, life-support systems and non modern cognitive orders, or for that matter to the values of those in the ’survival sector’ of the society - a sector not primarily concerned with the goal of a good life (as it is defined by Modern India) but with mere survival and the protection of whatever little the survivor has by way of access to the global commons, traditional technologies, knowledge of health care, and community self-sufficiency outside the monetized sector of the economy. The feelings, attitudes and values associated with the survival sector are the ones that the commercial cinema consciously or unconsciously exploits but in the process also unwittingly supports, even if only partially and even while mouthing the slogans of the dominant culture of politics. Commercial cinema romanticizes and, given half a chance, vulgarizes the problems of the survival sector, but it never rejects as childish or primitive the categories or world views of those trying to survive the processes victimization let loose by modern institutions". (Nandy, 1995; 203)


"Bandit Queen" set a different agenda for itself right from the beginning by a stark baseline of the film - "This is a true story of Phoolan Devi" unlike the popular mainstream cinema which never claimed to present the truth but focused on entertainment as the key deliverable. Suddenly the spotlight shifted to truth obscuring from public view the cinematic quality, social relevance and cultural dimensions of the film. But the truth as they say changes, and with every narration, it changes drastically. The most glamorized leader of lawless bandits, Phoolan devi, who’s travails of violent life and struggles the film claimed to portray, herself debunked the film as a canvas of lies, distortions and vulgarity. Intellectuals, feminists, media and critics forced the judiciary to step in and demanded for an expurgated version. (As told by Phoolan Devi to India Today, October 1994)


The story of the central character of this film - Phoolan Devi - who became a living legend and an icon of ruthless and crude caste violence in northern India had become folklore even before she became the subject of ’Bandit Queen’. Belonging to a low caste, poor, rural family, Phoolan Devi was married at the age of 11 to a man of 35 or ’bartered to a man for a cow and a bike’ as depicted in the film and became a victim of family feud which later led to a full scale conflict between her and high caste village men who paraded her naked, humiliated and allegedly raped her at Behmai village. Kidnapped and raped by a bandit, she later married his rival bandit gang leader and eventually, upon his death, took over the reins of gang leadership and spearheaded a violent campaign against high caste men at Behmai villager who were responsible for her humiliation and rape, which shocked the nation and catapulted her into the league of most wanted outlaws in India. Hounded and hunted by the police, she surrendered years later amidst high drama and was eventually released although the court cases continue to dog her.


Sex and Violence: Was It Relevant or Overdosed?

The gory tale of Phoolan Devi would have been wiped off from the public memory in due course had she not become the subject of Mala Sen’s book - "India’s Bandit Queen" - and subsequently a film based on this book by the celebrated film director, Shekhar Kapoor, for Channel 4 in U.K.

The film shook the national conscience. It showed Phoolan being sold in ’marriage’ by her father, a thing not so uncommon among rural poor, though stoutly denied by Phoolan Devi herself. Her graphic gang rape by the Thakurs was the type never before depicted in the Indian films. Her humiliation by stripping her naked before a crowd of villagers was filmed with no holds barred. The footage of her rape by a dacoit who kidnaps her to ravines and is shot dead during the course of the rape was never of its kind in the Indian cinema.

Argued Madhu Kishwar, feminist and editor of Manushi while commenting on the film; “Thus for all the sophistication in handling rape and sex scenes, the film makers have an unhealthy obsession with sex and sex related violence". (Manushi, 84:35)


Kishwar’s point of view was echoed by several film critics. The sex and nude scenes in the film, according to newspaper reports drew large crowds, not otherwise interested in the issues of landless poor or women. With audiences cheering rape scenes, hooting at the nude parading of Phoolan Devi and

Whistling at every swear word uttered, the trauma of the protagonist was totally ignored and the film was reduced to soft pornography in the public domain. (See times of India, Jan 28, 1996; Feb 2, 1996; Indian Express, Feb. 14, 1996)

Can the film-makers be, however, faulted for poor public taste, argued several critics? The film director was only illustrating the crude reality of our social framework, protested many. This point has to seen in a wider frame of cultural reference as stated by Barret. "Mass media is often seen as inescapably locked with an illusory construction of pleasure, pandering to reprehensible tastes and values in an audience leading to a ’moralistic purism’ on the part of the avante grade. The question of pleasure is a particularly provoking one. In cultural politics it frequently surfaces as an irritant; why do people enjoy things that are politically bad for them? Why do we still take pleasure in fashion magazine or the dashing exploits of male heroes, or lyrical love songs, or blatant sentimentality? What meaning can we attach to these pleasures and our ambivalence about them? (Barret, 1982)

The counter argument is, however, equally powerful. "Wherever there are base desires and sexual outrages, there is someone ready to bestow art status upon them. The censors have retained full frontal nudity showing even pubic hair almost intact and those disgusting scenes of gang rape too... it may be a bad precedent for film-makers bent on exploitation", wrote Ratna Kapur, an advocate with the Centre for Feminist Legal Research in Hindu. Ratna Kapur emphasized; "The focus on the sexual content of the film has deflected attention from ever other aspect of the film and about the representation of Phoolan Devi’s life as a whole. The broader issues of whether or not the representation of Phoolan Devi’s life was empowering or dis-empowering for women, or whether the depiction of her victimization did justice to her actual life which was full of agony, have been completely sidelined.. The film erases any memory of Phoolan as a woman who seeks revenge for purely individual reasons - for the rape and violence she personally experienced at the hands of these institutions rather than that of a woman who became a legend during her time and a symbol of empowerment for the lower castes in Bihar". (The Hindu, 26 Feb, 1996).

The extensive footage of violence in the films, though not unusual, brought even more criticism. The scene of a dacoit who kidnaps Phoolan Devi and is killed while raping her particularly attracted criticism. So was the scene of Behmai massacre in which 20 people are shown being killed? The footage of Phoolan beating her past husband and his new wife was considered brutal by several film critics.

This brings us very close to a public demand going on in almost all societies to control violence on the small screen, which has affected children the most. While violence is a fact of modern life with gang warfare of drug Mafia and slumlords dominating the headlines in newspapers, why should only the film medium be brought under censorship? Can violence be really eliminated from our popular arts? Lee provides a counter argument here: "Violence can be seen as a legitimate cultural expression, even necessary to convey valid lessons about human consequences. Individually, crafted and historically inspired, sparingly and selectively used symbolic violence of powerful stories is capable of balancing tragic costs against deadly compulsions. There is murder in Shakespeare, mayhem in fairy tales, blood and gore in mythology, although Greek drama, often cited for its compelling pathos and cathartic effects, showed only the tragic consequences of violence on stage". [Lee, 1995:158]


A Sequel to Uprising OR A Prelude to Power Struggle?

Creative expressions in varied forms are not isolated spurts of individual fancies but by-products of the prevailing social and cultural compulsions. Viewed in this context, ’Bandit Queen’ should rightly be acclaimed as the mirror of Indian rural society torn by caste conflicts, women’s exploitation and post-green revolution agrarian maladjustment. The film is also a reflection of backward castes’ uprising to capture political power as witnessed in the parliamentary elections of 1989 and 1991 and enumerated below:

"We do not want a little place in Brahman Alley. We want the rule of the whole land. We are not looking at persons but a system. Change of heart, liberal education, etc. will not end our state of exploitation. When we gather a revolutionary mass, rouse the people, out of the struggle of this giant mass will come the tidal wave of revolution." (Joshi, 1884: 141-46)

The media glare that followed the release of ’Bandit Queen’ brought into focus the age old suppression of landless, low caste rural poor and provide a new meaning to their quest for power while giving context to Dalit politics which was just getting galvanized into a major political force under Mulayam Singh Yadav, Kanshiram and Mayavati. In the following months, riding on the wave of the film’s media hype, Phoolan Devi was to become an important player in the low caste dominated Indian Parliament and a symbol of bid for political power by the low and backward castes.

’Bandit Queen’ to that extent had been a part of a chain of cultural snippets that have forged to make correction of caste based subjugation a political manifesto of almost all political parties in the last two years, however muted it may have been even in case of some political parties as BJP. The confluence of Dalit forces - ex-untouchables of the north India, non-Brahmins of the south India and backwards from the western states - during this short period has changed the political agenda of the country in the post - Ayodhya and post-Mandal era and culminated in the formation of an anti-Hidutva platform and thereby altered the political and power configuration.

This important development immediately after the rise of Mandal forces unleashed by the former Prime Minister, V.P. Singh, who had to sacrifice his government on the issue of empowerment of low and backward castes, has preceded more than two decades of internecine conflict, often conflagrating into an open, violent war between the high castes and the so called ’Harijans’. Scheduled castes - the bulwark of rural labour class - which began to demand higher wages, land reforms better working conditions and consequently created turbulence in the placid social surface of north India, had to undergo a long, sad saga of atrocities, the type depicted to have been perpetuated on Phoolan Devi in "Bandit Queen".

The defiance of low-caste, landless farm labour in U.P and against supporting the farming of landed, rich and high castes Bhumihars resulted in inter-caste conflicts of such dangerous magnitude in seventies and the early eighties that organized massacres of lower caste people took place sporadically. The political structure in these two states could not channelise the defiance of the low caste poor into an organized political force until the late eighties and the bottled up frustration took the form of a cult of rural violence resulting in social upheaval.

The brutal portrayal of atrocities on low caste people in the film is a live gazette of our times which neither the popular, mainstream, cinema nor the art films or theatre was able to express profoundly and realistically. Even the otherwise vibrant political structure in U.P and Bihar could not galvanize the upsurge of low caste, landless poor into a political movement as was happening in Maharashtra where Ambedkar’s Dalit based Republican Party had become a political force to reckon with, in Punjab where Kanshiram had successfully brought low and backward castes under the banner of Bahujan Samaj Party and in the West Bengal where leftists had successfully captured the political power on the support base of the landless poor from the low and backward castes and introduced sweeping land and wage reforms. The vehicles of popular culture too failed to reflect the simmering social tension and sub-terranean violence. The popular community theatre and commercial Hindi cinema could not give an expression to the social resurgence.

The art cinema tried in vain at times to depict the social crisis in Mrinal Sen’s Mrigaya, Shyam Benegal’s Ankur and later in Prakash Jha’s Damul, but these creative efforts remained confined to critics and cocktail circuits due to their abstract form of arts and thereby could not give rise to a mass awakening. The commercial cinema during this period of over 15 years remained obsessed with its urban slum icon, Amitabh Bachan and this "angry young man’s frustration" with the system, oblivious of the rural massacres, formation of vigilant ’Dalit Sena’ and popular uprising in northern states. In the backdrop of such indifferences of political system and popular cinema towards the issue of low caste’s exploitation, "Bandit Queen’ scored a high point by focusing on the issue and placing it on the National agenda.

The film also indirectly brought to the fore the dichotomies of India’s development model which accentuated the ages old social inequalities even further and led to inter caste social conflicts.

"The primary sector, mainly agriculture, which had employed 75 percent of the population producing 54 percent of national income at the end of the British rule was still by 1991, employing 67 percent of the work force, but its share of GDP had come down to 31 percent meaning in effect that nearly as many in agriculture were getting a much smaller proportion of the total income. This primary sector threw off its surplus labour, the large majority of them not getting well protected jobs in factories but becoming the growing "unorganized sector" living in slums in cities and small towns. (Omvedt, 196:68)

It must be emphasized that a majority of those thrown off the bandwagon of the Primary Sector belonged to low castes who hand no land and were traditionally poor. Most of these who could not migrate to slums and remained in villages were caught in the cross fire of conflict between higher and lower castes over the issues of control of land, minimum farm wages and domination of local power institutions. "Bandit Queen" portrayed this conflict quite realistically by depicting situations of dispute over Phoolan’s family land and the local Thakur’s outrage over her refusal to accept a subservient role. ’Bandit Queen’ gave an expression to this outrage which was earlier confined to intellectuals" domain as proclaimed by Joshi.

"The Aryans - your ancestors - conquered us and gave unbearable harassment. At that time we were your conquest, you treated us even worse than slaves and subjected us to any torture you wanted. But now we are no longer your subjects, we have no service relationship with you; we are not your slaves or serfs. We have had enough of the harassment and torture of the Hindus." (Joshi, 1980:297)

The empowerment of the lower and backward caste people is now firmly on the political platform of India and there is no denying that the last two decades of struggle and violent conflicts have played a key role in bringing this about.

"The bureaucratically top-heavy, impoverished from of development related to a caste system in which (according to the later Mandal Commission Report) the public sector continued to be Brahman - dominated. The higher castes controlled the levers of economic power by holding nearly 70 percent of all positions and 90 percent of class I positions in the Government and public Sector Structure?" (Gail Omvedt, 1996:69)


Social Indictment OR A Case For Rural Women?

Besides highlighting the social injustice being perpetrated in the name of castes, "Bandit Queen", also succeeded in bringing to limelight the issues pertaining to rural women’s exploitation in the Indian Society. This was not raising the feminists’ flag but confronting the traditional societies in the whole of sub continent - Afghanistan, Pakistan and North India - which are notorious for having a ’culture against women’, in chances and life options (Papanek, 1989). The social structures in this belt are characterized by their institutionalization of extremely restrictive codes of behavior for women. It should be noted that both Muslim and non-Muslim societies are encompassed in this belt. What these societies have in common is the practice of rigid gender segregation, specific forms of family and kinship and a powerful ideology linking family honor to family virtue. (Kabeer, 1988; Mandelbaum, 1988)

The film made a bold attempt to link the status of women with the forms of production and property relations. Historically, the transition from simple hunting and gathering communities to agrarian technology entailed a major shift in gender relations in these societies and led to what Engels (1975) called ’the world historical defeat of the female sex". "Urbanization, industrialization, the expansion of wage labor, warfare and political conflict further degenerated the gender relations and adversely affected the position of women (Moghadam, 1995:219). The women and children in these societies, historically, became a part of the property rights as land and livestock (Sacks, 1982) in the disguise of protecting them.

Shekhar Kapoor’s portrayal of Phoolan exposed these hypocrisies of the Indian society. Though contested by Phoolan Devi as untruthful, ’Bandit Queen’ shows her getting bartered for a cow and a bike to a man of 35. When the village elite from upper castes want to humiliate her family, they parade her naked and molest her as sexual dis-honour is utmost in the armory of insult in the Indian rural society.

The irony of the situation is that ’Bandit Queen’ could not generate a public debate about the exploitation of women as the well-known Banwari Devi case of Rajasthan succeeded in doing. Banwar Devi, a grass root woman volunteer who opposed the practice of child marriages and reported such instances to Police was gang raped by her own villagers. The case is still in the courts and the Government has been accused of having turned a blind eye to the episode). Perhaps the explanation lay in the fact that the issues of ’factual correctness’ of the narration, use of nude scenes and depiction of gang rapes deflected the public attention from real issues.


Reality or Western Stereotype?

Giving credence to the arguments that the film director Shekhar Kapoor was playing to the gallery of western audiences, Madhu Kishwar wrote; "One suspects that it is largely to satisfy the western palate which delights in seeing non-western people as exotic species very different from themselves. Make it a case of upper caste tyranny over a lower caste women and it becomes an instant hit formula in the West". (Kishawar, 1995; 84)

In the wider cultural context, however, Bandit Queen appears to have been shot and directed for western audiences and fitted well in the western stereotype images of Indian society sick of exploitative, hierarchical caste and structure and blatant subjugation of women. There is no denying, however, that Indian audiences, suppressed within the cultural codes and the age old, puritanical Indian censorship laws, found the staple diet of nudity and sex highly appetizing and devoured every morsel of it as witnessed in the houseful theatres weeks after its release.

"The film director’s pursuance of Western stereotype has proved as detrimental to it as the stereotype of formula damages the popular commercial cinema. Right from deforming the story of a living legend to treatment of various events, the film followed a distinct western bias. While Phoolan Devi was never sold in marriage, the film showed her being bartered by her father for material gains. While a close relative of Phoolan took away her family’s land and had Phoolan repeatedly raped, handed over to Police and raped, the film showed high caste Thakurs perpetrating all these brutalities on her; The film shows her being traumatized by her mother-in-law, whereas in reality, she did not have a mother-in-law at all. Similarly, despite her repeated assertions that she was not involved in the Behmai murder case involving chilling massacre of high caste people, the filmmakers have shown her present at the scene of carnage. The film showed the police office in charge of it as a part of a villainous plot by the political bosses - yet another instance of making reality into a stereotype mould. (As told by Phoolan Devi in India Today in Oct. 1994)

The allegation of feminists and critics that Shekhar Kapoor had a clear brief from the film producers of Channel 4 and fitted a serious story into a popular western stereotype to cash in on the life of a well known and controversial character is not entirely unjustified. A closer scrutiny of western stereotype will establish the pressure under which Shekhar Kapoor may have directed the film.

In, the well known U.S. TV serial, Cagney and Lacey, two tough women cops were scripted in the unorthodox role of dealing with criminals, prostitutes and drug traffickers. The script, however, could not be put into production because not one motion studio could digest its non-femininity.

Even when CBS finally accepted it in 1980, it was only after re-scripting and incorporating scope for young and beautiful actresses to play the roles of Cagney and Lacey and weave their family life also around. Even after all the modifications, CBS kept on dragging its feet and abruptly put the serial off the air after telecasting only two episodes. The character of cagney which revolved around a single, career minded and tough urban cop, in total variance with traditional notion of femininity, made the network uncomfortable. Hectic lobbying by the producer subsequently revived the serial which remained under network’s pressure to keep the story aligned to traditional and expected cultural norms (d’Acci, 1987:215)

Only the film director Shekhar Kapoor would be able to confirm or deny whether he was under a pressure from Channel 4 to forcibly introduce the stereotype of a poor father forced to sell his daughter, cruel mother-in-law, high caste Thakurs brutalizing a young, poor village woman. But these stereotypes changed an otherwise highly creative film into a narrative who seeks revenge for purely individual reasons - for the rape and violence experienced at the hands of exploitative institutions rather than a woman who became a legend during her time and a symbol of empowerment for the lower castes and women in north India and aided in the ongoing political process which eventually changed the power structure in two northern states - Utter Pradesh and Bihar - with low caste dominated parties capturing power in these states and eventually dominating the parliament and central cabinet of India after 1996 elections.

The case of ’Bandit Queen’ has many parallels. The distortion of reality and forced packaging of social themes under stereotype by powerful telecasting channels has created an artificial layer on social behaviour even in the societies with high literacy and media exposure. The Smithton women phenomenon based on a stuffy of women’s readership habits in an American mid-west town presents an inventory of cultural stereo-types every writer, playwright, film maker and artist must adhere to. Jamnce Radway’s field work stated that powerful channels have standardized norms for any form for creative expression. According to her finding, an ideal storyline should entail the slow development of a romance, with the heroine and hero only gradually becoming aware of their feelings and finally overcoming their mutual distrust. Only after a romantic affair has been built up in the story, explicit descriptions of sexuality will be appreciated. The story should climax with the hero’s masculine defense mechanism crumble beneath the love of the heroine. So much for the cultural stereotype in the highly liberated American society. (Radway, 1984)

"This hegemony of powerful TV channels and other media institutions in the West in enforcing stereotypes has often amounted to ’cultural contamination’ in the eastern societies. A handful of mammoth private organizations have begun to dominate the world’s mass media. Most of them confidently announce that they - five or ten giant corporations - will control most of the world’s important newspaper, magazines, books, broadcast stations, movies, recordings and video cassettes. The product’ is news, information, ideas, entertainment, and popular culture; the public is the whole world". (Bagdikian, 1989)

The Western Media’s one-sided view of world situations and stereotype treatment of the third world societies is not new. The powerful TV networks in the western societies have been presenting a distorted view of even their black populace for decades as illustrated here: "When we sat in our living rooms in the fifties and early sixties watching those few black folks who appeared on television screens, we talked about their performance, but we always talked about the way white folks were treating them. I have vivid memories of watching the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday nights, of seeing on that show the great Louis Armstrong.... Watching television in the fifties and sixties, and listening to adult conversation, was one of the primary ways many young black folks learned about race politics.... The screen was not a place of escape. It was a place of confrontation and encounter. (Hooks, 1990:3)


Emancipatory Or Politically Relevant?

Several film critics and intellectuals have eulogized ’Bandit Queen’ and raised its status to an emancipatory film. Even the film’s director, Shekhar Kapoor, has indirectly added to this chasm in his premier show addresses and media interviews. Commenting on the shooting of gang-rape scenes, he told Sunil Sethi of India Today: "I imagined myself being sodomised. I reckoned that the body, perhaps would accept the pain but how would the mind escape the debasement?” Remarked Sethi: "The success of the scene lies in the manner in which any vicarious appeal is overtaken by the sheer horror of human degradation. Both the actress and director came to nervous breakdowns during its filming". (India Today, Aug 31, 1994)

Does the film meet the criterion of being a part of emancipatory process in India? An evaluation of the film by basic criterion of emancipatory process could help in settling this issue; does it portray:

1. Despairing of electoral or interest politics, organized alternative modes of action;

2. Revolutionary insurrection in which the state is regarded as not only lacking equity but standing as a system for the wrong combination of equity, order and growth;

3. Does it give creative expression to violent acts by small groups against persons and property as symbolic or surrogate for society and state arising out of inability to create the mass following for a revolutionary insurrection (Apter, 1992)

While emancipatory movements of all three types stated above have been intrinsic to the evolution of democracy itself, particularly so in the case of maturing of Indian democracy where the Indian State has been besieged by various secessionist movements such as Telangana Movement, Dravid Movement, Bodo Movement, Jharkhand Movement and more recently Khalistan and Kashmir Movements besides violent uprising by ultra-leftist groups such as Naxalites in the West Bengal and Andhra and Dalit Sena in Maharasthra, Popular Cinema stayed clear of the related issues. Not surprisingly, none of these movements ever fully succeeded on its own terms through the Indian democracy readjusted itself to accommodate the demands of such movements in due course and strengthened itself. The flexibility of the Indian democracy in adjusting to these pulls and pressures eventually made it healthier and more vibrant. The sad commentary of this saga is that popular cinema and arts did not actively participate in this process of democratic enlightenment by establishing the credentials of various emancipatory movements and thereby narrowing the gap between various pressure groups.

The reluctance of the popular cinema in focusing on the issues of democracy should, however, be seen in a historic and cultural perspective. Democracy and liberal values are essentially western thoughts brought to India only during this century. Liberty, fraternity and equality is the philosophy of the modern age. The philosophy had no place in the Indian psychic and mystical value structure. the Indian literature, mostly written by saints and religious figures, had not propounded these ideals. On the contrary, domination by higher castes, worship of powerful people and institutions, fascism and social inequality have been accepted norms of social behaviour. (Bagul, 992). The film-makers in societies which still pursues these values cannot be expected to divorce themselves from these realities and propound liberal values or stage a rebellion against these.

In this context, "Bandit Queen" stands apart. Though ’Bandit Queen’ does not measure up to the norms of an emancipatory process because Phoolan Devi has not been portrayed to have led a movement for social change and remained confined to an individual focused revenge, the issue raised by it are very relevant to Indian democratic polity which has begun to take note of the newly acquired political power of landless, low-caste populace and initiated the process of not only accommodating it but learning to share power with it. In the film, Phoolan Devi has not been depicted to have commanded a mass following or received solidarity from people, particularly women, for whom she now claims to have rebelled, and therefore left the mark of being emancipatory. However, the film fitted well in the prevailing political context. In the last four years following the move of V.P. Singh Government to give more powers of position in bureaucratic hierarchy to low caste sections of society, all political parties consider it politically correct to have low caste people occupy positions of power. Creative efforts such as those of Shekhar Kapoor may not be indeed emancipatory in nature, they have precipitated the process in India to take note of injustices on backward and low-caste people and take remedial measures.

While the self-rectifying and accommodative nature of democratic polity is the bedrock of its strength, the democratic system often acts only after popular opinion built by films, literature and popular arts becomes very powerful. As a rule, even the most benevolent democratic societies make attempt to suppress and crush all emancipatory movements but change their approach under the pressure of public opinion constituted by popular arts and then begin the process of co-opting those who make equity claims. ’Bandit Queen’ in this context succeeded in building up a popular opinion, though only among intelligentsia to articulate the just demands of these sections oppressed for centuries and continually neglected by the Indian democracy. The film therefore fulfilled a basic expectation from an enlightened film in precipitating this process of reconciliation as stated by Apter. "It mollifies and reconciles (without giving too much away in the process), although more often later than sooner. This tension between the co-opting tendencies of political democracy and the resistance to them, one of the most interesting and least explored aspects of democratic political life, involves a process of absorption. The state needs to be able to convert the self proclaimed principles of the movement into interests and then engage in negotiations and bargaining. But this can only be done when those infuriated by the process can no longer wield principle as their only claim to equity." (Apter 1992, 161)

This apparent indifference of democracies towards emancipatory movements until they become violent enhances the responsibility of film makers, academicians, media and artists in taking up the cause of such movements and create conditions which enable individuals and social groups to affirm themselves and to be recognized for what they are or wish to be. Conditions for enhancing the recognition and autonomy of individual and collective signifying processes in everyday life is therefore essential for popular arts though they same may not be necessarily be a part of emancipatory nature. (Melluci,1992, 43-47).

A pertinent point that arises out of this discussion is as to what extent can the film makers, artists and media persons go in ’glamorizing’ such individuals and their acts in order for the society to take note of their demands. Indian cinema has often been accused of placing criminals and outlaws on the high pedestal and confer upon them moral propriety by projecting them as victims of system’s deficiencies or tyrannies. By doing so, hasn’t the violent acts often been glamorized and thereby encouraged. While portraying the injustices forced on Phoolan Devi, Shekhar Kapoor cannot be entirely absolved of the irresponsibility of converting Phoolan Devi into an innocent victim of the system and almost legitimatising her acts of senseless violence.

It must be emphasized that even the most economically successful democracies will have some quota of the penalized, the victimized the marginal. Hence, there will always be fertile grounds for emancipatory movements of some kind and, therefore, opportunities for the popular arts to portray the genesis and relevance of such movements. The question is, how much liberty can be taken by the film-makers, writers and artists while dealing with such subjects. How do popular arts respond to such movements which both violate the law and refuse to use ordinary institutional rules especially when, because of the magnitude and audacity of their claims, they polarize the community and force the state to act punitively? Moreover, since they have the disturbing quality of making visible those groups that tend to be politically invisible, they shock the mainstream of society. They ’reveal’ negative conditions as more than accidents of individual defects of the system as an whole, and offer a logic to show why democracies of such defects in order to survive (Apter,1992).


EPILOGUE

Back home, in the fields full of water, nursery of paddy is being planted by the group of village women. The songs of nature and weddings are muted. A murmur can be heard. Why didn’t they crown Phoolan as the ruler? After all she did win the elections! Not too faraway, the owners of the farm are pleading with them to speed up before the rains burst out again.


The rural landscape will never be the same again. ’Bandit Queen’ will never be seen by millions of these people of the land. But they have found a voice now that will change the way Indian Parliament conducts its debates. This is the voice of protest, full of demand for power, often with aberrations of violence, but a voice that can no longer be ignored.



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