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About Phoolan Devi [ 1963-2001 ]; The life history and biography of the great Phoolan Dev-Know all about Phoolan Devi, a real dacoit queen of India

Phoolan Devi, Indian outlaw, and politician (born August 10, 1963, Uttar Pradesh State, India—died July 25, 2001, New Delhi, India), was the infamous "Bandit Queen", famous for both her acts of revenge that happened. On those who misused him and his Robin Hood-like activities to help the lower castes.

 

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About Phoolan Devi [ 1963-2001 ]; The life history and biography of the great Phoolan Devi

After being imprisoned, however, she became a member of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, where she continued to serve as a champion of the poor and oppressed. Phoolan's life story was a mixture of fact and legend, starting with her marriage at the age of 11 to a man three times her age.

A year later, after being brutalized by her husband, she returned home, an act her family considered shameful. By the time she was in her 20s, she had joined (or was kidnapped) a gang of dacoits (dacoits), sexually assaulted several times – once by upper caste landlords, Thakurs, in the village of Behmai - and left barren, and became the leader of a dacoit gang. On February 14, 1981, Devi led an infamous act of revenge, known as the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre; Around 20 Thakurs of Behmai were shot in retaliation for her gang rape.

This act further sharpened her status in modern folklore and the police were on the lookout for her. In 1983, in poor health and exhausted by the struggle to stay in hiding, Phoolan negotiated her surrender to avoid the death penalty. Although she agreed to 8 years of imprisonment, she was jailed for 11 years without trial and was released only through the efforts of the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (Mulayam Singh Yadav).

In 1994, shortly before its release, she was the subject of the Bollywood film Bandit Queen. In 1996, Phoolan took advantage of her community status and, as a member of the Samajwadi Party, won the election to Parliament. She lost her seat two years later but regained it in 1999. Devi died when masked assailants opened fire on her outside her house.

Early Life of Phoolan Devi

Phoolan was born into a Mallah (sailor) caste in the small village of Ghura ka Purwa (also known as Gorha ka Purva) in the Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh. She was the fourth and youngest child of Mula Devi and Devi Din Mallah. Only she and an older sister survived to adulthood.

Phoolan's family was very poor. The principal property owned by him was about an acre (0.4 ha) of agricultural land on which there was a large but very old neem tree. When Phoolan was eleven years old, her grandparents died and her father's elder brother became the head of the family. His son, Maya Din Mallah, proposed to cut down the neem tree, which had occupied a large part of his one-acre farm. He wanted to do this because the neem tree was old and not very productive, and he wanted to cultivate that piece of land with more profitable crops. Phoolan's father acknowledged that the act had some meaning, and agreed to it with mild protest.

However, the girl Phoolan got angry. She realized that since her father had no sons (only two daughters), her uncles and cousins ​​were having a sole claim on the family farming inherited from her grandfather. She confronted her older cousin, publicly taunted her, called her a thief, and repeatedly and over a period of several weeks, abused and taunted him.

 One thing that is attested from almost every source about Phoolan is that she had a very bad tongue, and she regularly used abusive words. Phoolan also physically assaulted her cousin when he scolded her for abusing and leveling allegations against her. Then she gathered some village girls and staged a dharna (sit) on the ground, and she did not budge when the elders of the family tried to use force to drag her home. Eventually, she was beaten unconscious with a brick.

A few months after this incident, when Phoolan was eleven years old, her family arranged for her to marry a man named Puttilal Mallah, who lived several hundred miles away and was three times her age. She faced constant beatings and sexual abuse at the hands of her husband and was returned to her family in 'humiliation' after several attempts to escape.

In retaliation for the public and private humiliations, and to teach her a lesson, Maya Din (cousin) goes to the local police and accuses Phoolan of stealing her little things including a gold ring and wristwatch. The police, who belonged to nearby villages, knew Phoolan and her family well, and they did what the family wanted. They kept Phoolan in jail for three days, physically abused her, and then released her with a warning to behave better in the future and to remain quiet without quarreling with her family or others. Phoolan never forgave her cousin for this incident.

 After Phoolan was released from jail, her parents wanted to send her to her husband once again. She approached Phoolan's in-laws with the plea that she is now sixteen years old and therefore of full age to live with her husband. He initially refused to take Phoolan back. Although he himself was very poor, Phoolan's husband was now 38 years old, and it would be very difficult for him to find another bride, especially with a wife who is still alive. There was no question of divorce in that society. After Phoolan's family gives him a generous gift, they finally agree to take her back. Phoolan's parents performed the ritual of Gauna (after which a married woman starts living with her husband), Phoolan went to her husband's house and left her there.

Within a few months, Phoolan, this time no longer a virgin, returned to her parents again. Shortly after, her in-laws return the gifts given by Phoolan's parents and say that they will never accept Phoolan again under any circumstances. It was 1979 and it was only a few months before Phoolan had his sixteenth birthday. She later claimed in her autobiography that her husband was a man of "very bad character". A wife leaves her husband, or being abandoned by her husband, is a severe taboo in rural India, and Phoolan was marked as a social outcast.

Life as a dacoit or dacoits

The area where Phoolan (Bundelkhand) lived is still extremely poor, arid, and devoid of industry; Most able-bodied men migrate to big cities in search of manual labor. During the period under consideration, the industry was low, even in large cities, and daily life was a serious crisis with subsistence farming in an arid region with poor soil. It was not uncommon for young men to labor fruitlessly in the fields by fleeing into nearby ravines (the main geographical feature of the area), forming groups of bandits, and plundering their more prosperous neighbors in villages or on city highways. escaped from

Shortly after her last stay at her husband's house, and in the same year (1979), Phoolan became involved with one such gang of dacoits. How this happened is not clear; Some say that because of her "spirited nature" she was kidnapped, separated from her own family, and caught in the eye of bandits after being openly rejected by her husband, while others say She "walked away from her life." In her autobiography, she simply says "kismat ko ye Manzoor thaa" ("It was fate ruling") and she becomes part of a gang of bandits.

Be it kidnapping or her own folly, Phoolan had an immediate cause for remorse. Gang leader Babu Gurjar raped her for three days and thrashed her mercilessly. At this juncture, Phoolan is saved from rape by the second-in-command of the gang, Vikram Mallah, who belonged to Phoolan's own Mallah caste. In a dispute related to rape, Vikram Mallah killed Babu Gurjar. The next morning, he took over the leadership of the gang.

Relationship with Vikram Mallah

Irrespective of the fact that Vikram already has a wife and a husband, Phoolan and Vikram start living together. A few weeks later, the gang attacked the village where Phoolan's husband lived. Phoolan herself dragged him out of the house and stabbed him in front of the villagers. The gang leaves him almost dead on the side of the road, with a note warning older men not to marry young girls. The man survived, but a scar remained under his stomach for the rest of his life. Because of this incident, and because he legally remained Phoolan's husband, the man could never marry again. He lived his life as a recluse as most of the people of the village avoided living with him for fear of bandits.

Phoolan learned to use a rifle from Vikram and took part in gang activities in Bundelkhand, which straddles the border between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. These activities included attacking and looting villages where upper-caste people lived, kidnapping relatively wealthy people for ransom, and sometimes highway robberies that targeted flashy cars. Phoolan was the only female member of that gang of dacoits. After every crime, she used to visit a Durga temple and thank the goddess for her protection. The main hideouts of the gang were in the drains of the Chambal river.

 After some time, Shri Ram and Lala Ram, two upper caste Rajput brothers who were caught by the police, are released from prison and return to the gang. They are enraged upon hearing about the murder of their former leader Babu Gurjar and hold Phoolan responsible for instigating the act. They rebuked her for being a divisive vulgar, and she responded to them with her characteristic impurity of the tongue.

Shri Ram then grabbed her by the cuff of her throat and slapped her hard, and a scuffle ensued. Phoolan took advantage of this opportunity to allege that during the scuffle Shri Ram touched and molested her breasts. As the leader of the gang, Vikram Mallah reprimands Shri Ram for attacking a woman and apologizes to Phoolan. Sri Rama and his brother shrank under this humiliation, which was further compounded by the fact that both Phoolan and Vikram belonged to the Mallah caste of sailors, far below the land-owning Rajput caste to which they themselves belonged.

Whenever the gang ransacked a village, Shri Ram and Lalla Ram would make it a point to beat up and insult the Mallahs of that village. This angered the Sailor members of the bandit gang, many of whom left the gang. On the other hand, about a dozen Rajputs joined the gang at the invitation of Shri Ram and Lalla Ram, and the balance of power gradually shifted in favor of the Rajput caste.

 Vikram Mallah then suggested that the gang be divided into two parts, one consisting mainly of Rajputs and the other consisting mainly of Mallahs. Shri Ram and Lalla Ram rejected this suggestion on the grounds that the gang had always consisted of a mix of castes in the days of Babu Gurjar and his predecessors, and had no reason to change.

Meanwhile, other seafarers were also not happy with Vikram Mallah. The fact that a woman living alone with him provoked jealousy; Some of the other Mallahs had ties of kinship with Vikram's actual wife, and Phoolan's tongue did not make her love anyone who interacted with her. A few days after the proposal for partition came, a fight broke out between Shri Ram and Vikram Mallah.

Apparently, Shri Ram made a contemptuous remark about Phoolan's morality, and Vikram responded with comments about the women of Shri Ram's household. There was a gunfight. Without a single supporter, Vikram and Phoolan managed to escape in the dark. However, they were later traced and Vikram Mallah was shot dead. The victorious faction took Phoolan to the Rajput-dominated Behmai village, which was home to Shri Ram, Lalla Ram, and several new Rajput dacoits.

According to legend, Vikram taught Phoolan, “If you are going to kill, kill twenty, not just one. For if you kill twenty, your fame will spread; If you kill only one, they will hang you like a murderer."

Behmai was under house arrest and Phoolan raped

Phoolan Behmai was locked in a room in a village house. She was beaten, raped, and humiliated by a succession of several upper caste Thakur men over a period of three weeks. In the final indignation, they made him walk around the village naked. She managed to escape after three weeks of imprisonment, with the help of a low-caste villager from Behmai and two Mallah members of Vikram's gang, including Man Singh Mallah.

A new gang of Phoolan

Phoolan and Man Singh soon become lovers and joint leaders of a gang made up entirely of Mallahs. The gang carried out a series of violent raids and robberies in Bundelkhand, usually (but not always) targeting upper caste people. Some say that Phoolan only targeted upper caste people and shared the loot with lower caste people, but Indian officials claim this is a myth; There is no evidence that Phoolan or her accomplices share money with anyone in the crime, be it a low caste or another person.

Massacre at Behmai

Several months after escaping from Behmai, Phoolan returns to the village to seek revenge. On the evening of 14 February 1981, when a wedding was going on in the village, Phoolan and his gang entered Behmai as police officers. Phoolan demanded that his oppressors "Shri Ram" and "Lala Ram" be produced. [citation needed] He reportedly said, the two men could not be found. And so Phoolan surrounded all the youths of the village and made them stand in a row in front of a well. Then they were taken from the line to the river. On a green embankment, he was ordered to kneel. There was a barrage of bullets and 22 people were killed.

 The Behmai massacre had sparked outrage across the country. VP Singh, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh resigned after the Behmai murder case. A massive police search started, but Phoolan could not be traced. It was said that the search was not successful as Phoolan was supported by the poor people of the area; Stories of Robin Hood models began to circulate in the media. Phoolan came to be called the Bandit Queen, and Phoolan was portrayed by sections of the Indian media as a woman who fought for her life.

Phoolan Devi Surrender and Jail Sentence

Even after two years of the Behmai murder, the police could not catch Phoolan. The Indira Gandhi government decided to surrender. By this time, Phoolan was in poor health and most of his gang members were dead, some at the hands of the police, some at the hands of rival gangs. In February 1983, she agreed to surrender to the authorities. However, she said that she did not trust the Uttar Pradesh Police and insisted that she would surrender only to the Madhya Pradesh Police. She also insisted that she would keep weapons only in front of the pictures of Mahatma Gandhi and the Hindu goddess Durga and not in front of the police. She put forth four more conditions:

• One condition was laid that no member of his gang who surrendered would be sentenced to death.

 

• The punishment for other gang members should not exceed eight years.

 

• He should be given a plot of land for a living

 

• Her entire family should be provided security by the police to watch her surrender ceremony

An unarmed police chief met her during a meeting in the ravines of Chambal. She went to Bhind in Madhya Pradesh, where she held her rifle in front of the images of Gandhi and the goddess Durga. The audience included a crowd of about 10,000 people and 300 policemen besides Arjun Singh, the then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. At the same time, other members of his gang also surrendered.

Phoolan was charged with forty-eight offenses, including thirty charges of robbery and kidnapping. Her trial was delayed for eleven years, during which she remained in prison as an undertrial. During this period, she was operated on for an ovarian cyst and had to undergo a hysterectomy. The hospital doctor reportedly joked that "they don't want one flower to produce another".

She was finally released on parole in 1994 after mediation by Nishad community leader Vishambar Prasad Nishad (another name for the Sailor community of sailors and fishermen). The Uttar Pradesh government led by Mulayam Singh Yadav withdrew all cases against her. The move sent shock waves across India and became the subject of public discussion and controversy.

Phoolan married Umaid Singh

This time Phoolan married Umaid Singh. Umaid Singh contested the 2004 and 2009 elections on an Indian National Congress ticket. In 2014, he contested the elections on the ticket of the Bahujan Samaj Party. Later, Phoolan's sister Munni Devi accused him of being involved in Phoolan's murder.

Member of parliament

In 1995, a year after her release, Phoolan was invited by Dr. Ramdas (founder of Pattali Makkal Katchi) to attend a conference about the prohibition of alcohol and pornography against women. This was her first conference after her release which marked the beginning of her Indian politics. However, Phoolan contested for [11th Lok Sabha] from Mirzapur constituency of [Uttar Pradesh]. She contested as a member of Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, whose government withdrew all cases against her and released her from prison. She won the election and served as an MP during the tenure of the 11th Lok Sabha (1996–98). She lost her seat in the 1998 election, but was re-elected in the 1999 election and was the current Member of Parliament for Mirzapur when she was assassinated.

    As an MP, she fought for women's rights, an end to child marriage, and the rights of India's poor. In a Che Guevara-type revision of history, however, Phoolan is remembered as a thrilling Robin Hood who robs the rich to help the poor, and not as a statesman who perverts India's social hierarchy. Working to implement structural changes in,

 The murder of bandit beauty Phoolan Devi

When she was alive, Phoolan Devi had a larger-than-life image – a victim of caste oppression and gender exploitation, who fought first by resorting to violent retaliation and later by stepping into the political arena. After her death, this image is sought to be transformed into that of a phenomenal leader who fought relentlessly for the downtrodden and downtrodden with a never giving up spirit.

The uncanny closeness of her sudden and gruesome death in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections and Chief Minister Rajnath Singh's announcement of a system of "quota within quota" for the most backward castes (MBCs) will ensure that his image lives on for a long time. Political Region of Uttar Pradesh. A myth is formed about her way of life and his death.

Phoolan Devi reached Parliament House on July 23, the first day of the monsoon session

Interestingly, as a Lok Sabha member, Phoolan always jumped to the defense of her mentor Mulayam Singh Yadav whenever she was attacked by her rivals, mainly members of the Bharatiya Janata Party. She will try to yell at them. Even in death, Phoolan came to the rescue of the Samajwadi Party (SP) leader at a time when he was finding it difficult to counter Rajnath Singh's MBC "Brahmastra". Phoolan belonged to the Malha community, one of the most backward castes in the Other Backward Classes (OBC), which accounts for 7 percent of the OBC population. Now Mulayam Singh can turn back and say that while Rajnath Singh used to talk about the welfare of the most backward classes, in reality, he was killing them. SP leaders have been making this allegation.


It is certain that Phoolan's murder in broad daylight in the high-security area in the national capital on July 25 will continue to haunt UP. Do politics at least till the assembly elections are over. The fact that the murder took place a few yards from Rajnath Singh's residence on Ashoka Road and that his guards were looking away when the shots were fired, only helped the SP's efforts. Thus, even before the details of her murder were known, the SP began attacking the BJP governments at the Center and in Uttar Pradesh, accusing them of withdrawing their protection from "caste bias". However, there is little evidence to show that either her protection was reduced or that she ever sought more protection.

Party general secretary Amar Singh held Home Minister LK Advani and Rajnath Singh responsible for the murder. In New Delhi and Lucknow, SP workers raised slogans like "Rajnath killer hai, Ati backward ko mara hai". Mulayam Singh Yadav forced Phoolan's family members to perform her last rites in Mirzapur, the Lok Sabha constituency in eastern Uttar Pradesh that she represented. Her body was taken by road from Varanasi to Mirzapur, although a plane carrying it to Varanasi could land at Mirzapur. The BJP draws its strength from eastern Uttar Pradesh, and Rajnath Singh and state BJP president Kalraj Mishra belong to this part of the state.

From the ravines of Chambal, Phoolan had indeed come a long way fighting every inch. The photographs of a retarded woman in trousers, with a shawl casually thrown over her shoulders, a red bandana on her head, and a large gun in her hands, as she surrendered to the Madhya Pradesh government in 1983, leave one stunned How she rose to become a people's representative, fight for the rights of the oppressed and carve a niche for herself in the world of politics dominated by men. But she did. She was elected to the Lok Sabha twice under adverse circumstances. Her physical presence would not have created a ripple in the caste politics of Uttar Pradesh. As elections draw near, but her death will surely do so.