From Bandit Queen to Sher Singh Rana biopic: How Bollywood has wronged Phoolan Devi

Today marks the 59th birth anniversary of activist and Lok Sabha MP Phoolan Devi, arguably one of the most polarising figures in Indian history. While she is a Bahujan icon for many, her popular image has been tarnished by her violent past and a notorious biopic. 

Phoolan Devi’s tragic origins were marred by sexual assault and humiliation by an abusive husband (a 30-year-old with whom she was forced into marriage at the age of 11), police authorities in UP, and several upper-caste Thakur men whom she and her gang later killed in revenge. Hailing from a Mallah (boatman) caste, she faced the brunt of casteism for the longest time until she had to take justice in her own hands.  

Why Phoolan Devi hated Bandit Queen: Following her publicised surrender and post-dacoit life as a politician, her actions might have been debatable but Indian popular culture has mostly rendered her voiceless. Fresh off the fame of Mr India, director Shekhar Kapur adapted Mala Sen’s biography of Phoolan, titled India’s Bandit Queen, as the 1994 biopic Bandit Queen. 

Garnering controversy for its graphic content in India and gaining overwhelmingly positive reviews overseas, Bandit Queen was the talk of the town when it was released. Modern viewers might however refer to the movie as bordering on ‘trauma porn’ and this makes more sense given Phoolan Devi herself was never fond of the end product. 

For starters, the scenes of sexual assault are shown in unnecessarily graphic detail, with Devi citing that she wasn’t even consulted in the creative process. For the auteur Kapur, this might be ‘realistic cinema’, but for the movie’s real-life heroine, re-watching such scenes might be reliving the trauma. 

What happened to Shekhar Kapur: In Arundhati Roy’s essay The Great Indian Rape Trick, the author cited a report from the Sunday Guardian that stated ‘He has openly admitted that he didn’t feel that he needed to meet Phoolan’! 

Phoolan Devi made her disdain evident by even threatening to immolate herself if Bandit Queen was not pulled off theatres. After the producers paid her 40,000 pounds, Devi calmed down a little but continued to criticise Kapur’s venture for the rest of her life. 

As for Kapur, he won Best Director at the Filmfare awards while the movie won Best Hindi Feature at the National Film Awards. Bandit Queen was also selected as India’s official entry to the Oscars and Kapur went on to piggyback his way to Hollywood, directing two popular biopics on Queen Elizabeth I. 

Phoolan Devi writes her own story: Also frustrated with Mala Sen’s biography on which the movie was based, Devi wished to write a more accurate and sensitive story of her life. Collaborating with British authors Marie-Therese Cuny and Paul Rambali, she wrote I, Phoolan Devi. The comprehensive autobiography delved into her growing-up years, the casteist violence she was subjected to, her retaliation, her romantic relationship with fellow dacoit Vikram Mallah, the 11-year-long prison sentence, and her eventual retribution. 

Years have passed but nobody has dared to adapt her autobiography into a big-budget Bollywood biopic. She appeared as a brief yet significant character (in reference; not named) in the 2019 period action thriller Sonchiriya but other than that, there’s not a trace of her in mainstream cinema after Bandit Queen. 

Her assassin gets a biopic: Instead, her infamous assassin Sher Singh Rana is getting his own biopic! With Vidyut Jammwal slated to star in the film, the poster itself aims to venerate Rana as a majestic Rajput hero who not only killed Devi but also brought back the ashes of ruler Prithviraj Chauhan from Kandahar, Afghanistan. 

The real-life Rana himself seems to have an easy life right now. Claiming to have taken revenge on behalf of the upper-caste men that Phoolan killed, Rana himself surrendered to the authorities and was arrested immediately after the 2001 assassination of Phoolan. In 2004, he escaped from Tihar Jail claiming that he had gone to recover Chauhan’s ashes. Re-arrested in 2006, he was sentenced to life in 2014. 

In 2016, the Delhi High Court released him on bail, following which he married the daughter of a local politician and even formed his own political party. 

One might argue that a Sher Singh Rana biopic would show the other side of the story. But by this logic, a polarising figure like Phoolan Devi deserves another shot after Shekhar Kapur’s biased and half-baked take on her life. Here’s hoping that Bollywood doesn’t mess up the casting by covering an Alia Bhatt or Taapsee Pannu in layers of brownface and making them speak in a fabricated UP accent!