Summary Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2018. “The Arena of the Colony_ Phoolan Devi and Postcolonial Critique.” In Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture for Introduction to Gender Studies at UU. (2018/2019)
Summary Ponzanesi, Sandra. 2018. “The Arena of the Colony: Phoolan Devi and
Postcolonial Critique.” In Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture.
Elena van Hattum
In 1994 Phoolan Devi was released from jail. She is known as the Bandit Queen, the
Avenging Angel or the Rebel of the Ravines. She made a remarkable transformation from
Indian lower-caste fisherman’s daughter to a member of the Indian Parliament in 1996. She
is usually depicted with red banana and a rifle, the embodiment of a cruel and bloodthirsty
goddess. Her larger-than-life image is of a victim of caste oppression and gender
exploitation who fought back by resorting to acts of revenge and later being a politician. She
was married of at 11 and abandoned by her family. After being abused she ran away and
was subjected to sexual assaults. She was abducted by a gang and became the lover of the
gang leader. When he was killed she was kidnapped and the victim of a collective rape, for
which she decided to take revenge by forming her own gang. She robbed the rich and
redistributed her loot to the poor, turning her in a legendary champion of the oppressed. In
1981 she went to jail, after surrendering. In 1994 she was released and joined the Socialist
Party. In 1996 she became member of the Parliament, in 2001 before the election she was
murdered by two men. This news was a shock to the world because of her reputation as a
Bandit Queen, due to the controversy surrounding The Bandit Queen by Shekhar
Kapur.
The film was meant to overcome the boundaries between East and West and combines
European arthouse films with Bollywood escapist entertainment. The oppression of women
and the Indian caste system are denounced. The filmmaker focuses on 2 aspects of Devi’s
life: 1. the rape. 2. the revenge. The film sparked a debate on the politics of authenticity,
agency, authority and responsibility in the representation of ‘real’ life experience and struggle
of the individual. Phoolan Devi denied these aspects and threatened to burn herself alive if
the film was not banned. She resisted her objectification in the film as an abused and raped
rural woman.
In acknowledging the oppression of women in India, the film has a consciousness raising
effect. But it also glorifies oppression by playing with excessively sensationalistic
images of violence against the oppressed Indian woman. Here played the
fact-versus-fiction issue. Arundhati Roy attacked the film because she thought Devi was
exploited by it. Devi as a woman has ceased to be important to the filmmaker. Instead her
suffering from ‘Legenditis’ has become a caricature of herself. By visualizing rape and
oppression in order to say something about the life of Indian women, Kapur also does this
for commercial reasons. This is deadly and disempowering for Devi’s legacy. This debate
unravels the part played by stories and the media in the construction of the female identity. It
is exemplary in illustrating a number of feminist topics that seem to plague the relationship
between western forms of representation of the Other and the postcolonial subject’s attempt
to claim a voice of its own and determine moments of agency on its own terms. These are
central questions for postcolonial critique.
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