Arundhati Roy on Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen -2

The Great Indian Rape-Trick II

I've tried.
But I'm afraid I simply cannot see another point of view on this whole business.
The question is not whether Bandit Queen is a good film or a bad film.
The question is should it exist at all?
If it were a work of fiction, if the film-makers had taken the risk that every fiction writer takes, and told a story, then we could begin to discuss the film. Its artistic merit, its performances, its editing, the conviction behind its social comment...
If this had been the case, I, as the writer of films that have been infinitely less successful, would not have commented.
The trouble is that Bandit Queen claims nothing less than "Truth". The film-makers have insured themselves against accusations of incompetence, exaggeration, even ignorance, by using a living human being.
Unfortunately, to protect themselves from these (comparatively) small risks, they had to take one big one. The dice were loaded in their favour. It nearly paid off . But then, the wholly unanticipated happened. Phoolan Devi spoilt everything by being released from prison on bail. And now, before our eyes, in delicious slow-motion, the house of cards is collapsing.
As it folds softly to the floor, it poses the Big Questions. Of Truth. Of Justice. Of Liberty.
A man who read my essay of last week, came up to me and said "She's scum. Why are you getting involved with her?"
I'm not sure I know how one defines scum. But for the sake of the argument, let's assume that she is.
Phoolan Devi (Scum. ) - like a degree from an unknown University.
Does Scum have Civil Rights?

It took a Salman Rushdie to make the world discuss the Freedom of Expression. Not an Enid Blyton. And so, to discuss an individual's right to Justice, it takes a Phoolan Devi. Not the Pope.
In yesterday's papers, the Chairman of the Censor Board defended the delay in clearing some films on Rajiv Gandhi. "The trouble with political films", he said, "is that they are about real people. They must be absolutely true."
In the eyes of the Law, are Rajiv Gandhi and Phoolan Devi equally real?
Or is one a little more real that the other?

As we watch the drama unfold in the press, one thing has become absolutely clear. The most elusive, the most enigmatic, the most intangible character of all, is the "Truth". She hardly appears. She has no lines. Perhaps it's safe to assume that the play isn't about her at all. If so, then what are we left with?
Versions.
Versions of the story. Versions of the woman herself.
We have the version of her in the film: Poor Phoolan. Raped and re-raped and re-re-raped until she takes to crime and guns down twenty-two Thakur Rapists. (Forgive her, the film says to us ) We have the version of her painted by the producers now that she's protested about their film : Manipulative, cunning, trying to hit them for more money. (Look at the greedy bitch!) We have the version of her that appears in the papers: Ex-jailbird. Flirting with politics. Trying to adjust to married life, manipulated by her husband and her French Biographers.
And these are only some of them.
We have versions of her story.
Phoolan's version.
Mala Sen's book that claims to be based on Phoolan's "writings".
This film that claims to be based on Mala Sen's book.
And these are only some of them.
As always, when we cannot agree, we must turn to Law. Study contracts. Examine promises. Scrutinize signatures

What does Phoolan's contract say? Or, more accurately, what do Phoolan's contracts say?
They say quite simply, all three of them, that the film was to be based on Phoolan's writings, i.e. The film was to be Phoolan Devi's version of her story.
Not Mala Sen's version. Not Shekhar Kapur's version. Not your or my version. Not even the "True" version (if such a thing exists), but Phoolan's version.
You see, it turns out that Mala Sen's book was published long after the first contract with Phoolan was signed.
The first agreement for the purchase of the rights to Phoolan's version was with Jalal Agha's company called ANANCY FILMS. It was signed in 1988. The contract clearly states (under-lined right across the top) that it was to be a Documentary film "relating to Indian banditry and your role therein." Having made this clear, the contract refers to it as "the Film"
Another agreement was signed in 1989 informing Phoolan that the rights to her "writings" now belonged to Channel Four.
The third letter was issued in 1992 bv B V Videographics, S.S. Bedi's company, affirming the agreement between Phoolan Devi and Channel Four, and informing her that they were the latest in the line of succession to the rights of her story.
The contracts, smuggled in and out of prison by Phoolan's family in tiffin carriers, are vague and cursory. Couched in this vagueness there is a sort of disdain. Of the educated for the illiterate. Of the rich for the poor. Of the free for the incarcerated. It's like the attitude of a memsahib getting her ayah to undertake to vacate the servants' quarter in the event that she's sacked. Essentially, Phoolan Devi seems to have given Chalillel Four the rights to film her version of the story of her life. In return for the sum of a little over five thousand pounds. Less than one percent of the six hundred and fifty thousand pound budget of the film. (What was that about her being greedy?)
Anyway Let us assume that it all started out in god faith. That they intended to make a Documentary Film. Somewhere along the way it became a Feature film. They took care of that in the small print. Okay.
In the last clause of the agreement(s), they gave themselves the right to "cut, alter and adapt the writings and use alone or with other material and/or accompanied by editorial comment."
Herein (they believe) lies their salvation.
What did they mean by this clause? What did they intend when they included this in the contract?
To me, as a writer of films, it seems fair enough. You must have the right to cut, alter and adapt your source material. Of course you must. Unless you want to make a film that is exactly as long as the life of your subject.
But does "cut, alter, and adapt" include Distort and Falsify?
The Producers' (by now public, and written) refusal to show Phoolan the original version of the film (the one that has been seen and reviewed and is now on its World Tour) suggests that they know they have done her a terrible injustice. But they say they are not worried because they have a "fool-proof" (India Today, August 21st) contract with her. What does this imply? That they deliberately set out cheat and mislead her? That they conned an illiterate woman into signing away her rights? I don't know. I'm asking.
Surely the fact that they were dealing with an illiterate woman only increases their obligation to her?
Surely it was up to them, to check and counter-check the facts with her? To read her the script, to fine-tune the details, to show her the rough-cut before the film was shown to the rest of the world?
Instead what do they do? They never meet her once. Not even to sign the contracts . They re-invent her life. Her loves. Her rapes. They implicate her in the murder of twenty-two men that she denies having committed.
Then they try to slither out of showing her the film!
"Cut, alter and adapt"? -- is that what it's called?
Could it be that the film's success, and the Producers' (and Director's) blatant exploitation of this person, both have to do with the same thing? That she's a woman, that she's poor, and illiterate, and has (they assume) no court of appeal? Which is why she became a bandit in the first place? What they haven't got yet. The point that they seem to keep on missing (in the film, and otherwise), is that she's no victim. She's a fighter. Unfortunately, this time she's on their territory. Not hers.
After I saw the film, which was about three weeks ago, I have met Phoolan several times.
Initially, I did not speak of the film to her, because I believed that it would have been wrong of me to influence her opinion. The burden of my song so far, has been Show her the film. I only supported her demand that she had a right, a legal right to see the film that claims to be the true story of her life.
My opinion of the film has nothing to do with her opinion.
Mine doesn't matter.
Hers does.
More than anyone else's.
Two days ago, on the 1st of September, when the Producer replied to Phoolan's legal notice, making it absolutely clear that he would not show her the original, international version of the film, (the version that has been written about, and so glowingly reviewed), I sat with her and told the sequence of events, scene by scene.
The discrepancies, the departures, the outright fabrications are frightening. I wrote about some of them last week. I didn't know then just how bad it really was.
Phoolan didn't write any prison diaries. She couldn't. She narrated them to someone who was with her in jail. The writings were smuggled out and given to Mala Sen. Mala Sen pieced them together, and wrote first a script, then a book. The book presents several versions of the story. Including Phoolan's. The film doesn't, Mala Sen's book, and Bandit Queen the film differ radically, not just in fact, but in spirit. I believe that her film script was altered by the makers of the film.
Substantially altered. It departs from the book as well as from Phoolan's version of her story.
Since I have not seen Phoolan's diaries, I can only read the extracts published in Mala Sen's book and assume that they are accurate. Mala Sen quotes her: "...what I am writing is read by many, and written by those I do not know so well..."
What a terrible position to be in! What easy meat for jackals!
According to Mala Sen, Phoolan Devi was reluctant to even discuss rape:


"There are various versions of what happened to Phoolan Devi after Vikram Mallah's death. When I spoke to her she was reluctant to speak of her bezathi (dishonour) as she put it, at the hands on the Thakurs. She did not want to dwell on the details and merely said "Un logo ne mujhse bahut mazak ki". I was not surprised at her reticence to elaborate. First of all, because we had an audience, including members of her family, other prisoners and their relatives. Secondly because we live in societies where a woman who is abused sexually ends up feeling deeply humiliated, knowing that many will think that it was her fault, or partly her fault. That she provoked the situation in the first place. Phoolan Devi, like many other women all over the world, feels she will only add to her own shame if she speaks of this experience."

Does this sound like a man who would have agreed to have her humiliation re-created for the world to watch? Does this sound like the book that a film replete with rape could be based on? Every time Mala Sen quotes Phoolan as saying " un logo ne mujhse bahut mazaak ki the Director of the film has assumed that she meant that she was raped. "How else can a woman be expected to express the shame heaped on her...asks Kapur." (August 31st [1994], India Today) And in the film he does not shy away from dwelling on details. Oh no. That's woman stuff. When Phoolan won't provide him with the details, he goes ahead and uses the wholly vicarious account of some American journalist from "Esquire ". The man writes with skill and feeling. Almost as though he was there. (I've quoted from this at length in The Great Indian Rape-Trick I)
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that whenever Phoolan says "mujhse mazaak ki" she does in fact mean that she was raped. Do they have the right to show it? In all it's explicit detail? This raises the question of an Individual's Right to Privacy. In Phoolan Devi's case, not just Privacy, Sexual Privacy. And not just infringement. Outright assault.
In the rape scenes in the film, (Phoolan Devi is shown being raped by her husband, raped by Babu Gujjar, raped by the police and gang-raped bv the Thakurs of Behmai), her humiliation and degradation could not possibly, be more explicit.
While I watched this, I remember feeling that using the identity of a living woman, re-creating her degradation and humiliation for public consumption, was totally unacceptable to me. Doing it without her consent, without her specific, written repeated, whole-hearted, unambiguous, consent, is monstrous. I cannot believe that it has happened. I cannot believe that it is being condoned.
I cannot believe that it is not a criminal offense.
If it were a fictional film, where rape was being examined as an issue, if it were a fictional character that was being raped, it would be an entirely different issue. I would be glad to enter into an argument about whether showing the rape was necessary, whether or not it was "exploitative".
The Accused - a film that challenges accepted norms about what constitutes rape and what doesn't, hardly shows the act of rape at all!
Bandit Queen on the other hand, has nothing intelligent to say about the subject beyond the fact that Rape is degrading and humiliating. Dwelling on the Degradation and the Humiliation is absolutely essential for the commercial success of the film. Without it, there would be no film. The intensity of these emotions is increased to fever-pitch because we're told - She's real . This happened.
And faithfully, our critics go home and write about it. Praise it to the skies.
Who are we to assess a living woman's rape? Who are we to decide how well done it was? How Brutal? How Chilling? How true-to-life?
Who the hell are we?
Had I been raped, perhaps I would devote my every waking hour to call for stiffer legislation, harsher punishment for rapists. Perhaps I'd take lessons from Lorena Bobbitt. What I would never ever do, and I don't imagine that anyone else has (even those who loved the film so much) would either -- is to agree to have it re-created as entertainment cloaked in the guise of concern, for an audience that was going to pay to watch. It would be like being raped all over again. And ironically, the more skillful the Director, the greater would be my shame and humiliation.
I am disgusted that I was invited to Siri Fort to watch Phoolan Devi being raped - without her permission. Had I known that she had not seen the film, I would never have gone. I know that there are video tapes of Bandit Queen doing the rounds in Delhi drawing rooms. If any of you who reads this essay has a tape - Please Do the right thing. Show it to Phoolan Devi (since the Producers won't). Ask her whether she minds your watching or not.

Given all this, to call Phoolan Devi's protests and demands to see the film " Tantrums" (Amita Malik, 'Sunday', 28th August [1994]) and "Grumbling" (Sunday Observer, 21st August [1994] is so small-minded, so blinkered that it's unbelievable. And unforgiveable.
I've tried so hard to understand how it could possibly be that so many intelligent people have not seen through this charade. I can only think, that to them a "True Story' is just another kind of story. That "Truth" is merely a more exciting form of fiction.
They don't believe that Phoolan Devi is real. That she actually exists. That she has feelings. Opinions. A mind. A Past. A father that she loved ( who didn't sell her for a second-hand bicycle). Her life, or what they know of it, is so implausible, so farfetched. So unlike what Life means to them. It has very little to do with what they associate with being "human".
They cannot put themselves in her shoes - and think what they'd feel if the film had done to them what it has done to her.
The more "touched" among them don't denigrate her. They exalt her with their pity. From 'Woman' to 'Womanhood'.



"Indeed the strength of the film is that it goes much beyond Phoolan Devi, who is of course the original peg..." (Amita Malik, 'Sunday', August 28th) "Kapur's film is not the story of one extraordinary woman: it is a manifesto about Indian womanhood." (Alexander Walker, Evening News)

When a woman becomes Womanhood, she ceases to be real.
I don't need to argue this any further, because my work has been done for me Every time they open their mouths - the Producer, the Director and even the Actress of this incredible film - every time they open their mouths, they damn themselves.



"The West has lapped up the film... it has been very tightly edited and the essence of child abuse and caste-discrimination comes out very strongly. Phoolan is just a vehicle for the expression of these..."



(S.S. Bedi, 'Sunday', August 28th [1994])




"The film was a means of finding deeper meaning in the world. It was a means of discovering myself. It helped me discover new aspects of myself."



(Shekhar Kapur, the Director, 'Sunday' August 28th [1994])




"When I was selected for the role, I read every report on Phoolan and looked at her picture for hours on end to understand her. When I was done with all this, I realised that I had formed an image of her, and worked out why she had reacted the way she did. After this I did not want to meet her because I did not want any contradictions to the image I had formed of her."



(Seema Biswas, the Actress, 'Sunday', August 28th [1994])

In their quest for Classic Cinema, they've stripped a human being of her Rights. Her Dignity. Her Privacy. Her Freedom. And perhaps, as I will argue later, of her Right to Life itself.
And so we move from Rape to Murder.
Phoolan Devi denies having murdered twenty-two Thakurs at Behmai. She has denied it in her statement to the Police.She has denied it in her "writings". She has denied it to Mala Sen.
Bandit Queen shows her present and responsible for the massacre of twenty-two Thakurs at Behmai.
What does this mean?
Essentially I did not kill these twenty-two men.

Yes you did.
No I didn't.
Yes you did. Cut, Alter and Adapt ?
Does Bandit Queen the film constitute an Interference with the Administration of Justice? It certainly does.
This February, after eleven years in prison, Phoolan Devi was released on bail. Two days after her release, the widows of Behmai filed an appeal against Mulayam Singh Yadav's plans to drop the charges against Phoolan Devi for the massacre of their husbands. Phoolan's trial is still pending in Indian Courts. If she's found guilty, she could be hanged.
Very few know what really happened in Behmai on that cold February night. There was gun-fire. There were twenty-two corpses. Those are the facts.
Was Phoolan Devi there? Did she kill those men? Two of the men who were shot but didn't die have said she wasn't there. Other eye-witnesses say that she was. There is plenty of room for doubt Certainly there is that.
All we have for sure, is a Definite Maybe.
Faced with this dilemma, with this great big hole in their story-line, (Rape n' Retribution) - what does our 'Greatest Indian Film Ever Made' do?
It haggles with the ''Truth'' like a petty shop-keeper



The case against Phoolan was sub-judice and so we took her statements about the Behmai massacre where she said she had shot a few people. (?) But in the film we have not shown her killing anybody as we did not want it to affect her case."



(S.S. Bedi, 'Sunday', August 28th [1994])"

But what if she didin fact kill those men? Is that not an terrible injustice to the murdered men and their families?
Never mind the fact that according to the law, showing Phoolan Devi present, supervising and responsible for the massacre, whether or not she actually pulled the trigger, does not make her any less culpable.
So, in effect, the result of their little arrangement with the "Truth", is that they've managed something quite remarkable They've got it wrong both ways. They've done both sides an injustice.
Apart from this, in other, more subtle ways, the Interference in the Administration of Justice has already begun.
Phoolan Devi knows that the people who made the film have a lot at stake. She also knows that they have the Media supporting them. She knows that they are powerful, influential people. From where she comes from, they look as though they own the world They fly around it all the time.
And who is she? What has she got to say for herself?
That she's India's best-known bandit?
She's not even a free woman. She's a prisoner, out on bail. She is terrified. She feels cornered. She cannot be expected to be coherent in her protest.
She believes that all it would take would be a nudge here, a wink there, and she could land right back in jail. Perhaps her fears are unfounded. But as far as she's concerned, they could.
So what are her options? She's caught between a rock and a hard place. Should she accept this public re-enactment of her rape, her humiliation, her by now immortal walk to the well? Should she leave uncontested the accusation that she did indeed kill twenty-two men?
What could she expect in return?
A little bit of Liberty?
Somewhat shaky, somewhat dangerous, somewhat temporary?
When Bandit Queen is released in India the people who see it will believe that it is the Truth. It will he seen by people in cities and villages. By lawyers, by judges, by journalists, by Phoolan Devi's family, by the relatives of the men who were murdered in Behmai. By people who's vision and judgement will directly affect Phoolan Devi's life.
It will influence Courts of Law. It could provoke retribution from the Thakur community which has every right to be outraged at the apparent condoning of this massacre. And they, judging by the yard-stick of this film, would be entirely justified were they to take the law into their own. hands
Perhaps not here, in the suburbs of Delhi. But away from here. Where these things are real and end in death.
Bandit Queen the film, seriously jeopardises Phoolan Devi's life. It passes judgements that ought to be passed in Courts of Law. Not in Cinema Halls.
The threads that connect Truth to Half-Truths to Lies could very quickly tighten into a noose around Phoolan Devi's neck. Or a bullet through her head. Or a knife in her back.
While We-the-Audience peep saucer-eyed out of our little lives. Not remotely aware of the fact that our superficial sympathy, our ignorance of the facts and our intellectual sloth -- could grease her way to the gallows.
We makes me sick.



September 3rd, '94.

---

Arundhati Roy on Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen

The Great Indian Rape-Trick I

At the premiere screening of Bandit Queen in Delhi, Shekhar Kapur introduced the film with these words: "I had a choice between Truth and Aesthetics. I chose Truth, because Truth is Pure."
To insist that the film tells the Truth is of the utmost commercial (and critical) importance to him. Again and again, we are assured, in interviews, in reviews, and eventually in writing on the screen before the film begins. "This is a True Story."

If it weren't the "Truth", what would redeem it from being just a classy version of your run-of-the-mill Rape n' Retribution theme that our film industry churns out every now and then? What would save it from the familiar accusation that it doesn't show India in a Proper Light? Exactly Nothing.
It's the "Truth" that saves it. Every time. It dives about like Superman with a swiss knife - and snatches the film straight from the jaws of unsavoury ignominy. It has bought headlines. Blunted argument. Drowned criticism.

If you say you found the film distasteful, you're told - Well that's what truth is - distasteful. Manipulative? That's Life - manipulative.
Go on. Now you try.
Try...Exploitative. Or.. Gross. Try Gross.

It's a little like having a dialogue with the backs of trucks.
God is Love.
Life is Hard.
Truth is Pure.
Sound Horn.
Whether or not it is the Truth is no longer relevant. The point is that it will, ( if it hasn't already) - become the Truth.

Phoolan Devi the woman has ceased to be important. (Yes of course she exists. She has eyes, ears, limbs hair etc. Even an address now) But she is suffering from a case of Legenditis. She's only a version of herself. There are other versions of her that are jostling for attention. Particularly Shekhar Kapur's "Truthful" one, which we are currently being bludgeoned into believing.




"... it has the kind of story, which, if it were a piece of fiction, would be difficult to credit. In fact, it is the true story of Phoolan Devi, the Indian child bride..."



Derek Malcolm writes in The Guardian.

But is it? The True Story? How does one decide? Who decides?

Shekhar Kapur says that the film is based on Mala Sen's book - India's Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi. The book reconstructs the story, using interviews, newspaper reports, meetings with Phoolan Devi and extracts from Phoolan's written account, smuggled out of prison by her visitors, a few pages at a time.
Sometimes various versions of the same event - versions that totally conflict with each other i.e: Phoolan's version, a journalist's version, or an eye- witnesses version - are all presented to the reader in the book. What emerges is a complex, intelligent and human book. Full of ambiguity, full of concern, full curiosity about who this woman called Phoolan Devi really is.

Shekhar Kapur wasn't curious.
He has openly admitted that he didn`t feel that he needed to meet Phoolan. His producer Bobby Bedi supports this decision "Shekhar would have met her if he had felt a need to do so." (Sunday Observer August 20th [1994]).
It didn't matter to Shekhar Kapur who Phoolan Devi really was. What kind of person she was. She was a woman, wasn't she? She was raped wasn't she? So what did that make her? A Raped Woman! You've seen one, you've seen 'em all.
He was in business.
What the hell would he need to meet her for?

Did he not stop to think that there must have been something very special about her? That if this was the normal career graph if a low-caste village woman that was raped, our landscapes would be teeming with female gangsters?

If there is another biographer any where in the world who has not done a living subject the courtesy of meeting her even once - will you please stand up and say your name? And having done that, will you (and your work) kindly take a running jump?

What does Shekhar Kapur mean when he says the film is based on Mala Sen's book? How has he decided which version of which event is "True" ? On what basis has he made these choices?
There's a sort of loutish arrogance at work here. A dunce's courage. Unafraid of what it doesn't know.
What he has done is to rampage through the book picking up what suits him, ignoring and even altering what doesn't.

I am not suggesting that a film should include every fact that's in the book.
I am suggesting that if you take a long hard look at the choices he has made - at his inclusions, his omissions and his blatant alterations, a truly dreadful pattern emerges.
Phoolan Devi (in the film version), has been kept on a tight leash. Each time she strays towards the shadowy marshlands that lie between Victimhood and Brutishness, she has been reined in. Brought to heel.
It is of consummate importance to the Emotional Graph of the film, that you never, ever, stop pitying her. That she never threatens the Power Balance.
I would have thought that this was anathema to the whole point of the Phoolan Devi story. That it went way beyond the You-Rape-Me: I'll-Kill- You equation. That the whole point of it was that she got a little out of control. That the Brutalized became the Brute.
The film wants no part of this. Because of what it would do to the Emotional Graph. To understand this, you must try and put Rape into its correct perspective. The Rape of a nice Woman (saucy, headstrong, foul-mouthed perhaps, but basicaly moral, sexually moral) - is one thing. The rape of a nasty/perceived-to-be-immoral womall, is quite another. It wouldn't be quite so bad. You wouldn't feel quite so sorry. Perhaps you wouldn't feel sorry at all.
Any policeman will tell you that.
Whenever the police are accused of custodial rape, they immediately set to work. Not to prove that she wasn't raped. But to prove that she wasn't nice. To prove that she was a loose woman A prostitute. A divorcee. Or an Elopee - ie: She asked for it.
Same difference.

Bandit Queen -the film, does not make a case against Rape. It makes its case against the Rape of nice (read moral), women. (Never mind the rest of us that aren't "nice") .

[??The film is consistently??] it's on the lookout, like a worried hen - saving Phoolan Devi from herself. Meanwhile we, the audience, are herded along, like so much trusting cattle. We cannot argue, (because Truth is Pure. And you can't mess With that).

Every time the Director has been faced with something that could disrupt the simple, pre- fabricated calculations uf his cloying morality play, it has been tampered with and forced to fit.
I'm not accusing him of having planned this.
I believe that it comes from a vision that has been distorted by his own middle-class outrage, which he has then turned on his audience like a fire-fighter's hose.

According to Shekhar Kapur's film, every landmark - every decison, every turning-point in Phoolan Devi's life, starting with how she became a dacoit in the first place, has to do with having been raped, or avenging rape.
He has just blundered through her life like a Rape-diviner
You cannot but sense his horrified fascination at the havoc that a wee willie can wreak. It's a sort of reversed male self absorption.
Rape is the main dish. Caste is the sauce that it swims in.

The film opens with a pre-credit sequence of Phoolan Devi the child being married off to an older man who takes her away to his village where he rapes her, and she eventually runs away. We see her next as a young girl being sexually abused bv Thakur louts in her village . When she protests, she is publicly humiliated, externed from the village, and when she returns to the village, ends up in prison. Here too she is raped and beaten, and eventually released on bail. Soon after her release, she is carried away bv dacoits. She has in effect become a criminal who has jumped bail. And so has little choice but to embark on a life in the ravines.
He has the caste-business and the rape-business neatly intertwined to kick-start that "swift, dense, dramatic narrative" (Sunil Sethi, Pioneer August 14th [1994])
Mala's book tells a different story.
Phoolan Devi stages her first protest against injustice at the age of ten. Before she is married off. In fact it's the reason that she's married off so early. To keep her out of trouble.
She didn't need to be raped to protest. Some of us don't.
She had heard from her mother, the story of how her father's brusher Biharilal and his son Maiyadeen falsified the land records and drove her father and musher out of the family house, forcing them to live in a little hut on the outskirts of the village.
The angry little girl accompanied by a frightened older sister marches into her uncle's hora field where the two of them hang around with a combative air, munching hora nuts and plucking flowers (combatively). Their cousin Maiyadeen, a young man in his twenties, orders the children off his premises. Phoolan refuses to move. Instead this remarkable child taunts him, and questions his claim to the land. She was special.
She is beaten unconscious with a brick.

Phoolan Devi's first war, like almost every dacoit's first war, was fought for territory. It was the classic beginning of the journey into dacoitdom.
But does it have rape in it?
Nope.
Caste-violence?
Nope.
So is it worth including in the film?
Nope.
According to the book, her second protest too, has to do with territory. And it is this (not the sexual harassment bv the village louts, though that happens too), that lands Phoolan Devi in jail and enters her name in the police records.
Maiyadeen, the book says, was enraged because the property dispute (thanks to Phoolan's pleas to the village panchayat) had been re-opened and transferred to the Allahabad High Court.
As revenge he destroys Devideen's (Phoolan's father) crop, and is in the process of hacking down their Neem tree when Phoolan intervenes and throws a stone at him. She is attacked, trussed up, and handed to the police.
Soon after she's released on bail, she is kidnapped by dacoits. This too, according to Phoolan's version ( upto, this point, there is no other version), is engineered by Maiyadeen as a ruse to get her out of his hair.
Maiyadeen does not figure in the film.

Already some pretty big decisions have been made. What stays, what goes. What is high-lighted, what isn't.
Life is Rape. The rest is jus' details.

We then see Phoolan in the ravines, being repeatedly raped by Babu Singh Gujar, the Thakur leader of the gang she has been kidnapped by. Vikram Mallah, the second-in-command is disgusted by his behaviour and puts a bullet through him. According to the book the killing happens as a drunken Babu Gujar is threatening to assault Phoolan. In the film he's actually at it, lying on top of her, his naked bottoms jerking. As he breathes his last, Phoolan blinks the blood out of her eyes and looks long into the eyes of her redeemer. Just so that we get the point.
After this we are treated to a sequence of After-rape-romance. The touching bits about the first stirrings of sexual desire in a much-raped woman. The way it works in the film is If-you- touch-me-I'll-slap-you-but-I-really-do-want-to-touch-you.
It's choreographed like a dusty dance in which they rub against each other, but whenever he touches her she swats his hand away, but nevertheless quivers with desire. It is such a crude, obvious, doltish depiction of conflict in a woman who is attracted to a man, but associates sex with humiliation. It's not in the book, so I'm not sure whose version Shekhar has used. From the looks of it, probably Donald Duck's.
Vikram Mallah and Phoolan Devi become lovers. While the book and the film agree that he was her one true love, the book does not suggest that he was her only lover.

The film does. She has to be portrayed as a One Man Woman. Otherwise who's going to pity her? So it's virtue or bust. One lover (a distant cousin) is eliminated completely. The other (Man Singh), is portrayed as what used to be known in college as a Rakhi-brother.

From all accounts, Vikram Mallah seems to have been the midwife of Phoolan's birth into dacoitdom.
He supervises her first act of retribution against her husband Puttilal.
The film shows him bound and gagged, being beaten by Phoolan Devi with the butt of her gun, whimpering and crying with remembered rage.

At having been raped. In the Retribution bits, she is allowed a little latitude. Otherwise, (as we shall see) none at all.

But there's a sly omission here. According to the book, according to Phoolan Devi herself, there were two victims that day. Not one.
The second one was a woman. Vidya, Puttilal's second wife.
The film hasn't told us about a second experience Phoolan has with Puttilal. The time that Maiyadeen forced her to return to Puttilal. Phoolan arrived at her husband's house to find that he had taken a second wife. Vidya harassed and humiliated Phoolan and eventually forced Puttilal to send her away.
Her humiliation at Vidya's hands is more recent in Phoolan's memory.
Phoolan, in her written version says she wanted to kill them both and leave a note saying that this will be the fate of any man who takes two wives. Later she changed her mind and decided to leave them alive to tell the tale. She beat them both. And broke Puttilal's hands and legs.

But what nice woman would do that?
Beat up another woman?
How would you feel sorry for someone like that?

So, in the film, Vidya is dumped.
Phoolan's affair with Vikram Mallah ends tragically when he is shot.
She is captured bv his Thakur killers, gagged, bound, and transported to Behmai. The stage is set for what has come to be referred to as the "centerpiece" of the film. The gang-rape.
It is the scene by which the film is judged.
Not surprisingly, Phoolan herself is reticent about what happened. All she says is un logo ne mejhse bahut mazaak ki.
She mentions being beaten, humliliated and paraded from village to village. She mentions another woman dacoit Kusuma -- who disliked her, and taunted and abused her. (Of course there's no sign of her in the film. It would only serve to confuse the Woman-as-victim moral arithmetic.)
Since Phoolan isn't forthcoming, it is the vivid (vicarious) account in Esquire by an American, journalist, Jon Bradshaw that has been enlisted to structure this scene.



"... Phoolan screamed, striking out at him, but he was too strong. Holding her down, the stranger raped her. They came in one by one after that. Tall, silent Thakur men -- and raped her until Phoolan lost consciousness. For the next three weeks Phoolan was raped several times a night, and she submitted silently turning her face to the wall... she lost all sense of time... a loud voice summoned her outside. Sri Ram ordered Phoolan to fetch water from the well. When she refused, he ripped off her clothes and kicked her savagely...at last she limped to the well while her tormentors laughed and spat at her. The naked girl was dragged back to the hut and raped again."

Whatever Shekhar Kapur's other failings are, never let it be said that he wasn't a trier. He did his bit too. He (Pioneer Aug 14th, India Today August 21st [1994])locked himself up in a room - the door opening and closing as one man after another strode in - imagining himself being sodomized!!! After this feat of inter-sexual empathy, he arrives at some radical, definitive conclusions. " There is no pain in a gang-rape, no physical pain after a while," he assures us "It is about something as dirty as the abject humiliation of a human being and the complete domination of its soul."
Thanks baby. I would never have guessed.
It's hard to match the self-righteousness of a film-maker with a cause. Harder when the film- maker is a man and the cause is rape.
And when it's the gang-rape of a low-caste woman by high-caste men .. don't even try it. Go with the feeling.
We see a lot of Phoolan's face, in tight close-up, contorted into a grimace of fear and pain as she is raped and mauled and buggered. The overwhelming consensus in the press has been that the rape was brilliantly staged and chilling.

That it wasn't exploitative.
Now what does that mean? Should we be grateful to Shekhar Kapur for not showing us the condition of her breasts and genitals? Or theirs? That he leaves so much to our imagination?
That he gave us a tasteful rape?
But I thought the whole point of this wonderful film was its no-holds-barred brutality? So why stop now? Why the sudden coyness?
I'll tell you why. Because it's all about regulating the Rape-meter. Adjusting it enough to make us a little preen-at-the-gills. Skip dinner perhaps . But not miss work.
It's us, We-the-Audience, stuck in our voyeuristic middle-class lives who really make the decisions about how much or how little rape/violence we can take/will applaud, and therefore, are given.
It isn't about the story. (There are ways and ways of telling a story) It isn't about the Truth. (There are ways around that too. Right?) It isn't about what Really Happened. It's none of that high falutin' stuff.
It's good old Us. We make the decisions about how much we would like to see. And when the mixture's right, it thrills us,. And we purr with approbation.

It's a class thing. If the controls are turned up too high, the hordes will get excited and arrive. To watch the centrepiece. They might even whistle. They won't bother to cloak their eagerness in concern like we do.
This way, it's fine, It's just Us and our Imagination.
But hey, I have news for you - the hordes have heard and are on their way. They'll even pay to watch. It'll make money, the centrepiece. It's hot stuff

How does one grade film-rapes on a scale from Exploitative to Non-exploitative?
Does it depend on how much skin we see? Or is it a more complex formula that juggles exposed skin, genitalia, and bare breasts?
Exploitative I'd say, is when the whole point of the exercise is to stand on high moral ground, and inform us, (as if we didn't know), that rape is about abject humiliation.
And, as in the case of this film, when it exploits exploitation. Phoolan has said (Pioneer, August 15 [1994]) that she thinks they're no better shall the men who raped her. This producer/director duo.
And they've done it without dirtying their hands. What was that again? The complete domination of the soul? I guess you don't need hands to hold souls down.
After the centrepiece, the film rushes through to its conclusion.
Phoolan manages to escape from her captors and arrives at a cousin's house, where she recuperates and then eventually teams up with Man Singh who later becomes her lover, (though of course the film won't admit it).
On one foray into a village with her new gang, (one of the only times we see her indulging in some non-rape-related banditry), we see her wandering through a village in a daze, with flaring nostrils, while the men loot and plunder. She isn't even scared when the police arrive. Before she leaves she smashes a glass case, picks out a pair of silver anklets and gives it to a little girl.
Sweet.

When Phoolan and her gang, arrive in Behmai for the denouement, everybody flees indoors except for a baby that is for some reason, left by the well, The gang fans out and gathers the Thakurs who have been marked for death. Suddenly the colour seeps out of the film and everything becomes bleached and dream sequency. It all turns very conceptual. No brutal close-ups. No bestiality.
A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
The twenty-two men are shot The baby wallows around in rivers of blood. Then colour leaches back into the film.
And with that, according to the film, she's more or less through with her business. The film certainly, is more or less through with her. Because there's no more rape. No more retribution.

According to the book, it is really only after the Behmai massacre that Phoolan Devi grows to fit her legend. There's a price on her head, people are baying for her blood, the gang splinters. Many of them are shot by the police. Ministers and Chief-ministers are in a flap. The police are in a panic . Dacoits are being shot down in fake encounters and their bodies are publicly displayed like game. Phoolan is hunted like an animal. But ironically, it is now, for the first time that she is in control of her life. She becomes a leader of men. Man Singh becomes her lover, but on her terms. She makes decisions. She confounds the police. She evades every trap they set for her./ She plays daring little games with them. She undermines the credibility of the entire UP police force. And all this time, the police don't even know what she really looks like.
Even when the famous Malkhan Singh surrenders, Phoolan doesn't.
This goes on for two whole years. When she finally does decide to surrender, it is after several meetings with a persuasive policeman called Rajendra Chaturvedi, the SP of Bhind, with whom she negotiates the terms of her surrender to the government of Madhya Pradesh.
Is the film interested in any of this?
Go on. Take a wild guess.

In the film, we see her and Man Singh on the run, tired, starved and out of bullets. Man Singh seems concerned, practical and stoical.
Phoolan is crying and asking for her mother!!!
The next thing we know is that we're at surrender. As she gives up her gun, she looks at Man Singh and he gives her an approving nod.
Good Girl! Clever girl!
God Clever Girl

Phoolan Devi spent three-and-a-half years in the ravines. She was wanted on 48 counts of major crime, 22 murder, the rest kidnaps-for-ransom and looting.
Even simple mathematics tells me that we've been told just half the story.
But the cool word for Half-truth is Greater-truth.
Other signs of circular logic are beginning to surface.
Such as: Life is Art

Art is not Real
How about changing the title of the film to: Phoolan Devi's Rape and Abject Humiliation: The True half-Truth?
How about sending it off to an underwater film festival with only one entry?
What responsibility does a biographer have to his subject? Particularly to a living subject?
None at all?
Does it not matter what she thinks or how this is going to affect her life?
Is he not even bound to shovv her the work before it is released for public consumption?

If the issues involved are culpable criminal offenses such as Murder and Rape - if some of them are still pending in a court of law -- legally, is he allowed to present conjecture, reasonable assumption and hearsay as the unalloyed "Truth?"

Shekhar Kapur has made an appeal to the Censor Board to allow the film through without a single cut. He has said that the Film, as a work of Art, is a whole, if it were censored it wouldn't be the same film.
What about the Life that he has fashioned his Art from?
He has a completelv different set of rules for that.

It's been several months since the film premiered at Cannes. Several weeks since the showings in Bombay and Delhi. Thousands of people have seen the film. It's being invited to festivals all over the world.
Phoolan Devi hasn't seen the film. She wasn't invited.
I met her yesterday. In the morning papers Bobby Bedi had dismissed Phoolan's statements to the press -- " Let Phoolan sit with me and point out inaccuracies in the film, I will counter her accusations effectively, " (Sunday Observer, August 21st [1994]). What is he going to do? Explain to her how it really happened?
But it's deeper than that. His story to the press is one thing. To Phoolan it's quite another. In front of me she rang him up and asked him when she could see the film. He would not give her a definite date.
What's going on?
Private screenings have been organised for powerful people. But not for her.
They hadn't bargained for this. She was supposed to be safely in jail. She wasn't supposed to matter. She isn't supposed to have an opinion.
"Right now", the Sunday Observer says, "Bobby Bedi is more concerned about the Indian Censor Board than a grumbling Phoolan Devi."
Legally, as things stand, in UP the charges against her haven't been dropped. (Mulayam Singh has tried, but an appeal against this is pending in the High Court).
There are several versions of what happened at Behmai. Phoolan denies that she was there. More importantly, two of the men who were shot at but didn't die say she wasn't there. Other eye- witnesses say she was. Nothing has been proved. Everything is conjecture.

By not showing her the film, but keeping her quiet until it's too late to protest (until it has been passed by the Censors and the show hits the road), what are they doing to Phoolan? By appearing to remain silent, is she concurring with the film version of the massacre at Behmai? Which states, unequivocally, that Phoolan was there. Will it appear as though she is admitting evidence against herself? Does she know that whether or not the film tells the Truth it is only a matter of time before it becomes the Truth. And that public sympathy for being shown as a rape-victim doesn't get you off the hook for murder?
Are they helping her to put her head in a noose?
On the one hand the concerned cowboys Messrs Bedi & Kapur are so eager to share with us the abject humiliation and the domination of Phoolan Devi's "soul", and o n the other they seem to be so totally uninterested in her.
In what she thinks of the film, or what their film will do to her life and future.
What is she to them? A concept? Or just a cunt?
One last terrifying thing. While she was still in jail, Phoolan was rushed to hospital bleeding heavily because of an ovarian cyst. Her womb was removed. When Mala Sen asked why this had been necessary, the prison doctor laughed and said " We don't want her breeding any more Phoolan Devi's."
The State removed a woman's uterus! Without asking her .Without her knowing.
It just reached into her and plucked out a part of her!
It decided to control who was allowed to breed and who wasn't.
Was this even mentioned in the film?
No. Not even in the rolling titles at the end
When it comes to getting bums on seats, hysterectomy just doesn't measure up to rape.




August 22nd, '94

Courtesy- http://www.sawnet.org/