Phoolan Devi: Gendered Subaltern; Caste Warrior

Abstract

This article analyzes Phoolan Devi's life in literature and politics, both of which place her at the intersection of caste and gender. It reads the literary representations of the sexualized violence that Phoolan Devi suffered in the context of the adjudicating discourses of the Indian Penal Code and Hindu law. Both of these discourses construct the raped woman as an originally pure woman whose modesty has been violated; literature, however, provides an alternate frame of value by repurposing myths such as the myth of the baghi, or folk revolutionary, that enable a dismissal of the constructions of secular and sacred law. This essay also analyzes Phoolan Devi's political life with the Samajwadi Party in which she invoked the myth of Eklavya, the undermined male low-caste hero. In her political life, Phoolan Devi sidestepped gender concerns and aligned herself with the right wing Hindutva movement, which implicitly endorsed the conservative gender politics that the literary representations of her story discount. This author concludes that while Phoolan Devi appears to be a gendered combatant in the arena of social injustice, her quest for political success profoundly compromises that agenda.