|
Phoolan Devi ((ヒンディー語:फूलन देवी), ') (10 August 1963 – 25 July 2001), popularly known as "Bandit Queen", was an Indian bandit and later a Member of Parliament. Born to a low caste family in rural Uttar Pradesh, Phoolan endured poverty as a child, had an unsuccessful marriage, and took to a life of crime. While yet a teenager, Phoolan ran away from her husband and joined a gang of bandits. She was the only woman in that gang, and her relationship with one gang member, coupled with other minor factors, caused a gunfight between gang members. Phoolan's lover was killed in that gunfight and Phoolan was gang-raped by the victorious rival faction. She then rallied the remnants of her dead lover's faction, took another lover from among those men, and wrecked revenge upon Behmai, the village where she had been raped. As many as twenty-two Rajput men belonging to that village were lined up and shot dead. Not a single one of these men had raped or otherwise harmed Phoolan - their crime was that they belonged to Behmai village, were male, and belonged to the Rajput caste to which Phoolan's rapists had belonged. The press portrayed the Behmai massacre as an act of righteous lower-caste rebellion and Phoolan herself as an oppressed feminist Robin Hood. The respectful sobriquet 'Devi' was conferred upon her by the media at this point. However, Indian police authorities state unequivocally that there is no recorded instance of Phoolan ever having helped a single person who was poor or needy, and that the feminist Robin Hood image is a media-created myth.〔 Her only motivation, they say, was revenge and hatred towards an entire caste of people. Phoolan evaded capture for two years after the massacre before she and her few surviving gang-members surrendered in 1983. She was charged with ''forty-eight'' major crimes, including multiple murders, plunder, arson and kidnapping for ransom. After eleven years pending trial, the state government headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party withdrew all charges against her, and Phoolan was released in 1994.〔 She then stood for election to parliament as a candidate of the Samajwadi Party and was twice elected to the Lok Sabha as the member for Mirzapur. In 2001, she was shot dead at the gates of her official bungalow (allotted to her as MP) in New Delhi by former rival bandits whose kinsmen had been slaughtered at Behmai by her gang. The 1994 film ''Bandit Queen'' is loosely based on her life. ==Early life== Phoolan was born into the mallah (boatmen) caste,〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=Phoolan Devi, India's Bandit Queen )〕 in the small village of Ghura Ka Purwa (also spelled Gorha ka Purwa) in Jalaun District, Uttar Pradesh. She was the fourth and youngest child of Devi Din and his wife Moola.〔India today, Volume 26. Thomson Living Media India Ltd., 2001〕 Only she and one older sister survived to adulthood. Phoolan's family were very poor. The major asset owned by them was around one acre (0.4 hectare) of farmland with a large but very old Neem tree on it. They lived, as is traditional in India, as a joint family, meaning that her paternal grandparents, her father's brother, his wife and son shared the family home and common kitchen with Phoolan's parents, her sister and herself. Phoolan's father, uncle and cousin, the three able-bodied men of the family, cultivated the acre of land and laboured at other jobs as daily-wagers in order to support this large family. When Phoolan was eleven years old, her paternal grandparents passed away in quick succession and her father's elder brother became the head of the family. Her cousin, Maya Din, proposed to cut down the Neem tree which occupied a largish patch of their one-acre farmland. He wanted to do this because the Neem tree was old and not very productive, and he wished to cultivate that patch of land with more profitable crops. when Phoolan's father agreed to the proposal with mild protest, the teenage Phoolan was incensed. She felt that since her father had no sons (only two daughters), her uncle and cousin were asserting sole claim on the family's farmland inherited from the paternal grandfather. She confronted her much older cousin, taunted him publicly, called him a thief and repeatedly, over a period of several weeks, showered abused and taunts upon him. Phoolan also attacked her cousin physically when he rose to the bait and berated her for abusing him and making accusations against him.〔 Phoolan then gathered a few village girls and staged a ''Dharna'' (sit-in) on the land, and did not budge even when the family elders tried to use force to drag them home. A few months after this incident, Phoolan's family arranged for her to marry a man named Putti Lal, who lived several hundred miles away and was twelve years older than her. Putti Lal was an abusive spouse and the marriage (illegal under Indian law) was unsuccessful, which motivated Phoolan to return to her parents. During her stay in her parents' house, Phoolan continued to bait and taunt her cousin Maya Din. With the help of a local social worker who was a women's rights activist, Phoolan even took her cousin to court for unlawfully holding her father's land. She lost the case, since her own father did not support her in court. In fact, the land had belonged to Phoolan's grandfather and Maya Din's father had the same rights as Phoolan's own father. Further, the produce and income from that land was being consumed in the family's common kitchen, including both of Phoolan's parents, while the labour was mainly contributed by Maya Din; Phoolan had no brothers who could labour in the fields.〔 In retailiation for the public and private humiliations heaped on him, and in order to teach her a lesson, Maya Din went to the local cops and accused Phoolan of stealing small items belonging to him, including a gold ring and a wrist-watch. The cops, who belonged to nearby villages, knew Phoolan and her family well, and they did what the family wanted. They kept Phoolan, then a minor, in jail for three days, gave her a sound thrashing, and then let her off with a warning to behave better in future and live quietly without quarreling with her family or with others.〔 Phoolan never forgave her cousin for this incident. After Phoolan was released from jail, her parents once again wanted to send her to her abusive husband. While she cohabited with him for a while, now as a social outcast, unwanted by her parents and abused by her husband, she either escaped or was kidnapped which paved her way to banditry. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Phoolan Devi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|