Bandit Queen: Cinematic representation of social banditry in India

Its long history and destabilising impact notwithstanding, banditry has received scant academic attention in India. Confined mostly to occasional and incident-driven media reportage, the socioeconomic factors that fuelled insurgencies and banditry and the milieu which provided a context for the operations of these outlawed movements received little attention. Cinematic representation of the social banditry phenomenon in the country, based on little or no first-hand research, as a result, suffered from ingenuousness and failed to emerge from the romanticised depiction of insurgency and terrorism which Bollywood, India's movie industry, is known for. Bandit Queen, the biopic of Phoolan Devi, in contrast, stands apart. Scathing criticisms regarding its use of sex as a tool for commercial success notwithstanding, the movie succeeds in drawing the viewers' attention to the persisting social cleavages in India. Using rape as its central theme, it shocks its audience into acknowledging the reality and relevance of social banditry in a country where governance remains an absent entity for a vast majority of its people. That most Bollywood movies depicting social issues have continued to remain aground in romanticism and irrelevance makes Bandit Queen even more relevant in times to come.