A letter to Phoolan Devi: A Revolutionary Spirit Against Caste-Based Oppression

A letter to Phoolan Devi: A Revolutionary Spirit Against Caste-Based Oppression

By Shainal Verma

“Sing of my deeds

Tell of my combats

How I fought the treacherous demons

Forgive my failings

And bestow on me peace.”

-Phoolan Devi

Dear Phoolan,

Long before “Queen” was a famous feminist word, you claimed it in your own novel and brave ways.

In your memory, I write today’s article, with memories that are bitter-sweet. Fighting caste-based oppression is never sweet, is it? The only sweet outcome of this fight is looking back and seeing how far you have come, reclaimed your dignity and personhood.

Your memory matters a great deal because the fight against caste based oppression remains as significant, with statistics that signal growing caste based atrocities in the rural and urban regions of India. Gang-rape and murders of Dalit women remain a dark reality.

It sucks that every time one has to remind others of the importance of speaking against caste based violence and oppression, one is expected to state statistics so let me cite a case that took away my slumber.

Gang rape of Anjana Ahirwar

On May 26, 2024, a horrifying turn of caste-based violence meted against Anjana Ahirwar (23) returned to our collective memory as Anjana was found “mysteriously’ dead as she fell from the moving van carrying her uncle, Rajendra Ahirwar’s body.

The problematics of the language attached to portraying Dalit women’s deaths as ‘mysterious’ by the state and civil society needs wider reflection. This is wider reflection cannot be isolated from the memories of many revolutionary fierce Dalit women who resisted caste based oppression and did everything in their power to claim social justice.

The historical trajectory of Anjana Ahirwar’s fight to voice herself against the brahminical subjugation and exploitation of her and her family needs a bigger conversation. The laidback way the state handled the safety of the Dalit woman and her family after raising her voice against sexual assault is alarming as well as heartbreaking, as her brother, Nitin Ahirwar, aka Lalu, was beaten to death in Madhya Pradesh’s Sagar in August 2023.

Lalu confronted a group of four upper-caste men who sexually molested Anjana. Anjana was constantly pressurized to withdraw her complaint, and this pressure was built by vandalizing her house, humiliating and terrifying her mother by forcing her to parade naked in the village, the death of her uncle who was a ‘key’ witness in the murder of Nitin. How different is this from Hathras, when a Dalit girl was gang raped or as latest as yesterday on July 24 2024 when a Dalit girl in Kannauj who was gang raped succumbed to suicide?

Everyday I engage with countless instances of violence, both physical and emotional on Dalit women’s bodies by the brahminical system and I am reminded of the revolutionary instincts and potential of yours who shaked the foundations of caste based slavery and oppression onto Dalit bodies.

You were martyred on July 25 2001, only six years after my birth. It makes me happy that I was alive as the same time as you at least for six years, and it makes me wonder, had you been alive, what would you have done for the same injustice that continues even after your death?

Anjana’s fight against four influential men who have links with the Bharatiya Janta Party reflects that Anjana was an embodiment of your spirit to smash the brahminical system wherein Dalit women’s bodies are seen as disposable and excess. Anjana should not be glorified as a martyr, as she was only human to fight against her dehumanization but in the larger frame of sexual violence that impacts Dalit women, Anjana’s quest to seek social justice and reclamation of stolen dignity and respect of Dalit women becomes a collective memory of anti-caste retaliation.

Anjana becomes another face within the Dalit women’s movement who was not given due social justice as the state failed to protect her and the society continued their daily lives against the backdrop of the wrongdoing that she her family faced and is continuing to face. The civil society is yet to confront the loud calls of justice made by the population of 9.79 crore Dalit women, as per as the 2011 National Census of India.

Who will take accountability for Dalit girls and women’s growing rapes and murders? Who will answer this for us? Where’s the upper caste and class feminists GLOBAL cry against rape and outrage when it comes to speaking against caste based sexual violence? Why is the outrage and anger so selective? If we pause and look around, we can visibly see caste manifests itself in these loud calls for justice made by upper caste and class feminists where Dalit women are never cited or their cases are not highlighted. Neither are Dalit women academicians given due credit while understanding the lives of Dalit women.

While some of us can escape this violence, those living in highly casteist states of India that display the highest Scheduled Castes Atrocities such as Madhya Pradesh government that cuts funding from SC/ST welfare funding and re-directs it to animal welfare continue to haunt Dalit women and our imagination of a ‘safe’ present and future.

Looking back at this brahminical caste oppression done to Dalit women and their existence, it becomes difficult to not ask an important question: How much has changed since early 2000 when Phoolan Devi, also glorified as the ‘Bandit Queen’, a Dalit woman, was raped by men from oppressor caste backgrounds to year 2024, a time where a Dalit girl, who was only nineteen was sexually molested was found ‘mysteriously’ dead post her filing a sexual harassment case against her culprits who belonged to oppressor caste backgrounds?

Your figure of a ‘bandit queen’ became famous but you didn’t like it as you said your extreme steps were the only recourse to justice available to you. You gave a wider message against the constant vilification of Dalit women in India as you took part in the Behmai massacre in which twenty Thakur men were shot dead. While your revolt against caste oppression is distinct and one should be conscious of comparing one case of sexual assault with the another, it continues to provoke us to examine the socio-cultural and collective well-being of Dalit women in the Indian society from the early 2000 to the contemporary 2024.

Unfortunately, majority of Dalit girls and women in India do not have the resources to fight the oppressive brahminical systems that suffocate and succumb their existence due to being socio-economically marginalized. To understand the frame of reference and use of the word ‘brahminical’, one could refer to the works of Jotirao Phule, Gulamgiri (1873) and Dr. B.R Ambedkar’s paper, Caste, Genesis and its Mechanisms (1917), and Dalit women’s autobiographies to understand how sexual violence against Dalit women is ‘brahminical’ in nature and caste codified religiously sanctioned violence. Devadasi, sexual slavery of bahujan women’s bodies is a result of the same caste ethic rooted in sexual abuse and violence.

Every day, as many as four Dalit women are raped every hour and these are just ‘reported’ cases (Reported by International Dalit Solidarity Network). Dalit women die 14.3 younger than Savarna women in India reflecting the traumatic state of their mental and physical being. Dalit women continue to remain the most marginalized bodies in India, and this marginalization is the reason Dalit women continue to be angry every day.

Mysterious deaths or institutional murders?

The news of Dalit women being found ‘mysteriously’ dead is not new. Divya Bharti, a famous Bollywood Dalit actress was found ‘mysteriously’ dead on, 5th April 1993 at the age of only 19. During the time of her death, many Dalits believed her death to be a result of caste-based discrimination in the Bollywood industry. While this is not a proven fact, it however is also true that the circumstances surrounding her death proliferated various conspiracy theories. Soon, the police closed the close calling her death an “accidental case”. It is well known that The Dalit experience conveys that the representation of well-doing Dalits is indigestible to the larger Indian palette. The visuals of Dalit women doing well and living their lives independently are not praised, far acknowledged. This indigestion is depicted in the anti-caste documentary titled The Discreet Charm of the Savarnas directed by Rajesh Rajami. Many well-doing Dalit women are constantly expected to explain why they must deserve space in distinct institutional spaces. This burden to explain their oppression and participate in performative marginality also falls on Dalit women. Writing is one such method to break free from this burden as well as bring the many penal truths to the frontstage of the public.

When it comes to ‘news’ of the deaths of the marginalized social identities, the knowledge is always constructed by people in the upper echelons of the social hierarchy so the distrust surrounding the discourse of ‘sudden’ and ‘mysterious’ deaths is obvious and natural with the marginalized public. This distrust is a result of historical human subjugation and complete ostracization in theoretical texts and the material world. The thin air of distrust keeps growing within Dalit communities as the statistics reveal growing deaths, ranging from schools, colleges, civil society groups, Bollywood and the list is non-exhaustive. Often these deaths are termed as ‘mysterious’ or a ‘suicide’. Within the intersections of these deaths, Dalit women remain at the bottom because of the additional gendered struggle they have to navigate through. This is precisely why we must learn to critically see Dalit women’s ‘mysterious’ deaths not at their face value but must interrogate the circumstances that degraded their existence and bodies as real culprits of the deaths and call it what it is- caste violence.

Professor of arts and aesthetics, Brahma Prakash in an article, Gestures of Cultural Justice: Narrative Justice for Phoolan Devi in Epic Recounting argues that Phoolan Devi is re-casted as a queenlike figure who is seeking justice by embracing Buddhism at Deeksha Bhoomi at 1995, following Dr. Ambedkar’s led path of conversation to reclaim human dignity with smiles and laughter.

Anjana Ahirwar’s ‘mysterious’ death is another loud call for help by a Dalit woman who awaited social justice but never received. Even after her death, let us see how many newspapers or media houses will let this question be welcomed, demanding the distrust around ‘Dalit women’s mysterious deaths’ visibilize itself. I sent this article to some media houses but never received a response. I waited and waited and decided to self publish this today on the Medium. It only took Rs.300 to publish my words and not wait for others to do it.. especially when what one speaks for is not the norm. Much like your revolutionary spirit, we must take the matter of social justice in our stride and not wait for external validation of our actions and words from others. Let the world know the emotion of growing distrust within Dalit women today.

We have been waiting for long to be heard, to be published, to be welcomed in spaces, to be given justice, to be smiled back on, to be hugged, to be loved and most importantly, to be taken as a human being in all our capacities. We have stopped waiting and seek justice with every chance we CREATE.

Thank you for teaching us to be resilient amidst everyday instances of injustice.