Khalid Mohamed revisits Bandit Queen (1994), Shekhar Kapur’s film on the dacoit leader Phoolan Devi, recalling the blitz of controversies which surrounded the director’s truth-or-dare biopic.

Bandit Queen (1994), directed by Shekhar Kapur, remains one of Indian cinema’s most powerful biopics, chronicling the turbulent life of Phoolan Devi, a lower-caste woman who defied systemic oppression to become both a feared dacoit and a Member of Parliament. Known for its raw portrayal of gender violence, caste conflict, and political injustice, Bandit Queen sparked national controversy while earning international acclaim. Featuring a breakout performance by Seema Biswas and groundbreaking cinematography by Ashok Mehta, the film challenged Bollywood conventions and censorship norms. Today, it stands as a landmark in feminist cinema and political storytelling, often cited in discussions on Indian films about social justice and women’s empowerment.  

Time does speed by. It’s been a little over three decades since Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen (1994) rewrote the mothballed strictures of censorship with the truth-or-dare biopic of Phoolan Devi, once the scourge of the Chambal Valley, who surrendered at the age of 20 in 1983 to the law force with the tacit consent of the central government.

Reportedly, she was ‘Wanted’ for 22 murders and 26 cases of looting and kidnapping high-caste Thakurs. After a decade in prison, she went on to become an elected Member of Parliament for the Samajwadi Party. In 2001, at the age of 37, while serving her second term in Parliament, she was shot dead outside her home in Delhi under mysterious circumstances which haven’t been sorted to date.

Shekhar Kapur’s third film as a director after the endearing family drama Masoom (1983) and the rollicking entertainer Mr India (1987), was not only unexpected but a high-voltage shocker: perhaps the most visceral, no-stops-barred critique of the reasons behind an oppressed woman, born into a low caste, compelled into looting and killing the tormentors of her community.

Revisiting the Classic

Revisiting Bandit Queen on a DVD print today, in which first-time film actor Seema Biswas powerfully portrayed the eponymous leader of dacoits — the film adapted from a book by Mala Sen — hasn’t lost an iota of its walloping force and intensity in every sequence, in particular the depiction of Phoolan’s gang rape, the desperate lives of her cohorts, and the inevitable tragic consequences looming before her despite the government’s show of clemency.

Incidentally, when the film was streamed on Amazon Prime Video, the director had complained that it was an unacceptable edited version, an allegation that the channel refuted.

Photographed in the authentic badlands of northern India by the late Ashok Mehta, enhanced by the music score of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the surprise knockout of a social and political commentary, besides introducing Seema Biswas, also brought Manoj Bajpayee into prominence in a significant role among the ensemble actors of newcomers selected for their acting potential.

A Legacy of Dacoit Films

Needless to point out that the ‘dacoit’ film has been quite a prolific genre in the Bombay filmmaking factory. Of them, Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay (1975) showcasing Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh stands out as the all-time favorite, while Nitin Bose’s Gunga Jamna (1961) with Dilip Kumar, Moni Bhattacharjee’s Mujhe Jeene Do (1963) headlining Sunil Dutt, and Rahul Rawail’s Dacait (1983) with Sunny Deol, have also toted a cult following.

The difference here was that the formulaic framework was eschewed for a true-life story focusing on a woman who was a vengeful angry young woman when ‘vengeance’ had become the exclusive domain of Amitabh Bachchan.

While Bandit Queen was globally lauded for its brutal strength and endorsed by actors Richard Gere and Brad Pitt, it was mired in controversy in India. To add to the hoopla, although Phoolan Devi was portrayed empathetically, she had disputed its accuracy and fought to get it banned in India.

Legal and Ethical Battles

She even threatened to immolate herself outside a cinema hall if the film was not withdrawn. Eventually, she withdrew her objections after the film’s backup producer, Britain’s Channel 4, paid her £40,000.

Author-activist Arundhati Roy, in her essay entitled The Great Indian Rape Trick, questioned the right to "restage the rape of a living woman without her permission," charging Shekhar Kapur with exploiting Phoolan Devi and misrepresenting both her life and its meaning. Moreover, it was submitted for an Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film, which was opposed successfully since it hadn’t been recommended officially by the Film Federation of India.

Curious to know about Shekhar Kapur’s dilemma during those eventful Bandit Queen months, his response in the course of an interview with me was, “A filmmaker has to believe in what he or she is doing and fight it out. That’s why I have no sympathy for those who cry about intolerance when someone goes against their work. The point is never to give up. Ask yourself: What do you believe in? To what extent are you willing to fight it out? What are you willing to give up?”

Behind the Scenes

In this dramatic vein, Kapur had narrated that Bandit Queen, produced by the Delhi-based Bobby Bedi, “was one helluva prize fight. We didn’t ever give up the fight, not for a moment. We lost with the censors, we lost again with its Revising Committee and finally went to court. The judge was far more reasonable, and we could release the film, at long last, in 1996.” 

What was the attitude of the convention-bound Bollywood fraternity, be it in the depiction of nudity or the taboo colloquial dialogue? Apparently, the knives were sharpened against him because Bandit Queen ‘threatened’ to become a major hit.

“Threatened,” did he say? Could he elaborate?

Without mincing words, he asserted, “Very clearly, the film industry went against Bandit Queen, doling out statements that it was doing well only because of a single nude scene. Next, we had exclusive shows for women audiences and they threatened to make the film a bigger hit.”

Legal Victory and Piracy

Right in the midst of overwhelming approval from the cognoscenti as well as the masses, the director had laughed derisively, “And what do you know? A High Court judgement from Rajasthan ruled that the film was pornographic, anti-upper caste and that the censors had not done their job correctly. So, we fought it out in the Supreme Court and quoted the Constitution. After months of argument, we won. And the censored version was released across the nation.”

The ‘fight to the finish’ did have its downers: Bandit Queen lost out on a chunk of ticket sales because, “many had already seen the film in its pirated version on video cassettes.”

Unstoppable, Shekhar Kapur had said, “The process consumed two years of our lives. But we were right. If we hadn’t fought, I believe Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya and Anurag Kashyap’s films like Gangs of Wasseypur would have had to fight the fight which we did. Sometimes, I wonder would they have done so?”

Had he seen any other film which can match Bandit Queen for its graphic boldness? “At the risk of being immodest,” Shekhar Kapur had replied, “I haven’t seen a film as unforgiving as Bandit Queen ever since, not from India at least. Frankly, I wish there were more to bring about a change of outlook of the censors, only then the filmmaking mode of thinking will change for the better.”

Quite ironically, Bandit Queen was feted with the National Awards for Best Feature Film in Hindi, Best Actress and Best Costume Design (Dolly Ahluwalia), Filmfare Critics’ Award for Best Film, Filmfare Awards for Best Direction, Best Female Sensational Debut and Best Cinematography (Ashok Mehta).

Subsequently, Shekhar Kapur’s crossover to global cinema immediately yielded the Oscar-feted Elizabeth (1998) and its sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). That he wasn’t garlanded with an Oscar for direction is just one of those aberrations of the Oscar ceremony, which he went on record to state was ‘racist’.

Postscript: The Legacy Lives On

Shekhar Kapur had stressed the need for ‘change’ but has anything altered in Sheikhpur Guda where Phoolan Devi was born? It has to a degree.

Tanul Thakur, in an evocative article in Outlook magazine (August 2024), informs that around 2020, a temple has been built in the village with a marble statue of Phoolan Devi with folded hands. A plaque deifies her as a revolutionary, and she is considered the ‘beti’ by the villagers.

Yet there’s a flipside too, as the men of the hamlet told Thakur that her assassination made her “an unfinished promise, an unfinished sentence. Redemption leads us to admit that women are much safer and if the higher-caste give us an evil eye, their eyes will be gouged.” 

Despite the fact that Shekhar Kapur (now aged 79) has been honoured with the Padma Bhushan title, has chaired various committees of the current government and was appointed President of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, and chairman of its governing council in 2020, Bandit Queen continues to be the most valuable achievement of his lifetime, rarely recalled but an imperishable masterwork.