Ten years ago I remember watching Bandit Queen myself; the well-meaning advice of a school friend ?woh puri nangi hai? and I scampered off to the nearest video store. 2004, a journalism class and I?m reviewing Bandit Queen all over ? this time around the well meaning advice comes from Mala Sen and Arundhati Roy.
Post Bandit Queen and an Oscar nomination for Elizabeth I revered SK too ? a Bollywood director who is now striding over Hollywood ? for being one of the youngest directors in the Indian film industry to have made it so big in a short span of five movies . I would have praised Bandit Queen in the same vane, as did so many - critics and crowds alike, had I not tripped across a quirkily titled essay ?The Great Indian Rape Trick - Part 1&2? by Arundhati Roy.
A cursory glance through the essay and phrases like ?Rape n’ Retribution?, ?You-Rape-Me: I’ll-Kill- You equation?, ?Rape is the main dish. Caste is the sauce that it swims in?, ?Life is Rape. The rest is jus’ details?, ?What is she to them? A concept? Or just a cunt??, ?She didn’t need to be raped to protest. Some of us don’t?, could make one dismissive of Roy?s diatribe; an ?off the cuff rant? is how one critic described Roy?s essay.
?Ignorance is strength? George Orwell said it and never before has a truism been so ratified. Rave reviews, four star ratings, accolades and awards for the producers and directors and the truth behind Bandit Queen, its making and its makers all got masked. On September 3rd 1994 Roy warned us of the repercussions of blindly believing in SK?s version of the ?Truth? ? his artistic adaptation of Mala Sen?s novel, of the dire consequences of the laid back attitude of the intelligentsia who could never care enough to cross check between SK?s version and Mala Sen?s well researched, sensitively written account.
In Roy?s words When Bandit Queen is released in India the people who see it will believe that it is the Truth. It will influence Courts of Law. It could provoke retribution from the Thakur community which has every right to be outraged at the apparent condoning of this massacre. ??.Bandit Queen the film, seriously jeopardises Phoolan Devi’s life. It passes judgements that ought to be passed in Courts of Law. Not in Cinema Halls. The threads that connect Truth to Half-Truths to Lies could very quickly tighten into a noose around Phoolan Devi’s neck. Or a bullet through her head. Or a knife in her back.
On July 25th 2001, Phoolan Devi was gunned down by three masked assailants outside her official residence in New Delhi and looking back one gets the queasy feeling that?s the real assassins weren?t the trigger pullers, they were members of a film fraternity whose apathy towards depicting the truth, whose contrived artistic sensibilities and cash cravings ensured that Phoolan Devi was escorted to her ill-fated end.
So how did SK lark about the truth, was it ingenuousness or was it a systematic attempt to distort events, was it fact or was it fiction. Let?s take the instance of the Behmai massacre, in the movie. Phoolan Devi lines up the lot and with vengeance written all over her, strips the Thakur?s off their honour (read pagadis). Cut to the next scene and the twenty-two men are shot. According to the book there are several versions of what happened at Behmai.
Phoolan denies that she was there. More importantly, two of the men who were shot at but didn’t die say she wasn’t there. Other eye- witnesses say she was. Phoolan Devi even gives an explanation for the Behmai massacre (Pg159) ?You know how it is: if a woman does something, men feel they have to prove themselves to be superior and therefore go further. It is true that I wanted to avenge Vikram?s death. Many people supported this feeling in me, over many months, and I cannot begin to point fingers at them now. All I can tell you is that I wanted to kill Sri Ram and Lala Ram but they were not amongst the dead as you know.
I do not believe in killing people without a positive reason but the situation got out of control and in the eyes of Durga Mata, I am innocent of these deaths.? But Shekhar Kapur decides to skip these trivialities and the celluloid version in an attempt to showcase her as ?don?t?mess?with-me-rebel, includes her as a part of the carnage. What this did, was that it further jeopardised her appeals in the judiciary.
Phoolan eventually got out on bail, the courts couldn?t indict her but the Thakur?s weren?t unsparing enough. In the eyes of the Thakurs and the rest of the world Phoolan Devi had killed 22 Thakurs. For some she was mutineer, for the mighty and the formidable she was a murderer who needed to be taught a lesson and they did just that
Lets take another pivotal instance ?the gang rape?- There are two versions which appear in the book. The saucy version written by an American journalist Jon Bradshaw for the Esquire (who has written with the vivacity of being one amongst seven on that doomed night with his pants down and his journalistic pen up) and then of course the Phoolan Devi?s version which gets slighted just coz it adds nothing to this mortification mince. Phoolan Devi was reserved to even talk about what happened to her post Vikram Mallah?s death. All she says is that ?Un logo ne mujhse bahut mazak ki?.
In SK?s verbiage that?s translates into ?Un logo ne mera rape kiya?. Pages 126 to 130 gives Phoolan Devi?s version of what actually transpired, but of course how could she be telling the truth, Jon Bradshaw and Shekhar Kapur know better.
If the inclusions are appalling, so are the omissions
?Maiyadin, Phoolan?s cousin cum tyrant who features prominently in the book and in Phoolan Devi?s life, Vidya, Puttilal?s second wife who tormented Phoolan Devi for days on end, Her relationships pre Vikram Mallah with a distant cousin, Kailash (pg47) and post Vikram Mallah with Man Singh are omitted find no mention
?The omission of one of the most the most heart wrenching episodes in Phoolan life- the removal of her womb while she was being treated for an ovarian cyst, is plain daft(Pg244). Phoolan Devi was someone who wanted to bear children and had in fact in played daredevil and visited a temple of Mahira Mata to offer a nine tola gold necklace and pray for the ?blessing of a child?.(pg 210) Neither her daring attempt at teasing the police nor her yearning to procreate find any mention in the movie.
So how much has SK grown as a director post Mr. India. Not much I say. He?s recreated another fairy-tale and replaced tag lines like ?Mogambo Khush Hua? with expletives like ?Bhen#%&@?. (that?s the official punctuation after every dialogue). What Shekhar Kapur fails to understand is that when you pilfer around with the truth of real people, you put lives at stake, that?s masses are impressionable and truth isn?t expendable.
A momentary glance at Shekhar Kapur?s official website shekharkapur.com and a flash montage hollers that he is chartered accountant, a model , a chat show host , an actor , a producer , the best director??..how about adding a charlatan, a scammer, an undertaker, a murderer ??I?ll do the coding.
My best assessment : ?an aesthetic porn flick?.