Phoolan Devi was an Indian parliamentarian in the 1990s, but only after she achieved fame for becoming a modern day Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor. She also, perhaps more importantly, sought revenge on the many men who sexually assaulted her, before and after she was married off at the age of eleven. She became known as the Bandit Queen and was assassinated at the young age of thirty-seven. Devi serves as a source of strength for the main character in Parini Shroff’s debut novel, The Bandit Queens, a dark yet uplifting story of village women who fight domestic violence and caste discrimination.
Geeta is a young widow in a village in Uttar Pradesh with a menacing reputation. Her husband Ramesh disappeared five years earlier and rumor has it that Geeta killed him. Yet Geeta knows the truth about her failed marriage—Ramesh simply left her—but to cope with the rumors, she embraces her reputation and finds inspiration in the story of Phoolan Devi or the Bandit Queen.
The other villagers want little to do with her, including a small group of female entrepreneurs in a microloan group she becomes a part of. Her business is to make mangalsutra, or wedding necklaces that fend off the evil eye and bring an auspicious start to a couple’s marriage.
At first, sales were nil. Superstitious brides, it turned out, weren’t keen on wearing black magic wedding necklaces cursed by a self-made widow. But after two short-lived weddings where the brides were sent back to their natal homes, the village’s superstitions swung in her favor. If one did not petition a Geeta’s Designs mangalsutra, one’s marriage would last about as long as the bridal henna did.
The members of her microloan group include twin sisters, Priya and Preity, the latter of which was burned with acid by her husband, as well as Geeta’s former best friend Saloni and a Muslim woman named Farah. When Farah wants her abusive husband gone, she turns to Geeta to take care of him once and for all. If Geeta has already killed her own husband, what’s another murder to her? But Geeta knows the truth and feels torn between keeping up her reputation and remaining a law-abiding citizen—until Farah shows up to her home one day with a face so bruised she’s almost unrecognizable.
Soon it’s not just Geeta but the whole microloan group that become bandit queens. They meet a Dalit named Khushi, from the lowest caste, who comes to remove the body of one of the husbands and suddenly the women have another mission to combat: caste discrimination. In thinking about Khushi’s status, Geeta can’t help but reflect on the original Bandit Queen.
Geeta was no rebel; she’d never been one to bring the world to its knees. Phoolan Devi hadn’t either, but she’d brought some men to theirs, and her story had resonated with countless other women, including Geeta. She’d always regarded Phoolan’s life as delineated by gender: one woman against scores of men who constantly used her womanhood to dehumanize her, to grind her, literally, into the dirt. But Geeta now saw that caste had marked Phoolan’s story as much as, if not more than, gender had.
The serious and grim nature of domestic violence and caste discrimination give the novel its backbone, but it’s Shroff’s sharp humor, in the form of witty dialogue between the women, that makes this book memorable. They swear and insult each other, but as their plans start to spiral out of control, they end up coming together in ways they hadn’t experienced before they became bandit queens.
By the end of the story, Geeta wonders if there’s more to living a fulfilling life than following the lessons from Phoolan Devi. Perhaps she could feel more satisfaction in seeing justice served in other ways than death. And perhaps living with resentment and anger wasn’t the right path either.