What Is the Difference between a Social Bandit and a Celebrity Criminal - Essay Example

?Popular Resistance: What is the difference between a social bandit and a celebrity criminal? [Phoolan Devi and Bonnie Parker/Clyde Barrow] Introduction. The existence of crime in society is a universal phenomenon and many theorists have tried to explain it through the ages. In the twentieth century there has been a particular emphasis on notions of social class struggle, following Marxist ideology, where the exercise of power by a bourgeois elite over an oppressed proletariat is presented as the breeding ground for resistance. In this view of the world, hierarchies of power cause pressure on the lower rungs of the hierarchy, and this explodes out into resistance to this control from above. This resistance can be organized in various ways, including through trades unions, political activism, lobbying etc, and from time to time through more violent acts such as revolution or criminal campaigns. This paper summarizes the different types of popular resistance, following Weber, and then looks at two particular categories of popular resistance: the social bandit and the celebrity criminal. The two categories are often confused, and in order to make it clear what the difference is between the two, four key factors will be examined in turn: the social origins of protest, the motivation for criminal acts, the choice of victims and crimes, and finally the enduring legacies of each type of rebel. Two historical examples are cited: the Indian social bandit Phoolan Devi (1963-2001) and American celebrity criminals Bonnie Parker (1910-1934) and Clyde Barrow (1909-1934). Popular resistance: Weber’s four types of social action In 1914 Weber analysed popular resistance by dividing it into four categories: “1) rational orientation to a system of discrete individual ends… 2) rational orientation to an absolute value… 3) affectual orientation, especially emotional determined by the specific affects and states of feeling of the actor and 4) traditionally oriented through the habituation of long practice.” (Weber, 1996, p. 115) His insight into the way that actions have both meaning for individuals themselves, and a wider set of meanings in interaction with others illuminates the activities of criminals and these categories will be used in the following analysis. Social origins of protest. Eric Hobsbawn commented that “banditry is a rather primitive form of organized social protest, perhaps the most primitive we know” and that poor people “consequently protect the bandit, regard him as their champion, and turn them into a myth.” (Hobsbawm, 1971, p. 13) A social bandit arises out of a community which is a sub group of a larger community or state, and which has a number of beliefs and practices which are different from the larger unit. A key to his or her role is that he or she has the support of local people, and is in conflict with a higher authority. The deeply traditional and patriarchal society into which Phoolan Devi was born condones her arranged marriage to a man three times her age, and supports a caste system which condemns millions of people to poverty and squalor while higher caste landlords dominate lower caste peasants. Devi was captured and abused by local dacoits (an Indian term for roaming bandits). Her outrage and utter helplessness during this shocking treatment is the fundamental origin of for her rebellion. She grew up at the bottom of huge and impenetrable hierarchies of gender, social caste and provincial location, illiterate and poor, unable to defend herself from continuous oppression. The reality of India in the mid to late twentieth century is a fully modern industrial state with a huge deficit in terms of wealth distribution and rule of law. It seems then that Phoolan Devi’s early atrocities owe much to the third of Weber’s categories, namely affectual orientation. Clyde Barrow was a young man who began a life of crime by stealing cars and thieving in the early 1930s. It was the time of the Great Depression, jobs were very scarce, and poverty was rife, especially in families who had a working class background. A spell in the harsh regime of Huntsville prison caused Barrow to develop a hatred of all authority, and especially police and prison guards. What distinguished this wayward youth from many others of the period was a swift escalation of his crimes into murder, and especially murder of police officers. In the absence of legitimate avenues for success and wealth, Barrow opted for a life of crime, which is akin to Weber’s first category of rational orientation. Bonnie Parker, on the other hand, expressly portrayed herself in the romantic image of the “gangster’s moll” in love with Clyde Barrow: “Thus romance and the production of a criminal self were inextricably entwined for those who followed Bonnie’s criminal career” (Potter, 1998, p. 76) The partnering of Bonnie with Clyde added an emotional dimension their crimes, and the pair entered into a vicious cycle of crime and retaliation from the authorities. Motivation for criminal acts. Criminal activity often takes place in the context of gangs or more organized hierarchical syndicates. The collective nature of these activities has been much studied, and the existence of a special in a group mode has been analysed, where criminals carry out their activities with the support and encouragement of a loyal band. Robin Hood had his merry men, and Phoolan Devi had her husband Vikram and a whole gang of loyal supporters ready to follow them into direct action of the most violent sort. Bonnie and Clyde had a shifting group of disaffected youths who joined them on their escapades. It was recognised early in the twentieth century by Gustave le Bon and others that people behave very differently when in a crowd situation: “Doubtless a crowd is often criminal, but also it is often heroic. It is crowds rather than isolated individuals that may be induced to run the risk of death to secure the triumph of a creed or an idea, that may be fired for enthusiasm for glory and honour…” (Le Bon, 2002, p. 25) Fascist groups, including the Nazis in Germany, availed themselves of these theories when they orchestrated their great military spectacles. What is important in this kind of massing of affiliates in preparation for join action is that it gives a psychological boost to each individual in the group. Particularly in situations where people are victimised, low status, and unable to achieve any significant act of self-assertion as an individual, belonging to a crowd makes a huge difference: “… the individual forming part of a crowd acquires, solely from numerical considerations, a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to instincts which, had he been alone, would perforce have to be kept in restraint.” (Le Bon, 2002, p. 33). This research shows how initial triggers for public rebellion, especially among the weak and disenfranchised, can be moulded and channelled through the dynamics of group membership. Choice of Victims and Crimes As Hobsbawm notes, the victims of famous social bandits like Dick Turpin and Robin Hood are “ the quintessential enemies of the poor” (Hobsbawm, 1971, p. 22) such as lawyers, money-lenders and landlords who exploited their tenants. This fits with the trail of devastation that was made by Phoolan Devi and her associates, with an added angle of gender based revenge. She operated on the wrong side of the law, was captured, imprisoned, and made to pay the penalty of her crimes, and then emerged to capitalise on her popularity and take up a formal role as an elected politician. From the perspective of the lower classes, this is a rejection of the illegal means, but a justification of the political ends that she sought. From a higher class perspective, however, the stain of criminality, and stigma of low social class cannot be removed and this makes it very difficult for such a transformation to result in success in the political arena: “Even after they serve 14 years and even more in jails (as undertrials) and are set free by the law, people are taunted as criminals by articulate sections of the middle classes. Ms Phoolan Devi for instance.” (Ananth, 2001, no page number.) Ananth observes that the presence of individuals like Phoolan Devi with a criminal record in Indian Politics is a matter of concern, but that their number is small, and that there is a much greater problem to be resolved: “The larger danger, so to say, is the failure of the state (not just the Executive but the Legislature and the Judiciary), in reaching out to the people and meeting the expectations of the people. It is this aspect that leads to the criminalisation of the political system.” (Ananth, 2001, no page number) It does seem perverse for a corrupt state system to condemn social banditry when that system itself makes use of tactics such as murder, extortion and many abuses of power as a matter of course. Despite her distrust of the upper castes, Phoolan Devi stood for political office twice, winning a seat in the Uttar Pradesh state elections in 1996 in the Samajwadi Party and losing in the subsequent elections in 1998. Phoolan Devi’s autobiography was pieced together by a British editor from a number of taped interviews, since throughout her life she was illiterate (Fernandes, 1999, p. 127, n.9) and feminist readings of this book, as well as the film also produced by a British production team identify a disturbing tendency to depict Phoolan Devi as a rape victim, rather than a folk hero. “Ironically Bandit Queen in its attempt to call for social justice by revealing the brutal gender- and caste-based violence of rape does so by silencing Phoolan Devi’s own vision of social justice. (Fernandes, 199, p. 142) Other critics have highlighted the popular view of womanhood in India which Phoolan Devi personifies. She represents a “mythic polarization of “the Indian Woman… Victim or heroine, witch or goddess, housewife or prime minister.” (Ray, p. 2) In order to grasp her role in the real world, rather than in film portrayals, it is necessary to locate her in the social and political struggle of the lower caste people, and especially women, in her district. There is a deep political awareness at the heart of her autobiography: “I was discovering piece by painful piece how my world was put together: the power of men, the power of privileged castes, the power of might. I didn’t think of what I was doing as rebellion; it was the only means I had of getting justice.” (Devi, 1996, p. 154) This notion of violent revenge as the only way of justice is repeated again and again in the autobiography, and it is directed particularly at those who had previously been violent towards her. After a nasty beating of her previous husband she notes “As we left Maheshpur, I swore to myself that I would do the same thing to all the bastards like him. I would crush them! Otherwise there was no justice for girls like me!” (Devi, 1996, p. 282) It is clear that the revenge is not just for her own pain and suffering, but a way of trying to prevent the same thing happening to other low caste women. Devi admits to being motivated by “an outpouring of rage” (Devi, 1996, p. 412) on occasion and yet at the same time claims: “But I never killed without reason.”(Devi, 1996, p. 412) She moved, then, from being motivated by emotion, to a much more rational orientation. She also perceived herself in terms of a supernatural destiny, in tune with the myths and legends of her culture: “In my village they say that when the demon Kans strikes with lightning at the birth of a baby girl and kills her, she will rise up in the sky to become lightning in her turn. The demon struck me with lightning, and I became the lightning for others.” (Devi, 1996, p. 503) This is the stuff of ultra-nationalist myth, and what Griffin would call “proto-fascism” (Griffin, 1994, p. 177) which contains the germs of power strong enough to overturn fragile democracies. With increasing maturity, however, she moved, like IRA leaders in the 1970s from acts of violence to participation in regular politics. It is hard to imagine anything of the sort happening to Bonnie and Clyde. Their trajectory was suicidal from the moment they targeted police officers for murder, and there is no clear political cause detectable in their trail of devastation beyond an ill-defined resistance to authority. They were celebrity criminals, but not social bandits fighting for the rights of others. Enduring Legacies. Establishing the facts from the myths in cases of banditry and crime is often difficult because of the nomadic lifestyle that comes from being hunted by the authorities, and the presence of supporter and opposer narratives which are biased in one way or another. In the absence of hard facts, myths start to form, and this is what happened to both Phoolan Devi, who became known in popular culture as the “bandit queen” and Parker and Barrow who became known by their first names “Bonnie and Clyde.” Even to this day books, films, even songs and artworks continue to be produced celebrating the tragic tale of doomed lovers (Bonnie and Clyde) or fanatical warrior for justice (Phoolan Devi). There is a difference, however, in the nature of the support that the Indian and American criminals received. Their associates were equally ready to take up arms, but Phoolan Devi had much much greater support amongst lower caste members of society than Bonnie and Clyde ever did from working class Americans during their lifetimes. The fascination for Bonnie and Clyde was hyped up by the media and it had more to do with entertainment and fiction in Depression hit America than any real struggle for the benefit of any particular group or class of people. Killing policemen ultimately became, for Bonnie and Clyde, their only response to society’s ills, while Phoolan Devi entered the political arena as a serious candidate to speak up for the rights of lower caste people and especially women. Phoolan Devi’s illiteracy handicapped her ability to theorize and publicize her political agenda. This was, however, not necessarily a disadvantage since word of mouth narratives built up the individual incidents of her life into a heroic journey from oppression to redemption. Because she was firmly tied into the religious networks and mythologies of lower caste India, her early life was interpreted in the light of these narratives. The fact that Phoolan Devi made the transition from convicted criminal to elected politician demonstrates that she is a social bandit, motivated by bigger causes than her own material gain, or her initial rage and revenge for personal suffering. Her life story lends support to the theories of Sorel, who maintained that violent actions necessary to dislodge some of the most damaging abuses of the bourgeois establishment. He denies the establishment view that “violence is a relic of barbarism which is bound to disappear under the progress of enlightenment” (Sorel, 2004, p. 65) and maintains instead that “Proletarian violence, carried on as a pure and simple manifestation of the sentiment of class struggle, appears thus as a fine and heroic thing; it is at the service of the immemorial interests of civilization.” (Sorel, 2004, p. 85). From this point of view, social bandits are not primitive or barbaric at all, but a refreshing and crucially pure form of resistance to the forces of the establishment which are the same repressive forces that built up colonialism and capitalism. Bonnie and Clyde, on the other hand, represented wayward youth on the run, and a defiance in the face of a harsh and unforgiving patriarchal state. An important ingredient in their legacy has been their style, both in terms of image and in terms of how they carried out their daring ambushes and escapes. “The car, as technology and as a cultural sign, identified the Barrow gang as modern but also as disorderly.” (Potter, 1998, p. 93) Barrow had little education and no interest in theories, but Clyde wrote poetry and attempted, with some success, to create a mystique around the gang’s crimes, and associate their violence with the violent oppression of the poor by an authoritarian state. When they were ultimately caught and killed, the firing of “more than 150 bullets” (Milner, 1996, p. 161) testifies to the rage of the law enforcement agencies who sought revenge for their dead comrades. They were condemned and revered in equal measure, and became symbolic of the struggle of the poor to take part in the materialist “American Dream” narrative despite the poverty and social exclusion of their youth. What is memorable about their case is its cultural significance. They carved identities that matched the American people’s need for fictional heroes. In reality, however, during their short criminal lives they were feared by anyone who came into contact with them. They had taken on the full force of a well-armed and organized state police system, and this was too much for the law-abiding majority of American citizens. They were celebrity criminals, representing futile resistance, elusiveness and charm, living by violence and dying by violence, in a narrative that ultimately upholds the law abiding status quo. Conclusion: the difference between social bandits and celebrity criminals.   This paper has explored big questions such as the reasons why famous bandits and criminals commit crimes and what meanings people attach to them. A context of social deprivation and corrupt officialdom lies at the root of social bandits and celebrity criminals, and it is true that these factors make a life of crime more attractive than a life of oppression. The difference between the rebellion of social bandits like Phoolan Devi and that of celebrity criminals like Bonnie and Clyde is that the former has the support of a wide section of the public and is tied to serious political goals, while the latter may have cultural impact, and present a glamorous media image, but lacks any coherent, transferable political meaning. The social bandit is revered for her actions, which many accept as justified, while the celebrity criminals are revered for image and style, while the reasons behind their crimes are largely forgotten. References Ananth, V.K. 2001. Crime and Politics. The Hindu. Jan. 30th. Available online at: http://www.hindu.com/2001/01/30/stories/05302524.htm Anderson, B. 1991. 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War on Crime: Bandits, G-men and the Politics of Mass Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Ray, R. 1999. Fields of Protest: women’s movements in India. Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press. Sorel, G. 2004. [1906] Reflections on Violence. New York: Dover Press.  Weber, M. and Parsons, T. 1964. [1914] The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: The Free Press, pp. 87-157. Weber, M. 1914. Types of Social Action. Basic Sociological Terms. Available online at:  http//www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuk/abukuma/weber/method/basic/basic conceptframe.html Read More