The Bandit Queens

India is the world’s largest democracy, with over 1.4 billion inhabitants, and it harbors a multiplicity of traditions and legacies that overlap, interconnect, and contradict. On the one hand, India fosters an increasingly sophisticated and lucrative technology sector and features a growing middle class. On the other hand, India is also a land defined by ancient traditions and sometimes rigid social rules, especially in rural areas. For example, the practice of dowry, wherein a woman’s family pays the family of the husband-to-be to take the bride, is still followed in many places. This, along with entrenched limitations on gender roles, often functions to objectify and oppress women. As the novel also demonstrates, violence against women is pervasive in many facets of Indian society, and there are few laws in place to protect them. For example, women cannot prosecute their husbands for rape. In many places, as well, the mostly Hindu majority adheres to the traditional caste system, which enforces rigid social divisions between classes and is inherited upon one’s birth. Thus, if one is born into a low caste, there is no way to achieve any social mobility. When gender and caste intersect, the risks to women’s safety and autonomy are heightened, as the story of the Bandit Queen illustrates.