Born to a very poor family in northern India, Phoolan Devi rose to fame as the “Bandit Queen of India” in the early 1980’s. She was celebrated as the incarnation of two Hindu Goddesses, Durga and Kali, by sadhus and by members of the lowest castes of India, especially by mallah women like herself. Many Indians respected her for fighting back against the upper-caste men who had raped her and generations of other poor women, for stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, and for escaping numerous times from the police sent to capture her bandit gang.