In June 1992, author Roy Moxham did a very strange thing: he wrote to a bandit in an Indian jail. Phoolan Devi was the controversial and charismatic 'Bandit Queen' hailed as a modern-day Robin Hood in the villages surrounding Delhi. In revenge for her own gang rape, her followers killed 20 high-caste Indians, which led to her surrender and imprisonment. Struck by her story and appalled by her plight, Roy Moxham helped Phoolan Devi obtain justice, offered her encouragement when she became an MP in India on her release, and travelled with her for several years before she was finally gunned down in 2001. Based on the diaries that documented their extraordinary friendship, Moxham offers a fascinating portrait of a remarkable woman and reveals the hidden face of India.

Enduring cruel poverty and degradation, Phoolan Devi survived the humiliation and horrifying gang rape to claim retribution for herself and all low-caste women of the Indian plains. In a three-year campaign which rocked the government, she delivered justice to rape victims and stole from the rich to give to the poor, before negotiating surrender on her own terms. Throughout her years of imprisonment without trial Phoolan Devi remained a beacon of hope for the poor and downtrodden, and in 1996, admist both popular support and media controversy, she was elected to the Indian Parliament. For over a decade journalists, biographers and film-makers have found the power and scope of Phoolan Devi's myth irresistible. Now finally she tells the story of her life through her eyes and in her own voice.

When trust fund baby-turned-waitress Allie and her friends accidentally open a Door to Hell in the basement of Sally's Diner, they don't realize the havoc it will wreak on their Brooklyn neighborhood. Of course, the upside to murder-happy demons coming through the Door all the time is that Allie gets her own sexy and mysterious demon hunter: the dark-eyed, leather-clad, Stetson-wearing Ryan.Ryan teaches Allie everything he knows about fighting the creatures of the underworld-but refuses to give in to the sexual tension that simmers between them. Allie has almost given up on taking her relationship with Ryan to the next level when there's a surge in demonic activity... and the Door disappears.Now Allie and Ryan have to travel through Hell, literally, to try to stop Hell from taking over the Earth. They may not survive the trip, but Allie is about to discover something very important: Mortal peril is a total turn-on.

Phoolan Devi rebelled against the ancient caste rules of India, her country, resulting in her becoming a Robin Hood type bandit. Essentially sold at the age of 11 to become a wife for a much older man, she ran away when he raped her. From that point on, there were few choices for her but to join a roaming gang of bandits, her ambition leading her to become their rebel chief. Ultimately, she became a strong voice for change as a representative in the nascent Indian parliament. A story of courage and unbending determination in front of centuries of established inequities in the classic Indian caste system.

Before a crowd of several thousand people, mostly men, a young woman dressed in her bridal finery was burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre. The apparent revival of an ancient tradition opened old wounds in Indian society and focused world attention on the status and treatment of women in modern India.".

Global Icons considers how highly visible public figures such as Mother Theresa become global icons capable of galvanizing intense affect and sometimes even catalyzing social change.

On 25 July 2001, Bandit Queen Phoolan Devi who had become an MP by then was shot dead as she got out of her car near the gate of her New Delhi residence. Sher Singh Rana, Dheeraj Rana, and Rajbir were accused of the crime. Twenty-five-year-old Rana allegedly surrendered in Dehradun and confessed to the murder, saying he was avenging the deaths of twenty-two Kshatriyas at Phoolan's hands in Behmai. Then he escaped from Tihar Jail in 2004 to reach Afghanistan via Bangladesh in order to reclaim the relics of the last Hindu ruler Prithviraj Chauhan from his grave there. He was captured again from Kolkata in April 2006 and sent to Rohini Jail in Delhi. He is still lodged there since the matter is sub judice. Jail Diary is Rana's story in his own words. It begins on the day of his escape from Tihar and goes back and forth in time describing his childhood in small-town India, the beginning of his political career during college days, his induction into Eklavya Sena through which he was introduced to Phoolan, his days as a liquor vendor in Haridwar, and his nerve-wracking adventures as someone who broke one of the highest security prisons in Asia to pursue what, to his mind, was an act of honour.

The first thorough study of the co-existence of crime and democratic processes in Indian politics In India, the world's largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic processes exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why are one-third of state and national legislators elected--and often re-elected--in spite of criminal charges pending against them? In this eye-opening study, political scientist Milan Vaishnav mines a rich array of sources, including fieldwork on political campaigns and interviews with candidates, party workers, and voters, large surveys, and an original database on politicians' backgrounds to offer the first comprehensive study of an issue that has implications for the study of democracy both within and beyond India's borders.

The essays in this volume map the concerns of gender onto the terrain of nation, finding significant connections, disjunctions, and tensions between them. The authors argue that for any cultural analysis to be performed in the context of the decolonized nation-space, gender must take centre stage.