
Maun Mela fishing festival and traffic near twin bridges in Uttarakhand
festival · hills
Maun Mela, a traditional community fishing festival held along the Aglar River in the Tehri Garhwal region of Uttarakhand, India.
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Phoolan Devi shares her story. On a chilly February day in 1983, a 20-year-old young woman known as Phoolan Devi—literally, Flower Goddess—walked out of the forested ravines of the Chambal River valley and handed over her gun. She bowed to images of Gandhi and the goddess Durga and surrendered herself to the Chief Minister and Chief of Police of Madhya Pradesh state in central India. The cheering crowd of 8,000 people gathered that day—journalists; politicians; some 300 cops; and others from across the dry, impoverished center of the world’s largest democracy—knew Phoolan Devi as a hero, a bandit, a murderess, and a goddess long before they saw her in the flesh. Phoolan Devi, India’s celebrated Bandit Queen, was not a woman, but a legend. Born to a low-caste household in 1963 in a village
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festival · hills
Maun Mela, a traditional community fishing festival held along the Aglar River in the Tehri Garhwal region of Uttarakhand, India.

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