Gangubai's speech at Azad Maidan stands as the single most consequential public utterance of her career, the moment when a five-foot-tall brothel madam from Kamathipura stepped onto a podium before an openly hostile crowd of political women, NGO workers, and organisers and converted their suspicion into thunderous applause. It was the first time she had ever spoken in public, and the speech she delivered that day did not merely defend her profession; it reframed prostitution as a form of social protection, compared sex workers to soldiers fighting on a battlefield, and demanded that society treat them as equals. The address became the cornerstone of her public identity, transforming her from a feared madam who controlled brothels with an iron fist into a political figure capable of securing an appointment with the prime minister of India.

The Occasion and the Hostile Audience

The speech took place at a women's conference held at Azad Maidan in Mumbai, a meeting that had been called in support of the girl child and the empowerment of women. Women from several leading political parties, NGOs, and other organisations had been invited, and Gangubai herself had been asked to attend in order to help promote literacy among prostitutes. The organisers had requested that she speak on the condition of women in brothels, but when she was called to the podium and introduced as the 'president of Kamathipura', she was greeted with a great deal of suspicion. Dressed in a white cotton saree, Gangubai sensed the animosity in the room. She had been nervous as she ascended the stairs to the podium, having never really spoken in public before, and although she had rehearsed her speech several times during the day, standing in front of such a large crowd she felt absolutely unprepared. As she approached the microphone, she could hear murmurings among a section of the crowd. But the crowd's behaviour only made her more determined to prove her point, and all of a sudden she became less nervous.

The Speech Itself

Gangubai stunned her organisers and the audience with her opening line: 'I am a gharwali (a brothel madam) not a ghar todnewali (home wrecker). Several people among you look at this title as a stigma on womanhood but it is this stigma that has saved the chastity, integrity and morality of several thousands of women.' The crowd grew silent. She continued by arguing that the streets of Mumbai were far safer than those of other Indian cities, and that one would rarely hear of a girl being sexually assaulted on the roads. She did not want to take away any credit from the city's administration, she said, but she firmly believed that the notorious women of Kamathipura should be partly credited for this safety. 'We are only second to the legitimately married gharwalis (housewives),' she declared. 'By giving ourselves to the carnal pursuits of men, we are doing a big favour to all the women in society. A few handful of women who cater to the physical needs of men are actually protecting all of you from being attacked. These women help blunt the bestial male aggression, which is something that cannot be done in my hometown in Gujarat.' She acknowledged that the audience might think the women enjoyed their work, but insisted it was not easy, and that most were forced into it because they had families to look after. 'It shames me to learn that society looks down upon its very protectors,' she said, drawing a parallel between sex workers and the jawans of the country who fight endlessly in the battlefield so that citizens remain unharmed. 'Just like the jawans of our country, who fight endlessly in the battlefield so that you remain unharmed, we prostitutes too, are fighting our own batdes every day. Then why the difference? Why is a jawan rewarded and given national honours, while prostitutes are insulted and treated like pariahs? Give me an answer.'

The Argument for Prostitution Belts

Gangubai pressed her case to its most provocative conclusion. 'Nobody will have an answer,' she said, 'because you all are responsible for creating this question in the first place. The only solution to the problem is by treating sex workers as equals. The day you manage to do this, I will believe that society has achieved "women empowerment".' She pointed out that an orthodox city like Hyderabad could name its red-light area Mehboob ki Mehndi (the henna of the beloved), and asked why Kamathipura drew expressions of disgust in Bombay, a supposedly forward-looking city. She then drew her final parallel, comparing the need for a prostitution belt in every city to the need for a toilet in every home: 'We all keep at least one toilet in our homes so that we do not defecate or urinate in other rooms. This is the same reason why there is a need for a prostitution belt in each and every city.' She ended with a humble plea to the government to allow red-light areas to co-exist in society. The crowd was immediately on its feet and applauding thunderously; nobody had ever spoken for the cause of sex workers so convincingly.

Consequences and Legacy

The speech was not an isolated performance but the culmination of Gangubai's rise to power within Kamathipura. She had already become known as the only brothel madam who did not give priority to business and money but to women, allowing genuine cases to leave the trade while ensuring that fraudulent escapes were improbable. Her victory in the bade gharwali elections, which placed an entire building under her jurisdiction with several gharwalis reporting to her, had strengthened her position, and she had come to control Kamathipura's brothels with an iron fist. The sex workers revered her as a mother, calling her Ganguma, while men like Shaukat Khan, who abused women or took advantage of them by promising marriage without paying, feared her for her connections with the underworld and the police. When anti-prostitution sentiment swelled in the early 1960s, with the authorities of St Anthony's Girls' High School and local residents demanding the evacuation of sex workers from the belt on the grounds that prostitution could not be carried out within two hundred yards of an educational institution, the sex workers sought Gangubai's help and she successfully spearheaded the movement against their removal. Her political connections from this campaign apparently won her an appointment with the then prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, at his residence in New Delhi, making her the only local brothel madam ever to secure an appointment with the head of the country. The Azad Maidan speech thus marked the point at which Gangubai's authority ceased to be merely criminal and became explicitly political, a transformation that the book presents as central to understanding how women criminals of her era pushed the boundaries of dominant moral codes.