Tabligh-i-Jamaat

Tabligh-i-Jamaat, a transnational Islamic missionary movement, enters the world of Mafia Queens of Mumbai not as a force of politics or terror but as a quiet, personal refuge for one of its most formidable figures. The book, which profiles thirteen women from the Mumbai underworld, presents the movement almost entirely through the late-life conversion of Jenabai Daaruwali, the bootlegger who once ruled the city's illicit liquor trade. In the late 1980s, after the murder of her son Kamaal and as her own health began to fail, Jenabai involved herself with Tabligh-i-Jamaat, a religious movement among Muslims. This turn to religion is presented as a decisive break from her criminal past, a retreat into faith that redefines her final years and offers a counterpoint to the relentless violence and ambition that characterize the other stories in the book.

Jenabai's Turn to Religion

The catalyst for Jenabai's involvement with Tabligh-i-Jamaat was twofold: the traumatic loss of her son Kamaal and her own ailing health. The death of Kamaal, a wound that never fully healed, and the physical decline that followed pushed her toward the consolations of faith. In the late 1980s, she became involved with Tabligh-i-Jamaat, a decision that marked a profound shift in her daily life. The movement, which emphasizes personal piety, missionary work, and a return to the fundamentals of Islam, provided her with a new community and a new purpose. This was not a superficial gesture; it was a deep engagement that reshaped her identity in her final years, moving her from the center of the underworld to the margins of a religious congregation.

The Rosary and the Routine of Devotion

Jenabai's commitment to Tabligh-i-Jamaat was embodied in a single, recurring object: her tasbeeh, or rosary. Her daughter Khadija, recalling her mother's habits, described the rosary as inseparable from her, something she took everywhere she went. This detail is telling. The rosary, a tool of repetitive prayer and meditation, stands in stark contrast to the instruments of her former trade—the bottles of liquor, the ledgers of illicit accounts, the networks of informants. Where she once wielded power through violence and influence, she now held a string of beads, counting prayers instead of profits. The rosary became a symbol of her transformation, a tangible link between her public penance and her private devotion. It was a routine that anchored her days, a rhythm of faith that replaced the chaos of her criminal enterprises.

A Life of Contradictions

Jenabai's embrace of Tabligh-i-Jamaat did not erase the contradictions of her life; it highlighted them. The same woman who had built an empire on bootlegging, who had defied the police and the state, who had been a godmother-like figure to her community, now sought solace in a movement that preached austerity and spiritual renewal. Her home, once bustling with people seeking her solutions to their problems, became a place where she sat on her bed and gave counsel, but now within a framework of religious devotion. The movement offered her a moral vocabulary to make sense of her past and a community to support her in her decline. Yet the book does not sentimentalize this turn. It presents it as a fact of her biography, a choice made in the face of grief and mortality, without suggesting that it absolved her of her crimes or erased the suffering she had caused. The contrast between her past and her present is left stark, a testament to the complexity of a woman who was neither a blank slate nor a simple villain.

Significance in the Narrative

The presence of Tabligh-i-Jamaat in Mafia Queens of Mumbai is significant precisely because it is so understated. In a book filled with dramatic violence, spectacular crimes, and larger-than-life personalities, the movement appears as a quiet counterpoint. It represents the possibility of change, of a life redirected, even for someone as deeply embedded in the underworld as Jenabai. The book's author, in her introduction, explicitly states that the women profiled were not blank slates written upon by dangerous male mafia members, and that crime was for them not only a way of transcending poverty but also a life-saving concept. Jenabai's turn to Tabligh-i-Jamaat complicates this further. It suggests that even within a life defined by crime, there was room for a different kind of transcendence—a spiritual one. The movement, in this context, is not a political force or a social menace but a personal salvation, a final chapter in a life that had been anything but holy. It is a reminder that the women of the Mumbai underworld were not one-dimensional figures but complex individuals whose lives contained unexpected turns and quiet redemptions.