Akhil Bharatiya Sena

The Akhil Bharatiya Sena (ABS) was a political party founded in 1997 by Mumbai gangster Arun Gawli, but it was his wife, Asha Gawli, who served as its true engine. The party was a calculated instrument of survival, designed to protect Gawli from the police encounters that had killed so many of his underworld rivals. Through the ABS, Gawli achieved what no other don of his era could: he became a member of the Legislative Assembly, his daughter became a corporator, and he remained alive and free from fatal police action, all while his wife managed the party's affairs from outside the jail walls where he spent much of his time.

Origins and Purpose

The idea for the ABS was born in prison. In 1996, while Arun Gawli was locked up in Kolhapur jail under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA), he mentioned to a visiting journalist his aspirations to join politics. His stated reason was blunt: to save himself from a police encounter. The previous year, Asha had stood for the civic corporation elections, hoping her political standing would help her husband, but she had lost terribly. After this failure, she shifted her focus to building her husband's political career. In 1997, with his wife's encouragement and support, Gawli started the Akhil Bharatiya Sena, with himself as president and Asha heading the women's wing.

The Women's Wing as a Shield

The ABS's most distinctive feature was its women's wing, which was used as a literal shield for the don. A group of women would constantly surround Arun every time he walked out of Dagdi Chawl in Byculla, a tactic that other dons in the underworld made fun of. But the strategy worked. The cops could neither trace him in the crowd nor get violent with the women, and he was able to escape unscathed on more than one occasion. This use of women as human shields was a novel adaptation of political mobilization to the exigencies of gangland survival, turning the party's rank-and-file into a protective barrier against the state's deadliest tool.

Electoral Successes and Setbacks

The ABS's first major test came in 2002, when it contested the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections. In its very first attempt at entering the city's civic body, two corporators were elected: Arun's eldest daughter Geeta Gawli and Sunil Ghate, a one-time contract killer. This success was followed by a greater one in 2004, when Asha's management and supervision of the party finally bore fruit and her husband was elected the MLA from the Byculla constituency. However, the party's fortunes were tied to Gawli's own freedom. A couple of years before the Legislative Assembly elections of 2009, Gawli was again put behind bars, this time tried under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA). Asha did not give up. She filed his nomination papers for him and, along with her daughter Geeta, took it upon herself to campaign for him. A pre-election report in The Asian Age by Jigna Vora mentioned how Agni, an NGO, had rated Arun the most competent MLA during his term, a rating earned largely through Asha's work in the constituency on her husband's behalf. While Arun spent most of his time as an MLA in jail, Asha ensured she redressed the grievances of the people in the locality, spending money from the gang's resources to keep them happy. But they did not stop to think about one crucial aspect: Arun's own absence. His lack of attendance in the Assembly session had not gone unnoticed by political observers, and the people of his constituency voted against him, causing Arun to fail to clinch the MLA post.

Asha Gawli's Role and the Party's Significance

Asha's role in the ABS went far beyond campaigning. She was credited with safeguarding her husband against the police machinery and fake encounters on innumerable occasions. With Arun a frequent guest in jails, Asha had no option but to take the reins and run the show by proxy, formulating ingenious ways to protect him from the law, including digging holes inside their kitchen where he would hide whenever the police arrived with an arrest warrant. Her involvement became so vital to the gang that Arun began treating her as his most trusted lieutenant. Since Arun's gang members addressed him as 'Daddy', Asha automatically came to be known as 'Mummy'. The party was thus a family enterprise, with the don as its figurehead and his wife as its operational commander. Mummy, however, was not a disappointed woman after the 2009 defeat. For her, the very fact that Arun was safe and unharmed by police forces, even after being tried under several stringent laws, still made her a clear winner. Several top dons like Amar Naik, Sada Pawle and Nari Khan had been killed in fake police encounters, and even low-level acolytes had not been spared by the cops. If Gawli managed to survive the encounters, and even went on to win MLA elections, and if his daughter and party workers became corporators, it was largely because of his wife. Arun Gawli rarely stepped out of his fortress; it was Asha who went out and did everything for him, whether it was canvassing for elections, making the rounds of the courts for legal battles, or staging dharnas outside police stations and ministers' offices. The ABS thus represented a unique fusion of crime, family, and electoral politics, a survival mechanism that allowed a gangster to outlast his rivals not through violence but through the ballot box, managed by the woman he had married against the objections of his own gang.