Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, enters the world of Mafia Queens of Mumbai not as a political figure in his own right but as the ultimate state authority against whom the book's most famous subaltern heroine measures herself. His appearance in the narrative is brief but decisive: it is through an appointment with Nehru that Gangubai Kathiawadi, the brothel madam of Kamathipura, secures the government's intervention to halt a movement that threatened to displace hundreds of sex workers from the red-light district. The meeting transforms Nehru from a distant emblem of national power into a participant in one of the most legendary and contested anecdotes in the book's account of Mumbai's underworld.

The Appointment and Its Political Context

Gangubai's meeting with Nehru came about through her political connections, which had already proven their worth in the fight to protect Kamathipura's sex workers. In the early 1960s, authorities of St Anthony's Girls' High School, along with local residents, had demanded the evacuation of part of the red-light belt, arguing that prostitution could not be carried out within two hundred yards of an educational institution. A strong movement against the red-light zone had picked up, with constant agitations and meetings with civic authorities, but neither side would budge. When the anti-prostitution sentiment swelled, the sex workers sought Gangubai's help, and she successfully spearheaded the movement against their evacuation. It was this campaign that apparently won her the appointment with the then prime minister at his residence in New Delhi, making her the only local brothel madam in the country's history to secure a meeting with the head of state.

The Meeting and the Marriage Proposal

The meeting itself has become the stuff of legend, passed down through word of mouth for over four decades. According to the apocryphal story still narrated with pride by the sex workers of Kamathipura, Gangubai explained to Nehru the importance of the red-light area in Mumbai and the need to protect it, impressing him with her wit and clarity of thought. Nehru asked her why she had entered the business when she could have easily landed a good job or a husband. In response, the intrepid Gangubai threw a proposal at him: if he was ready to make her Mrs Nehru, she would abandon her business for good. Nehru was taken aback and reprimanded her for daring to speak to him in that manner. But a calm Gangubai smiled and delivered the line that has become the tale's enduring core: 'Don't get angry Pradhan Mantriji. I just wanted to prove a point; it is always easier to preach than practise.' Nehru remained silent.

The Outcome and Its Significance

Despite bluntly rejecting her second proposal, Nehru conceded to Gangubai's first demand and promised to look into the matter. Following the intervention of the government, the movement to displace the sex workers died a quick death. Gangubai's argument that the school had been built a century after the prostitution belt had come up made her the clear winner in the battle; she queried whether the concerned authorities were blind when they built the school. Gangubai had won the day, saving thousands of sex workers from financial desperation, not for the first time in her life. The episode encapsulates the book's central thesis about women criminals as active agents rather than blank slates written upon by dangerous male mafia members. Gangubai's confrontation with Nehru, whether historically verified or apocryphal, demonstrates how a woman from the margins of society could challenge the highest authority in the land, using wit and audacity to defend her community against the moral judgments of the powerful. The story's persistence in the oral tradition of Kamathipura's sex workers testifies to its symbolic power as a tale of subaltern resistance, even as the book itself acknowledges that its credibility rests solely on verbal evidence passed down through generations.