Mumbai gang war

The Mumbai gang war was the defining conflict of the city's underworld in the 1980s, a period of incessant bloodshed between two major warring factions: the Pathan gangsters—Amirzada, Alamzeb, Shehzada, and Samad Khan—and the then-underdogs, the Ibrahim brothers, Dawood and Sabir. This relentless violence had become a great cause of concern for the stalwarts of Mumbai's underworld, Haji Mastan and his friend Karim Lala. The conflict was not merely a series of isolated gun battles but a structural feature of the criminal landscape, a state of affairs that would eventually require an extraordinary intervention to resolve.

Causes and Background

The gang war was rooted in the volatile environment of Mumbai's underworld, a world shaped by the legacy of colonial governance. The British had put Mumbai on the trade route in the mid-nineteenth century, linking the city with an amazing network of railheads, a legacy that included the very name Marine Lines, derived from the Marine Battalion Lines, a British military establishment. This colonial infrastructure created the urban grid on which the gangs operated. The city itself was a patchwork of distinct neighborhoods, each with its own character and criminal ecology. Dongri, a stone's throw away from the cloth market in Kalbadevi, was initially part of the original island of Mumbai, which stretched from Malabar Hill to the Dongri hills. In the mid-1700s, the Dongri hills were levelled as part of the plan to merge the different islands of Mumbai, and the low-lying patch of uneven land between Crawford Market in the north and the reclaimed lands of Kamathipura in the south came to be called Dongri. By the time of the gang war, Dongri was choc-a-block with rickety, old buildings and primarily dominated by Muslims, a densely populated and impoverished area that served as a recruiting ground and battleground for the gangs.

The state's own actions also contributed to the criminal economy that fueled the gangs. Prohibition had always been central to Mahatma Gandhi's and the Congress' agenda, and on 1 August 1939, two years after the first Congress ministry was created in the Bombay province, prohibition was introduced in the city. The home minister at the time, Barrister K.M. Munshi, carried out an intensive recruitment programme in the police force to implement the Prohibition Act effectively, creating an exclusive cadre called the X Division headed by a DCP, Prohibition. However, when the Second World War broke out in 1939, the mammoth prohibition force was diverted for security measures to the docks and the implementation of prohibition suffered. This created a lucrative black market for liquor, which figures like Jenabai Daaruwali would come to dominate, and it was within this context of illicit commerce and weak enforcement that the gangs competed for territory and influence.

The Conflict and the Call for a Truce

The gang war itself was characterized by constant gun battles between the Pathans and the Ibrahim brothers. Dawood Ibrahim, a young man in his twenties at this time, was just another wannabe gangster, trying to make it big in the underworld. A resident of Mussafir Khana near Dongri junction, Dawood indulged in petty extortion, along with his brother Sabir. He was trying hard to get the attention of the mafia bigwigs; often, in order to evade the police, he was forced to go into hiding. The Pathans, by contrast, were established figures, and the two groups were locked in a struggle that seemed to have no end in sight.

The impetus for ending the war came not from the gangsters themselves but from Jenabai Daaruwali, the bootlegger who had risen to prominence in the underworld. She proposed a radical solution to Haji Mastan: bring the two warring gangs together as one force against the Chiliyas, a rival group. When Mastan protested, asking where he could create such a force, Jenabai replied, 'What are the Ibrahim brothers and the Pathan gang for?' and urged him to 'Get them together.' Mastan was astonished, pointing out that an alliance comprising the Ibrahim brothers and the Pathans meant calling a truce, which in the present scenario was impossible. For Mastan, even bringing them together into one room seemed an unlikely scenario. Jenabai, however, was persuasive. She argued that if they all united to become one force, even the government would stand no chance against them, and that the force would not only help them get property but also ensure that it was well protected. The odds of calling a truce were still close to zero, but Mastan realised that this was probably his only option. He agreed to request Karim bhai to convince the Pathans, but noted that Ibrahim bhai's sons would never agree, as even their father was fed up and had no control over them.

The Peace Pact at Mastan's Bungalow

Despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, the warring gangsters finally met at Mastan's bungalow in the wet month of July. On that particular day, Jenabai had been at Mastan's home since dawn. Apart from Mastan, the domestic help and her, no one else was present in the house. After a series of intense discussions with Karim Lala, the three had drawn the final list of invitees for the meeting that was going to be held that night. The meeting itself was a tense affair, but Mastan took control. 'Let us take an oath on the Koran,' Mastan said. Jenabai encouraged Dawood and Sabir to place their hands on the holy book; once they did, others slowly followed. Putting their hands out, the men softly muttered that they would abstain from killing their brothers and live peacefully and in total harmony. This oath-taking was the climax of the peace process, transforming a fragile agreement into a binding pact.

Soon after this meeting, Mastan let them in on the problem he was facing on Belassis Road. The Pathans and Dawood's gang met the tenants and ordered them to vacate the land. The Chiliyas fought fearlessly; however, they couldn't stand up to the joint might of the two gangs and they finally lost their land. Mastan then went on to build a tall, multi-storied building on the same plot. This was the first fruit of the alliance, demonstrating the practical benefits of the truce. It was a historic peace pact in the history of the Mumbai underworld, engineered by Mastan at his house and whose chief architect, undisputably, was Jenabai. The pact did not merely end a war; it created a new power structure, uniting the Pathans and the Ibrahim brothers under a common banner and allowing them to dominate their rivals.

Consequences and Aftermath

The peace pact had profound and lasting consequences for Mumbai's underworld. It consolidated the power of the major gangs, allowing them to expand their operations and influence. The alliance that Jenabai had brokered would go on to shape the city's criminal landscape for decades, with Dawood Ibrahim eventually rising to become the most powerful don in Mumbai. The pact also demonstrated the unique role that women could play in the male-dominated world of the mafia, not merely as victims or accomplices but as strategic architects of power. Jenabai's role in ending the gang war was a testament to her intelligence and influence, a fact that the book highlights as part of its broader attempt to understand the complex minds and psyche of women criminals. The book makes clear that these women were not blank slates written upon by dangerous male mafia members, and that there is no simplistic cause-effect way of looking at their lives. For these women, crime was not only a way of transcending their poverty and limitations but also a life-saving concept.

The legacy of the gang war and its resolution also intersected with the broader history of state power in India. The state's response to organized crime evolved over time, culminating in the promulgation of MCOCA, a stringent law promulgated by the Maharashtra government in 1998 after the abrogation of the TADA. Since they did not have any firm law with which to fight organised crime, the state government formulated this law, and later, the Gujarat and Delhi governments used the same law to control criminal gangs. The gang war and the peace pact were thus not isolated events but part of a continuous struggle between the state and the underworld, a struggle in which the lines between legality and criminality were often blurred. The peace that Jenabai helped to forge was a turning point, but it did not bring an end to violence; it merely redirected it, creating new alliances and new enemies in the ever-shifting landscape of the Mumbai underworld.