Mummy zindabad!

Mummy zindabad! is the war cry of the Gawli gang, a salute to Asha Gawli, the wife of the Hindu don Arun Gawli. The phrase, meaning 'Long live Mummy!', is shouted by a crowd of elderly Muslim men who gather outside a slum in Mumbai's Byculla area, raising their right fists in unison as Asha steps out of her car. To an outsider, the adoration from this crowd, who address her as 'mother,' seems strange, as she appears no older than fifty with her jet-black hair and only slightly lined brown skin. The respect she commands is not born of age or faith, but from the fact that she is married to 'Daddy,' the local don, and has become the true engine of his power. The chant is the audible signature of a woman who, through sheer force of will, transformed herself from a shy housewife into the most trusted lieutenant and de facto leader of one of Mumbai's most resilient gangs.

From Shy Wife to 'Mummy'

Asha Gawli's transformation was born of necessity. With Arun a frequent guest in the city's jails, she had no option but to take the reins and run the show by proxy. She did this so effectively that she formulated ingenious ways to protect her husband from the law, including having holes dug inside their kitchen where Arun would hide whenever the police arrived with an arrest warrant. According to the police, Asha had a pit dug right below the area that housed the gas cylinder. Her involvement became so vital to the gang that Arun began treating her as his most trusted lieutenant. Over the years, her demeanour changed as she shed her shy and orthodox ways and turned aggressive and wily in her dealings. Since Arun's gang members addressed him as 'Daddy,' Asha automatically came to be known as 'Mummy,' a title that would become her identity and her weapon.

The Political Shield and the Women's Wing

The chant 'Mummy zindabad!' is most powerfully associated with Asha's role as a political shield. In 1996, while Arun was locked up in the Kolhapur jail serving time under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA), he mentioned his aspirations to join politics as a way 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, she shifted her focus to her husband's political career. In 1997, with his wife's encouragement and support, Arun started the Akhil Bharatiya Sena, with himself as president and Asha heading the women's wing. It was this women's wing that was used as a shield for the don against arrests and police encounters. A group of women would constantly surround Arun every time he walked out of Dagdi Chawl, a strategy 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. The chant of 'Mummy zindabad!' was the rallying cry of this protective phalanx, a declaration that the don's safety was guaranteed by the women who surrounded him.

Running the Empire by Proxy

Asha's power extended far beyond physical protection. 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 that was largely due to 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 that she redressed the grievances of the people in the locality, spending money from the gang's resources to keep them happy. Despite her efforts, the people of his constituency voted against him, and Arun failed to clinch the MLA post, a failure attributed to his own absence and lack of attendance in the Assembly session. Yet, Mummy was not a disappointed woman. For her, the very fact that Arun was safe and unharmed by police forces, even after being tried under several stringent laws, made her a clear winner. This sentiment is the core of the 'Mummy zindabad!' chant: it is a celebration of survival itself, a defiant assertion that the don's life, preserved through her efforts, is the ultimate victory.

The Significance of the Chant in the Book's World

The cry of 'Mummy zindabad!' resonates against the other expressions of female power in the book. It contrasts sharply with the shrewd manipulation of Jenabai Daaruwali, who made ganglords like Karim Lala, Haji Mastan, and Dawood Ibrahim dance to the movement of her fingers, and with the public oratory of Gangubai Kathiawadi, who stunned an audience at Azad Maidan by declaring herself a gharwali, not a ghar todnewali. Where Jenabai's power was in scheming and Gangubai's in public advocacy, Asha's power was in the relentless, unglamorous labor of running a gang and a political career by proxy. The chant is also a gendered inversion of the underworld's usual dynamics. While top dons like Amar Naik, Sada Pawle, and Nari Khan were killed in fake police encounters, Gawli survived, won MLA elections, and saw his daughter and party workers become corporators, largely because of his wife. Arun rarely steps out of his fortress; it is Asha who goes out and does everything for him, whether canvassing for elections, making the rounds of the courts for legal battles, or staging dharnas outside police stations and ministers' offices. 'Mummy zindabad!' is therefore not just a cheer for a woman, but a recognition that in the Gawli gang, the real power, the real protector, and the real leader was the one who answered to the name 'Mummy.'