Byculla to Bangkok

by Hussain Zaidi

  Strikes were frequent, from 1924 onwards. The Labour Monthly’s May 1924 report on one Mumbai textile strike is revealing.

  One hundred and fifty thousand mill operatives, including thirty thousand women and children, have been on strike and locked-out of the textile mills of Bombay for nearly three months. All the mills of the district, eighty-three in number, are closed down. The question at issue is the payment of the annual bonus to the operatives, in addition to their usual wage. In July of last year, the owners put up a notice that the usual bonus, received by the operatives during the last five years and regarded by them as a form of supplementary wages, would not be paid. The men did not heed the notice, most of them being illiterate, and it was not until the end of the year when the bonus became payable that they realized the issue at stake. A strike was declared in the middle of January, followed immediately by a lockout on the part of the owners, in an attempt to force the men back to work unconditionally.

  The monthly wage of a Bombay mill operative is 35 rupees for men; 17 rupees for women – for a ten-hour day. This sum is insufficient to maintain their bodily health and strength, or to provide them with the most elementary necessities. For this reason, during the height of the post-war boom period when mill profits soared to several hundred per cent, the annual bonus was granted as a form of supplementary wages. The cost of living has risen (according to official figures) 58 per cent since 1914; profits have risen from 674 lakh rupees in 1917 to 1,559 lakh rupees in 1921, with a slight fall in 1922-23. The cotton mill workers are proverbially underpaid and overworked, with the result that they were always heavily in debt to the moneylender. Their right to organise into trade unions was not legally recognised, and they had no regular labour organisations and no union fund. Their leaders, up to the time of the present strike, were drawn from the ranks of the bourgeoisie – lawyers, politicians, philanthropists and professional labour leaders, who were closer, in interest and sympathies, to the employing class than to the workers. They sabotaged every attempt to strike on the part of the latter, they took the side of the employers in every decisive issue, they used their influence to keep the men at work and satisfied with the old conditions instead of attempting to better themselves. The government, which affects to maintain its neutrality in labour disputes, has never hesitated to call out armed police and military to aid the employers in guarding their property and crushing a strike.

  Strikes took place all the time in the Bombay textile mills as the workers fought for fair wages. In the early years, there was no unionism. It was the communist leader S.A. Dange who brought the workers under the communist umbrella and fought for the workers’ rights. Many years later, in 1982, when Dr Datta Samant announced a textile mill strike, the 250,000 workers presumed that eventually there would be a rationalization of wages on par with that of the other industries.

  The mills had begun a downward spiral long before Dr Samant called the strike. The textile workers, who knew they were underpaid as compared to workers in the pharmaceutical or engineering industries, decided to approach him to take up their case. They were tired of the official industry union, the Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh (RMMS), which was affiliated to the Congress-I but had failed to take up their cause. Dr Samant had fought for workers in other industries, and had a great following because his agitations always resulted in unheard of wage hikes. He was reluctant to call for a textile workers’ strike as it was not his field of work. But the workers surrounded his house in Ghatkopar and refused to leave until he agreed.

  Javed Anand, in his tribute to Dr Samant, says of the trade union leader, ‘Samant could not be bothered to look at company balance sheets offered by managements as proof of the organization’s inability to pay. He was convinced, like the workers were, that all balance sheets are dressed to lie. The fact that many companies which initially pleaded inability later agreed to pay more, added to Samant’s and the workers’ resolve not to let the balance sheets come in the way of their “exorbitant” demands.’

  At the time of the strike, a skilled textile worker was drawing Rs 1,500 while an unskilled worker was drawing Rs 700/800. The strike got national coverage. Dr Samant had been a Congress supporter for a while, but Indira Gandhi had not liked his defiance during the Emergency and he had been jailed. She felt that if the textile industry workers got their way, so would the port and dock workers, and so on. So, later, when the workers were willing to call off the strike even without a hike in wages, insisting only on one condition, that the government scrap the Bombay Industrial Act of 1947, nobody paid heed to their pleas. Their only other demand was for RMMS to be de-recognized as the only official union of mill workers under the Bombay Industrial Act.

  The government of the day refused to budge and the strike was never formally called off. The eighteen-month strike, one of the longest in India’s labour history, proved to be the death knell of the already struggling textile mills. Most of them shut down and three lakh textile mill workers lost their jobs.

  By the advent of the twentieth century, hardly any textile mill was running to full capacity and international brands like Finlay’s, Calico and Binny’s lapsed into history. Though the strike was blamed, every mill had its own reason for closure. Some closed because of the competition that was the result of globalization, some because they were labour-intensive and others because of family feuds.

  The workers in these mills were predominantly Maharashtrians from south Raigad and Ratnagiri. The Konkan coast was very poor in those days and farmers had to fall back on one rice crop and mangoes. The cotton mills were the warp and weft of the migrant’s life. For trade unionism, they would align with the communists, but as the communists did not believe in religion, the workers were soon under the sway of the right-wing Shiv Sena. The Shiv Sena found its early cadres among the mill workers of Konkan.

  There were also workers from other Indian states who eventually put down roots here. Slowly, the chawls that were walking distance from the mills evolved into a multicultural space driven by common middle-class values.

  The chawls and two-storey tenements, like the BDD chawls at Worli, housed workers in small, cramped rooms. Alcoholism was rampant, as was moneylending. Bootleggers and matka dens thrived. To escape the squalid living conditions, adults and children spent much of their time outside the house. Children lived and survived on their wits and often, when strikes were called, families were sent back home to the villages. Historians talk of communalism breeding in these places and Dr Samant attested to this. But there was something else that was bred here. Organized crime.

  Gawli worked in Shakti Mills (the now infamous mills where a young photojournalist was gang-raped on 28 August 2013), following in the footsteps of his parents. Naik’s family sold vegetables in Dadar, but his parents worked in the mills. Gangster D.K. Rao’s parents worked in a mill, as did the parents of Anil Parab. Most importantly, by the early nineties, the Maharashtrian and non-Maharashtrian boys who grew up in Girangaon, working their way up the mafia ladder by stabbing and killing for money, realized that they were sitting on a goldmine.

  South Mumbai was cramped and bursting at its seams and there was no place for expansion. The Bandra-Kurla Complex was being promoted as an alternative, but it lacked proximity to south Mumbai. The real-estate mavens, the mafia and the politicians realized that the only way for Mumbai to go was south-central. Girangaon had to make way for the new face of Mumbai, probably the next financial nerve-centre of the city. One by one, the mills that had survived Dr Samant’s strike closed and began pulling down their chimneys. The money at stake ran into crores. Some mills were sold for Rs 400 crore upwards and others were pegged at Rs 600 to Rs 900 crore.

  By the nineties, Girangaon had become the next Kurukshetra. The big players like Dawood had aligned with the builders, while Gawli and his ilk aligned with the mill owners. Everybody benefited, except the workers. And the new players, both in the mafia and state politics – and possibly even the politics of New Delhi – would come from the
money of Girangaon.

  FOUR

  The First Meeting

  The room is quiet, but there is the overwhelming presence of three heavily built, muscular men with forbidding expressions. In the centre of the room is a man in a wheelchair, wearing a half-sleeve shirt. His fingers are splayed on a white, sterile napkin that has been placed on his lap. He has a beard and his eyes are cold windows to his soul, contemplative, yet projecting annoyance. It is evident that our presence isn’t appreciated. He is staring at us and for a moment we are sure he has seen through us and our hidden motives and intentions. His face bears creases, testimony to far too many years of the hard life, his deep cynicism and extreme hate and distrust of the world. This is fifty-year-old Ashwin Naik, brother of ganglord Amar Naik. It was only after a great deal of persuasion and cajoling that we were permitted into his sanctum. Not everyone is allowed in.

  There are six telephones on the table. Needless to say, this is how he keeps the law and enforcement agencies flummoxed. How many phones can they tap?

  Ashwin has distinctive mannerisms. He speaks with peculiar pauses and with an unusual punctuation, as if carefully weighing and contemplating every word that comes out of his mouth.

  There is a photograph of a Shivling behind his table, and small idols of Ganesha and Laxmi are placed on the right side of it. When he sees us scrutinizing the idols, he turns, looks at them and says, ‘My parents used to say: “Dekho bhagwan hamare peeche hi toh hain”’ (Look, God is always behind us).

  Upon a second look, we spot the visiting card of Sachin Ahir, lying next to the idols. Ahir is an MLA, a cabinet minister in the coalition government of Maharashtra, and it’s surprising to see his card in Ashwin Naik’s house, for Ahir is also the nephew of rival ganglord Gawli. There are lots of questions waiting to be asked, but we reserve the topic for future meetings – if we can coax more out of him, that is – and instead talk about his family, his upbringing, and the days that shaped his career as a ganglord.

  Ashwin Naik became the don of the fledgling Amar Naik gang after the death of his brother in 1996. Amar was gunned down by Vijay Salaskar in a famous police encounter on 10 August that year.

  On 18 April 1994, Ashwin too was shot on the premises of the sessions court by Gawli’s sharpshooter Ravindra Sawant – only, the attack did not kill him. It left him permanently dependent on a wheelchair for movement.

  When our discussion veers towards his childhood and his parents, Naik’s face lights up. He speaks about his parents at great length, animated, smiling. He talks about their religious beliefs and their lack of education. He speaks of how ambitious they both were for their children and how they were determined that they should have the best education.

  Ashwin had three siblings: brothers Ajit and Amar, and sister Alka. Only Ashwin had the opportunity to study and earn higher academic qualifications. None of his siblings managed to study beyond matriculation, though their father Maruti Naik wanted all of them to study.

  Ashwin studied at Dr Antonio Da Silva High School and Junior College of Commerce in Dadar, and had been inclined towards technical education since Class 8. His fascination for aeroplanes and his leaning towards engineering saw him study aeronautical engineering. However, when he joined the Hindustan Aeronautics Academy, he had to quit within a year, unable to handle the harsh ragging of senior students. He then went to London and graduated as a civil engineer.

  Ashwin has a few people with him today, among them his lawyer Bharat Mane, who helps him articulate his thoughts. A stack of newspapers is bundled on a rack in one corner of the room. There is a TV in another corner and he keeps surfing news channels. We realize that we are also under the watchful eyes of CCTV cameras.

  He loves Bollywood films, Ashwin tells us proudly. He recently saw a Paresh Rawal starrer Oh My God and liked it very much. He is planning to see an action thriller, Race 2, at PVR Juhu today. When he sees our eyebrows rise in surprise, he assures us he will be surrounded by twelve of his most trusted men, protected even in the very public space of a theatre.

  Ashwin says he was obsessed with Bollywood since his childhood. He used to bunk school to watch movies after saving his pocket money of 25 paise for over a week. He meticulously noted every expense in his diary, in a self-invented code language. This habit has remained with him until today. He makes notes in his diary that no one except him can decipher. The crime branch cops have had a tough time cracking his encryptions; during interrogations, the maximum amount of time has been spent decoding the entries in his diary.

  Ashwin says he used to repair his friends’ and neighbours’ bicycles when he fell short of money for movies. But he confesses that he mostly just had fun because both his elder brothers treated him as a kid and pampered him.

  As the eldest, Ajit Naik shouldered the responsibility of his house and family. He was a hardworking man, and toiled from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day. There wasn’t a single day he was not at the shop. He was well-respected in the Dadar market, and everyone took his name with great regard for his integrity and honesty.

  Amar, on the other hand, was naughty and ended up in fist fights. Ajit tried to reprimand and reform him, but to no avail. Despite the friction between the older brothers, Amar and Ashwin got along well. Amar, though not proficient in subjects like English, was fantastic at maths. Contrary to popular opinion, he had few vices – he didn’t even smoke or drink – but he became infamous because of the company he kept.

  Then Amar began working at the shop, which had only been looked after by Ajit so far. Ashwin recalls, with a glint in his eyes, that that was when the problems began.

  FIVE

  The Vegetable Vendor’s Vendetta

  In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

  – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

  ‘No one will step forward unless he wants to get chopped up like a carrot,’ he said coldly, matter-of-factly, as if he was used to chopping up the human torso on a daily basis.

  He wielded the chopper like a vegetable knife, as though demonstrating the act of carrot-cutting, ready to pounce and attack anyone who dared take up the gauntlet and move a step towards him.

  Amar Maruti Naik meant business, and this seemed clear not just from his words but his demeanour. Amar’s eyes were bloodshot, he was gritting his teeth, ready to take that one step that would catapult him from an ordinary youth to a criminal. The onlookers were clearly nervous. It was evident that this twenty-four-year-old was willing to kill or get killed; there was extreme hatred and madness in his eyes.

  Five burly men faced him: menacing street thugs, bullies really, full of bravura but no spunk. They realized that a wrong move by any of them would propel the young man before them into action, and that he might slice their heads off with one swift motion. They had never worked for a penny in their lives, and this man seemed like somebody whose sinews had seen hard labour. This presented a challenge; they were used to dealing with pliable vegetable vendors who grumbled but eventually gave in to their demands.

  When Amar realized that none of his adversaries wanted to take the risk and meet his challenge, he moved to his left and extended his left hand to the man who lay face down on the pavement beside him, his white kurta soiled, his broken glasses beside him.

  ‘Dada, uth dada, majhahaathdhar, dada uth,’ Amar called to the man, who was writhing in pain. He bent down to hold his brother’s arm, to lift him, but his eyes remained fixed on the thugs watching their movements.

  Ajit Naik began to rise, leaning on his brother, but he seemed too weak to stand up; he stumbled and Amar, who was taking almost all his weight on one arm, lost his balance. This gave his opponents an opportunity to make the first move. One of them p
ounced on Amar from the side, while another tried to attack him from behind.

  But Amar was faster.

  He moved quickly to attack the person who had come from behind, slashing him with his chopper and managing to inflict a deep cut on the man’s arm. But the attacker who held on to his neck stymied him. He moved his chopper from his right hand to his left, but found it difficult to get rid of the man whose hands were pressing against his neck.

  The next moment, the man was shrieking with pain. Amar had used that age-old trick: squeezing his assailant’s testicles hard. The entire Dadar market resonated with the sound of the man’s agony.

  A deep gash on the arm of one man and the horrifying howls of the other were enough to unsettle the goons. They decided to retreat. But as they fell back, their ring leader said, ‘Tu thaamb, aaj aamhi lok tujha kheema karun taakin, mard ki aulaad hai toh ithech thaamb.’ (You stay put here if you are a real man, we will come back and make mince meat of you). They took hold of their injured friends and left the spot immediately.

  By now Ajit had come to his senses, and had heard their threat. He looked at Amar, who was still staring in the direction of his opponents.