Dongri to Dubai English Version

Preface

ongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia has been my most complex and difficult project since I took to repor ting on crime way back in 1995. The

biggest challenge by far has been chronicling the history of the Mumbai underworld and keeping it interesting for lay readers as well as choosing incidents that

marked an epoch in the Mumbai mafia.

It was first suggested to me by a friend in 1997, when I was barely a couple of years into crime repor ting, that I should try to write about the history of the

Mumbai mafia; I was advised to replicate something like Joe Gould’s Secret. At the time, I had not even heard of the book; to be honest, I felt it was too colossal

a responsibility for someone who was still wet behind the ears.

But having put my ear to the ground for Black Friday, I felt ready for a bigger challenge. Initially, I set out to find out why so many Muslim youngsters from

Mumbai were drawn to crime. Was it the aura of Dawood Ibrahim or was it economic compulsion that drew them? That was the question with which I star ted.

And somewhere along the way, I ended up doing what my friend had asked me to do initially.

When I set off on the story from Dongri, the metaphor was not lost on my friends. Am I guilty of linking members of a par ticular religion with crime? Unlike

in the US, where exhaustive studies have been conducted on race and crime and their correlation, if any, there has been no serious debate or study on the causes

that made Muslims prone to following a life of crime in the last fifty years.

When I say Dongri, it is not just the area that star ts from Mandvi near Zakaria Masjid but from Crawford Market to the end of JJ Hospital, covering Null

Bazaar, Umerkhadi, Chor Bazaar, Kamathipura, and all the interweaving cloth and retail markets and masjids.

Tracing the history of Mumbai, historian and researcher Sharada Dwivedi writes that the area was once a flatland and Dongri was a hill; there used to be a

Por tuguese for t here that the British took over and for tified. But before the British star ted reclaiming the land, the for t area was a low-lying area below the rocky

heights of Dongri, which provided easy access to the sea. Muslim settlers are known to have lived in the higher lands near the present day Chakala Market, and in

Dongri, from as far back as the fourteenth century.

The easter n par t of Bombay1 island was predominantly Muslim dominated for a long time, and remains so even today. After the seven islands were linked,

Dongri got a life of its own. The chaos around it happened gradually; with access to the markets, commerce thrived and so did the population. Traffic is a mess,

the pavements have been taken over by hawkers, pedestrians spill onto the streets, and the place is always bustling with activity. To the west of Dongri is the

Chor Bazaar (literally meaning ‘thieves’ market’) where you can get everything from old wardrobes discarded by Parsi households to antiques, gramophones, and

other curios.

Long before Dawood changed the way Dongri is perceived today, others who had walked the hall of fame and notoriety in the Dongri area were Chinka Dada,

Ibrahim Dada, Haji Mastan, Karim Lala, and Baashu Dada.

In those days, the easiest crime was to accost late night travellers and relieve them of their valuables. The ar t of pickpocketing was yet to be lear nt and

perfected. But the wielding of the shiny blade of a knife, sword, or chopper was enough to send shivers down the spine of the peace-loving residents of Bombay, as

it was known back then. Every little crime was repor ted with flourish by the British jour nalists. One of them, Alfred W. Davis alias Gunman, who repor ted on

crime for the Blitz, was a legend. A repor ter who flowered under his tutelage was Usman Gani Muqaddam. Usman was known for his diligent news gathering and

investigative skills. After extensive interviews with Usman Gani and other veteran crime reporters and my own research, I gathered that Dongri had always been

the epicentre of crime in Mumbai.