Comment: Glamour attracts the underworld to Bollywood

Here's a confession: for the last 10 years or so, I have been in intermittent contact with Chhota Shakeel. Now, before the Mumbai police arrests me under MCOCA, or the home ministry threatens to slap POTA, let me clarify that the nature of the contact is purely professional.

As a journalist cutting his teeth in Mumbai in the late eighties and early nineties, you could not but have some kind of contact with the "D Company". The Mumbai serial blasts of 1993 ensured that.

Until 1993, Dawood Ibrahim was seen in Mumbai's criminal lexicon as yet another gangster who had made the journey from the backstreets of south-central Mumbai to heading a gang of his own.

Extortion rackets, gold smuggling, and supari killings: Dawood was just another don with a glamorous lifestyle. He showed up regularly in his trademark dark glasses, he threw parties for the rich and famous, and gave interviews to journalists on the phone detailing his exploits.

Mumbai's streetsmart politicians used him at election time and local businessmen, many of whom were in the flourishing real estate market, made their peace with him.

No one in this period really seemed to question just why the Mumbai police was doing nothing to catch him. It was almost as if Dawood and his gang lived in another universe, one which didn't quite connect with the lives of the average person, so it didn't really seem to matter whether they were caught or not.

The Mumbai blasts changed all that. Dawood and his men were no longer some shadowy extra-territorial figures in the distance, but their remote control now seemed to target the heart of the metropolis.

Moreover, this was no longer some lumpen mob which was engaged in some localised turf battle. The 1993 blasts showed that Dawood was now part of a larger terrorist network.

For a while, Dawood was persona non grata. After all, he was no longer just some romanticised villainous character, he was now a traitor who was sleeping with the national enemy. He disappeared from our television sets, when the government woke up and said that it would demand his extradition and fewer people attended his parties.

But to have expected the underworld to disintegrate overnight was unrealistic. All that happened was that their role was transformed. Until 1993, Dawood and his gang believed they could survive and prosper by flirting on the periphery of Mumbai's social and political life.

After 1993, the gang realised the need to re-invent itself as being more than just a group of blood-letting men who could shoot and scoot. This is where the film connection was critical.

Films provided the gang with the four things they so desperately needed to make a comeback: money, glamour, power and legitimacy.

So, from putting their money in small-time video ventures, the gang decided it was time to enter the heart of the film business: production, distribution, music rights and international markets. If they could get actors and actresses to perform at their parties, why not get them to act in their films? And if they could provide finance to producers, why not produce the film themselves?

Its a strategy which worked because a disorganised industry was ripe for a takeover. The film world, of course, claims that they are "victims" of the gang. That if a Sunjay Dutt chooses to talk shop with Chhota Shakeel, he did so because he had little choice.

That if a Bharat Shah talks business with Shakeel, its again because he fears for his life. But how far does one carry this argument of fear and intimidation?

Yes, there is little doubt that no one can function with a gun to the head, but what has the industry really done to fight the scourge? When film-maker Rajiv Rai ran away from the country after an attempt on his life, did the industry speak out in one voice against the underworld? When Rakesh Roshan was attacked, how many film persons were ready to make it an issue? When producers were forced to take specific actresses, how many people in Bollywood protested?

The film industry's silence is its biggest indictment. It suggests that the industry has decided that its better to be co-opted by the underworld than to fight it. There are undoubtedly several people in the industry who would like to clean it up, who would like to make good films without any external pressures, who would like to take a stand. The fact though is that very few actually have.

Even after the Sanjay Dutt tapes were released, there have been very few voices from within the industry willing to debate the long-term implications of the growing clout of the likes of Chhota Shakeel on Bollywood. There are two senior film stars who are now members of the union government, but we haven't heard a squeak from them.

When we did a television programme on the Bollywood-underworld connection, the only one who was willing to come and speak out was Mahesh Bhatt, but the problem is that Bhatt has an opinion on most subjects, so its unlikely that he is representative in any manner.

And what of the country's law-makers who routinely make demands for the extradition of Dawood and his men but then seem to quietly forget about it?

For the ruling alliance at the centre, Sunil Dutt's discomfiture at the release of the tapes is seen to be politically advantageous since it might erode the credibility of the "Sadbhavana ke Sipahi" programme for communal harmony which the Congress party MP is leading. So, they would prefer the controversy to simmer rather than try and look for real solutions.

The Congress party too, doesn't want to tie itself in knots, so it would rather ignore the issue than face up to reality. Indeed, the attitude of the average politician was summed up by one MP who said, "Today, it is Sunjay Dutt and Chhota Shakeel, just think what would happen if the police tapped the phone conversations of some of our netas?"

Which is precisely the core of the problem. Today, there is hardly anyone who wants to take on the underworld because no one is quite certain just which direction the campaign would end up. No one knows who to point a finger at because you won't have enough fingers left once your through with the exercise.

Post-script: The last time Chhota Shakeel rang me up it was to deny a story that his gang had been attacked in Karachi by members of a rival faction. I heard him out, and then popped the question: "Is it possible to do a television interview with you?" He's promised to get back, but as you might have realised, even scoop-hungry reporters need the underworld.