Present-day mill neighborhoods in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad still retain traces of their previous incarnations. The vast emptiness of the former textile mill compounds is a material reminder of the city's earlier prominence as an industrial center rivaling Bombay. Contemporary styles of everyday political functioning similarly owe their origins to the historic position of these localities as sites of prosperous industrial activity and as spaces of vibrant working-class politics. The growth of these neighborhoods accompanied the proliferation of textile mills in Ahmedabad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Workers from neighboring districts settled these areas, as chawls Footnote 1 and tenements sprouted across the landscape of eastern Ahmedabad. The city, in the early years of the twentieth century, could boast of a flourishing textile industry fuelled largely by Indian capital as well as robust urban governance institutions that were being given a new direction by the Congress PartyFootnote 2 and “indigenous elites.”Footnote 3 When Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915, he chose Ahmedabad as his base, and the city assumed a central role in shaping nationalist politics as well as promoting Gandhian trade unionism through the formation of the Textile Labour Association (henceforth referred to as the TLA) in 1920. Until 1960, Ahmedabad was part of the Bombay PresidencyFootnote 4 till the Maha Gujarat Movement prompted a struggle for separate statehood for Gujarat.
A close reading of the local politics of the working-class neighborhoods of Ahmedabad reveals the layers of mediation that existed between the dominant trade union, the TLA, the Congress Party, and the city municipality. It offers us crucial insights into the texture of working-class politics in an industrial city and leads us toward a more complex understanding of local political practices. It is in one such neighborhood, Ravipur,Footnote 5 that I locate my study of local political intermediaries.
This article analyzes the transformation of local political practices over the period of the Textile Labour Association's political ascendance and its subsequent decline—roughly from the early 1920s to the late 1960s. In particular, I examine the techniques through which the TLA extended its control over the space of the mill as well as into the surrounding neighborhood. Training our focus on the working-class neighborhood enables us to integrate two domains of working lives that are usually kept separate in academic inquiry. On the one hand, we have the world of the factory or the textile mill and the politics of labor that are governed by the negotiations between workers, union leaders, and employers. On the other, we have the quotidian affairs of neighborhood life—the daily struggles over housing and civic amenities, which are, more often than not, mediated by local strongmen, municipal officials, and local politicians. These two domains intersect and overlap in critical ways in the working-class neighborhoods of Ahmedabad. This article explores these intersections and overlaps and attempts to excavate the rich terrain of local social and political life.
I discuss two figures of local importance, both considerably invested in matters of everyday political mediation—the union representative and the local strongman (or dadas, as they were colloquially referred to)—and focus particular attention on the ways in which their power was constituted and on the points of intersection between their seemingly discrete realms. These two figures—the morally upright TLA pratinidhi (representative) constructed, for all discursive purposes, in the image of the model worker and the dada, the “anti-social element,” operating on the fringes of respectable society—appeared to inhabit two very different worlds. Literally meaning “elder brother,” the term dada is often used to signify a neighborhood tough. In Ahmedabad, as elsewhere, they carry a reputation of being mathabhari, which, roughly translated, means hot-headed and dangerous. In more concrete terms, a mathabhari person would be defiant of established structures of authority and would have a penchant for violence, while extending a hand of patronage and protection in the neighborhood. Yet, as this article will show, the worlds of the dada and the pratinidhi coincided and converged at various points, and it was through these intersections that the power of both of these political intermediaries was constituted during the period under study.
My first encounter with the contemporary political practices of the mill areas came about by accident. New to the city, I arrived, through some contacts, at the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) office, like many researchers before me.Footnote 6 Many of the organization's grassroots workers are former mill workers and continue to live in the mill districts. One of my first contacts in SEWA, Urmilaben, insisted that I meet her father-in-law, a longtime resident of Ravipur who, she assured me, would be of great help in understanding the history of the mill areas. Upon meeting him at his “office” at the Ravipur post office crossroads, I realized that Jeevanbhai was a local municipal councilorFootnote 7 serving his third term. This particular char rasta (crossroads) is of some significance in the neighborhood, as it is the site of Congress power in the area and forms a “border” of sorts between the Hindu and Muslim parts of the neighborhood. Its symbolic significance is attested to by the fact that Narendra Modi's 2012 state election rally was held here. The crossroads (officially named Maganbhai Mithabhai chowk after a former mill worker and municipal corporator) has a warren of streets radiating from it, each with rows upon rows of chawls. On either side of the char rasta are small shops—a photocopy shop/garment processing workshop owned by Jeevanbhai; a photography studio owned by his nephew; and a Muslim-owned tailor's shop that has, since then, shut down. The fourth side was dominated by the eerily vacant Sarangpur Mill No. 2 compound.
On most days, this char rasta bears witness to the workings of Jeevanbhai's municipal offices. In his third term as the local Congress Party corporator from Ravipur, he attends to complaints, supplications, and appeals from his constituents. Despite his advanced age, he keeps regular office hours—sitting on a tin chair at the curb from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., and then from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.—and conducts his business in an intimidatingly brusque manner. A 75-year-old great-grandfather, as well as a bootlegger of some serious repute, Jeevanbhai has been actively involved in local politics for quite a few decades. Even during our very first meeting, he dropped hints about his violent past, proudly displaying battle scars from his days at the akhada (gymnasium). Over months of interaction with him, I learned more concrete details of his career—as a political intermediary, a TLA representative, and a formidable dada. His story provided me with a different lens into everyday political practices in the mill areas and enabled me to interrogate the historical transformations of the figure of the dada.
Though the dada has been widely represented in popular culture, a staple of Hindi cinema, there has been limited scholarly inquiry into this figure.Footnote 8 In Bollywood films, the figure of the dada has had multiple incarnations, from a small-time crook to a thug with a heart of gold, sometimes growing in influence to assume the position of “don” or gangster.Footnote 9 Usually posed against the “hero,” or protagonist, such figures operate on the margins of the law, though often within certain codes of honor. From being a peripheral character or antagonist, the figure of the dada has been placed at the center of the cinematic narrative in films like Satya or Vaastav.
This article locates its explorations of the figure of the political intermediary in the working-class neighborhood of Ravipur, tracing his political lineage, his modes of forming social and political relationships, and the consolidation and contestations of his power.Footnote 10 I place this figure within the broader narrative of the TLA's political, civic, and electoral engagements from the early 1920s to the late 1960s. The union's political aspirations during this period were realized through forging a strong alliance with the Congress Party—a relationship that proved to be mutually beneficial, as it consolidated the political party's hold over the working-class areas and simultaneously fashioned the TLA into a formidable political force. I present three central arguments in this article. Drawing from existing academic literature on Ahmedabad, I suggest that the TLA gained a foothold in the mill districts through its impressive network of grassroots institutions and intermediaries, maintaining what could be called a “parallel government.”Footnote 11 These intermediaries, on the other hand, relied on the access that the TLA opened up to further cement their control over the neighborhoods. Using this relationship of mutual interdependence as a framing narrative, I argue that the actual functioning of union representatives served as an interface between the formal and informal registers of control in the mill districts. Second, I argue that there were significant overlaps between two figures of local leadership—the dada and the TLA representative (the pratinidhi, as they were called in Gujarati, or “member,” as they were colloquially referred to)—not only in the scope of their functioning, but also in the performative styles that they embodied. Third, I contend that it was a very particular form of masculinity, that of dadagiri,Footnote 12 that tied together the seemingly separate realms of the dada and the pratinidhi. The TLA, as I show in this article, reinforced its presence over the working-class neighborhoods, through the figure of the dada and his performance of masculinity. This is particularly striking since one of the TLA's primary objectives was to create the model worker and to sanitize what was seen as an unruly one.
This article is divided into three parts. The first lays out the broader landscape of the city's local politics and introduces the main actors. I highlight the dominance of the Congress/TLA nexus during this period and argue that the Congress Party's and the TLA's political power was mutually constituted. The second discusses the ways in which the Textile Labour Association, the city's dominant trade union, was instrumental in civic governance and in mediating everyday political practices, and the third explores the position of the “political intermediary” and the central role played by this figure in the arrangement of local power in the mill neighborhoods. The two last sections lay out the contours of the field within which both the dada and the pratinidhi functioned and highlight the points of collision between their worlds. I focus not only on the structural role of the dada and the practices of dadagiri within the TLA apparatus, but also detail the process of making one.
Setting the Stage: City Politics, 1920–1969
Public life in the mill neighborhoods, especially in the early decades of the twentieth century, was constituted, in large part, by the textile mills and the dominant labor union, the Textile Labour Association (TLA). The union was formed in 1920, following strikes against wage cuts in 1917–1918. Mahatma Gandhi, Anasuyaben Sarabhai,Footnote 13 and Shankarlal BankerFootnote 14 were instrumental in its formation.Footnote 15 Four central institutions—the Congress Party, the Textile Labour Union, the Ahmedabad Mill Owners Association (AMA),Footnote 16 and the municipality—dominated the political landscape.Footnote 17 After Mahatma Gandhi settled in Ahmedabad in 1915, the city assumed great prominence in the freedom movement and within the Indian National Congress. The central position of Ahmedabad within the Congress Party of the time is also reflected by the close relationship that Vallabhbhai Patel, one of the architects of the Indian National Congress, had with the city municipality. Sardar Patel's political career began in the Ahmedabad municipality, when he was elected councilor from Dariapur in 1917. It was under his leadership that the first urban planning schemes were enacted, the walled city opened up, and westward expansion facilitated.Footnote 18
Till the 1950s, the interplay of tensions and collaboration between these four institutions shaped the city's political landscape. The role of the working-class neighborhoods in this political arrangement was particularly crucial. In 1924, the first mill worker was elected to the city municipality, thus beginning a long association between the TLA, the Congress, and the Municipality. When Kacharabhai Bhagat, a DalitFootnote 19 spinner from Laxmi Cotton Mills, contested the elections from Saraspur, he set in motion a decades-long involvement of the TLA in municipal politics.Footnote 20 At this point, the TLA was firmly associated with the Congress Party and the party leaders saw this as a way of expanding the Congress's support base.
Gulzarilal Nanda,Footnote 21 in an interview, refers to Sardar Patel as the “kingmaker” of Ahmedabad in those days and suggests that Patel was reluctant to support a Dalit candidate for the municipal corporation.
His initial reaction was hostile because he was unsure of the effect of this on the voters generally. We stood firm because of the principle involved. Our candidate was elected unopposed. This was the beginning of our effective work in the civic body and facilities being created in the workers' localities. This helped to boost the TLA's prestige.Footnote 22
Nanda's view is contested, however, with other accounts suggesting that it was Patel who introduced the idea of workers' participation in local governance, even in the face of opposition from other party members.Footnote 23
The relationship between the Congress and the TLA strengthened with the next municipal elections.Footnote 24 The number of TLA representatives in the municipality grew exponentially until 1950 (by which time the municipality had already gained the status of a municipal corporation).Footnote 25 Twenty-two councilors of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (henceforth referred to as AMC) were members of the TLA.Footnote 26
The city's working class was incorporated into the political body through the involvement of the TLA and the Congress Party. This level of political participation set the stage for the circulation of power in the mill neighborhoods. The attention that these areas received, in terms of civic amenities, infrastructure, and educational institutions, was in part due to the significant presence of worker representatives in the civic bodies. Beginning in the late 1920s, the union instituted a practice of obtaining written pledges from their electoral candidates, declaring their intention to “give special attention to working-class localities, and provide them with amenities such as lights, water taps and public latrines.” Only those candidates who endorsed these promises were then supported by the TLA.Footnote 27 The entire machinery of the TLA and its electoral fortunes were dependent on mill workers. Thus, the power that the union representatives were invested with was simultaneously constituted, at one level, by their position of dominance within the mill neighborhoods, and at another level, by their connections to larger processes of urban governance. The TLA's publications, such as the one quoted below, no doubt self-aggrandizing to an extent, routinely pointed out the union's own contributions to ameliorating the living conditions in the mill areas.
The present day improvement of the labour localities in respect of the civic amenities like water, drainage, roads, lights, schools, maternity homes, dispensaries, etc, are all largely due to the persistent efforts of these representatives along with members of the Congress party in the Municipal Corporation.Footnote 28
The relationship between the TLA and the Congress was not uncontested, by any means. The first hints of a rift appeared soon after their initial electoral alliance, in 1927, when Anasuyaben, one the key leaders of the TLA, refused to contest municipal elections, despite Vallabhbhai Patel's request.Footnote 29 The contentious relationship between the municipality and the mill areas was articulated primarily through the politics of service provision.Footnote 30
In the 1930s the TLA's absolute hegemony over the mill areas was threatened by the growing influence of communists and Congress socialists. The declining profits of the industry and the wage reductions that followed were met with a wave of strikes.Footnote 31 The Delhi Agreement of 1935 between the TLA and the Millowners Association further exacerbated the situation—protests and strikes escalated while state authorities came down heavily on workers' militancy.Footnote 32
Old TLA hands, like Kacharabhai, the union's first mill worker municipal councilor, were defecting to the Congress socialists.Footnote 33 The overwhelming support for the strike activity in 1937,Footnote 34 led by the Mill Kamdar Union,Footnote 35 suggests that the TLA's authority was waning in the mill areas.Footnote 36
The union reclaimed its hegemonic position through a strategic deployment of its political clout, ensuring the enactment of the Bombay Industrial Disputes Act. This act, passed in 1938, guaranteed representative status to the TLA and legally instituted arbitration as the model of industrial negotiation.Footnote 37
The early 1940s saw the city in the grip of the Quit India movement, as both industrialists and the union joined forces and called for a political strike, during the course of which TLA secretaries Gulzarilal Nanda and Khandubhai Desai were jailed by the colonial authorities.Footnote 38 During the height of the Independence movement, the four crucial institutions in the city—the Congress Party, the TLA, the AMA, and the Municipality—worked in close cooperation. The association of the Congress and the TLA, in particular, was strengthened as increasingly larger numbers of TLA candidates occupied elected positions in the Municipality. From the solitary mill worker candidate in 1924, TLA representation had grown to seventeen councilors by the end of the 1940s.Footnote 39 This impressive presence in the civic body ensured that the mill districts, so far categorized as suburban, grew to be seen as part of the city.
With the start of the Maha Gujarat movement in 1956, which raised demands for the creation of a separate state of Gujarat, the Congress party and, by association, the TLA, began to be increasingly marginalized in the city's politics. The movement resulted in the entire city being heavily politicized and was led in a large part by Indulal Yagnik. Yagnik, a one-time Gandhian, who had had his own tensions with the Congress Party, assumed leadership of the movement after the police fired upon demonstrators on August 8, 1956.Footnote 40 As protestors took to the streets, targeting the Congress House and the TLA building in particular, they were met with repressive force. Although previously identified as the Congress's political ally, the Secretary General of the TLA, Shyam Prasad Vasavada, tried to distance the union from the political fracas, declaring, “This is a labourer's institution. It has nothing to do with politics.”Footnote 41
Ahmedabad ceased to be a loyal supporter of the Congress Party. The white Gandhi cap, previously the symbol of political activism in the city, now bore the brunt of its anger. “All over Gujarat, crowds shouting ‘Maha Gujarat’ forced people to take off their white caps (the symbol of Congress membership). At times they took out effigies of MorarjiFootnote 42 and burnt them.”Footnote 43 The violence rapidly spread through the city and to the mill districts. Unions other than the TLA called for strikes and closure of the mills. The political alliances that were forged during the early days of the agitation were formalized on September 9, 1956, with the formation of the Maha Gujarat Janata Parishad (MGJP). This was a multiparty coalition comprising members of the Praja Socialist Party, former Congress workers, and communists, with Indulal Yagnik as its president.
The elections of 1957 revealed the fractured political landscape of Gujarat. In Ahmedabad, the Congress had gone from being the political party of choice to a target of popular anger. In this changed political environment, neither the Congress nor the TLA contested the municipal elections of 1957. Invoking the language of the Ramayana, the TLA report stated, “In 1956, the Congress had gone into wilderness to serve the people only by peacefully waiting and watching.”Footnote 44 Former Congress members as well as Praja Socialist Party and Communist candidates came together to form a multiparty platform called the Nagrik Paksh (Citizens Party) to contest the municipal elections. Chinubhai Chimanbhai, who was the Congress mayor at that time, resigned from the party and joined the Nagrik Paksh as its head.Footnote 45 The central and state elections, on the other hand, revealed the continued dominance of the Congress Party and the skewed geography of MGJP influence.Footnote 46
Between 1956 and 1960—between the initiation of the Maha Gujarat Movement and the actualization of statehood for Gujarat—the fortunes of the Congress Party waned. The party was held responsible for the denial of statehood to Gujarat and the repressive measures taken to quell protestors.Footnote 47 The TLA's control over the working-class areas, which had faced consistent, though largely unsuccessful, threats since its formation, was challenged yet again. The most visible challenge was posed by Karsandas Parmar—a leader of the Republican Party and a member of the MGJP—and the doffers' union. Despite the successful strike action of July 1958, the union could not survive and returned to the TLA fold within a few years.
These regular incursions upon the TLA's dominant position notwithstanding, the Union's reign over the mill districts remained firm.Footnote 48 Partly, this was due to the TLA's extensive organizational apparatus—its vast network of pratinidhis and representatives and its presence in the civic bodies and involvement in the quotidian affairs of the mill neighborhoods. The TLA's status as the sole representative union further strengthened the hold it exercised over the city's workers.
By the 1961 elections, the political atmosphere had changed considerably. The linguistic state of Gujarat had come into being, and the Congress had somewhat redeemed itself after the embarrassment of the Maha Gujarat movement. During these elections, the Congress Party's dependence on the TLA and the working-class areas was made even more stark. Out of a total of seventy seats, the Congress won fifty. Out of the thirty-one TLA candidates, twenty-nine won. The mill areas produced twenty-seven of the winning candidates.Footnote 49 The TLA institutional apparatus was mobilized to support the Congress campaign in 1961. The services of the Seva Dal Footnote 50 (volunteer corps) and the mill representatives' committees were marshaled for campaigning. A voters' fund was organized, through which the union was to reach the mill workers' constituencies: “This new idea and device helped very much to come in direct contact with the workers and their families in all the labour areas and the importance of election, and voters' vote conveyed to them.”Footnote 51
Congress Party dominance in Ahmedabad was, thus, clearly buttressed by TLA support. The linkages between the TLA and the Congress, which had been formed first in 1924, was at its peak at this point. The depth of this alliance is revealed in this statement by the TLA secretary, S.R. Vasavada, issued on the eve of the 1961 elections:
You have built an organization to find solutions to industrial questions. The TLA looks after these questions on a daily basis. But just solving questions of pay, inflation, bonus, and working conditions alone does not bring satisfaction to the workers. The workers' neighbourhoods must be clean; when the workers return home at night from the mills, there must be proper roads, and the roads must have street lights; there must be clean water to drink and adequate water for cleaning and bathing; there must be drainage for waste water; there must be arrangements for children's education. There must be adequate health education and also arrangements for nursing people who fall sick. Only if such basic facilities are maintained can the workers' world be happy. If the municipality is responsible for carrying out these tasks and therefore it is of utmost importance that the members we have chosen participate in the administration of the Municipality.Footnote 52
The close ties between the TLA and the Congress Party are further highlighted by the resolutions taken by the union in 1961. Resolution No. 2 in the annual report of 1961 stated,
The meeting of the Joint Representative Board held today on 21-6-61 welcomes the ideal of socialistic setting of society set before the nation, by the National Congress and appreciates its resolve to establish it. The Textile Labour Association will always endorse everything (emphasis mine) which the National Congress will do to reach this goal. The Congress is going to contest the next general election keeping this ideal in view. This Board believes that it is in the interest of labour to give support to all the Congress Candidates. This Board wishes that the Textile Labour Association would select its own candidates for the next General Elections and the Congress would give them tickets to contest it.Footnote 53
The 1961 elections indicate one fundamental aspect of the city's political geography—that the textile mill areas were absolutely key to control of the AMC. Despite Indulal Yagnik's personal appeal among the working class,Footnote 54 the Janata Samiti (the name under which the new MGJP contested elections) had not been able to mobilize the industrial workers.Footnote 55 After the dismal performance of the MGJP in the 1961 AMC elections, Yagnik realized that the mill areas' loyalty to the TLA and the Congress would need to be broken.Footnote 56
The crucial position of the mill neighborhoods in the arrangement of local political power in this period was also echoed by Jigneshbhai, a communist activist and social worker from Ravipur. Fiercely critical of the TLA, he blamed the union for the collapse of the textile industry and was quick to point out its callousness toward workers. While talking to me over tea one October morning, Jigneshbhai mentioned something that would keep resurfacing in our conversations over the next few months—his admiration of Indulal Yagnik and the key role of the mill areas in determining civic politics.
The trade union movement has had great significance. Like for instance, there was Harikrishna Vallabhdas, the owner of Ambica mills and many others, who was defeated by the worker's leader, Indulal Yagnik. The same Indulal who would eat channa (chickpeas) here, who would live with the workers, was elected to the municipal corporation. Dinkarbhai Mehta, who was associated with the communist party, was elected as the mayor. The mills and the mill workers used to play a crucial role in these elections.Footnote 57
Resentment of the TLA had been festering in these areas. The union's hierarchical structure, paternalistic mode of engagement, and allegations of corruption were swiftly denuding their support base. By the early 1960s, there had already been several attempts to break away from the union and to contest its hegemony, or more precisely its dadagiri Footnote 58 —the communist Mill Kamdar Union led by Dinkar Mehta, the doffers' union founded by veteran Republican Karsandas Parmar, the Lal Vavta union, and the anti-TLA alliance, the Kamdar Sangram Samiti. Forming such unions was fraught with difficulties since the TLA was the only representative union under the Bombay Industrial Relations Act.
Soon after the landslide Congress victory in the municipal elections, the political terrain of the industrial east was deeply contested as the TLA, the communist, and the socialist parties wrestled for control.Footnote 59 The TLA, by now acutely threatened, expressed serious concerns about the increasing communist activity in the mill neighborhoods. “This year also the efforts of the communists and their actions to create dissatisfaction among the labourers and instigate them against the Association continued,” mentioned the annual report of 1962–1963.Footnote 60 Between 1963 and 1965 the communist and socialist alliances—most notably the Kamdar Sangram SamitiFootnote 61 —organized protests and called for strikes, rupturing the somewhat uneasy hold of the TLA.Footnote 62
The tensions between the TLA and the other unions, particularly Sangram Samiti, came to a head in 1964. Sangram Samiti, led by Indulal Yagnik, called for a strike on August 5, 1964, against the recommendations of the Bonus Commission. There had been large-scale mobilizations in the working-class areas, and, on the day of the strike, in the ensuing altercation between the strikers and the police, the police fired on the striking workers.
In the municipal elections in 1965, the year after the Sangram Samiti agitation, the Congress Party and the TLA lost its dominance over the AMC for the first time in history.Footnote 63 The Congress had contested for all seventy-eight seats and won only thirteen of them while the Janata Parishad and the Sangram Samiti swept the elections, winning forty-two seats.Footnote 64 At this moment, the deep interdependence between the city's four central institutions—the Congress, the TLA, the AMA, and the Municipal Corporation—was irrevocably broken.
In 1969 the city was torn apart by the communal riots. These were India's first major communal riots since 1947 and were the worst to that point. The industrial areas of the city were the worst affected, as with all episodes of violence except 2002,Footnote 65 when the violence spread to the outskirts of the city. It was the violence of 1969 that revealed the extent of the connections that were maintained between the police and other state agencies and the dadas of the working-class areas.Footnote 66 The figure of the dada, the practices of dadagiri, and his significance in the everyday life of the neighborhood, as I discuss in the next section, had been, to a large degree, constituted by the TLA's very mode of functioning.
Circulation of Power: The Pratinidhi, the TLA, and the AMC
Like mill work, the TLA's civic and political activities needed the active participation of certain dominant neighborhood figures. These figures, the pratinidhi and the dada, were key players within the TLA's institutional apparatus. Their authority, in some part, stemmed from their ability to provide services and mobilize connections in higher places in the union offices and in the municipal corporation. The union's grassroots presence, on the other hand, was dependent upon these intermediaries.
Beginning with the 1924 elections, certain institutions and mechanisms were set in place in the working-class areas. These were expanded and consolidated over the years and were given great legitimacy by the fact that the TLA had such a significant role in the municipality. In the early 1930s, around the same time when rival unions began gaining ground in the city, the union first turned its attention from the factory to the neighborhood and began systematically including neighborhood affairs within its purview.Footnote 67 Substantive changes in the union's constitution in 1930 included an amendment that called for the “promotion of civic and political interests of the workpeople.”Footnote 68 This new focus was articulated in the formation of ward unions and voters' associations. The ward unions began as parallel unions, composed of workers from a chawl or mohalla (neighborhood), until they were subsumed within the formal structure of the TLA in 1936.Footnote 69 These neighborhood-level associations—the ward unions, the voters' association, Seva Dal, and the latta mahajans—formed one powerful flank through which the union retained its control over the mill neighborhoods. The other equally robust strategy was the TLA's use of the Bombay Industrial Disputes Act and its role as the sole representative union for dispute settlements.
The most significant of these bodies, the one that securely placed the TLA at the center of neighborhood life, was the latta mahajan or latta khatta (the committee for neighborhood affairs). From the early twentieth century onward the municipality's attention was aimed at the otherwise poorly serviced mill neighborhoods through the involvement of the TLA in civic politics. This mirrored developments across the subcontinent as civic bodies made increasingly greater interventions in the social reproduction of labor.Footnote 70 As Shankarlal Banker stated,
With Kacharabhai in the Municipality, it became easier to call the attention of both the Congress Party and the municipal officers to the needs of the workers' neighborhoods for roads, lights, water, toilets and other facilities … The working classes had been unaware of the responsibilities and the activities of the Municipality, on their behalf, and they had suffered from feelings of inferiority.Footnote 71
Through the TLA's latta mahajan, residents of mill neighborhoods could have a more direct access to the municipality. Not only did institutions like the latta mahajan and voters' associations (which were accountable to both the Congress and the TLA) ensure that the union was firmly anchored within the mill areas, they also worked as party mobilizers for the elections. “Apart from enlisting voters to the civic body,” explained Nanda, “the work of these mandals was to understand local problems; may it be cleanliness in localities, water supply, lighting in lanes and by-lanes etc.”Footnote 72
In order to examine the TLA's dominance and its eventual decline in the city's local government, it is important to understand the peculiarly hierarchical structure of the union. The TLA retained its top-down, Gandhian structure until the end. The union comprised twelve occupational unions, each with their own representatives (one for every fifty to seventy workers) on the Joint Board of Representatives. Occupational representative boards were formed in the mills, and elections were conducted every two years. The representative board had committees that dealt with neighborhood issues, including one especially dedicated to municipal affairs.Footnote 73 Out of these pratinidhis (representatives) on the Joint board, 115 were appointed to the Central Executive Committee on the basis of the numerical strength of the subsidiary unions. The Central Committee was composed of these pratinidhis as well as twenty-eight honorary members “who operated independently of the rank and file,” as did the nominees to the Advisory Council.Footnote 74 The president and the secretaries assumed office for an indefinite period, through appointment rather than election, resulting in a distinctly hierarchical structure. The workers' participation in the union's functioning was limited to electing their pratinidhis. The pratinidhi's position was usually a very profitable one and, therefore, in such great demand that it was often “lucrative enough to be auctioned off in advance.”Footnote 75 The pratinidhis were the ones who collected the members' contributions and negotiated employment relations among the workers, the management, and the union. For these services—addressing workers' complaints, mediating recruitment, and extending contracts for temporary workers—the pratinidhis would expect to be paid. On payday, it was the pratinidhis who would collect the union membership fees from the workers under them, out of which they were entitled to a 5 percent commission.Footnote 76 They operated along a principle that one of my informants called “indirect terror.”Footnote 77
The mill pratinidhis had absolute authority in their areas.Footnote 78 The persistence of certain labor practices, such as contract labor, suggests the deep embeddedness of union representatives within the very practices they were officially trying to abolish. For instance, despite the TLA's official struggle for regularizing contract labor, workers were often employed in contractual positions through the mediation of the pratinidhis. Contractors, often in collusion with the TLA representatives, operated through finely calibrated practices of bribery and concealment. Gelabhai, a contractor who ran an operation with his brother, a TLA pratinidhi, describes how his entire family was kept on the muster rolls of the Swadeshi Mills when, in reality, he oversaw a team of five women and two boys:
That way, I would make Rs. 1,000 per month. It was my brother's job to see that we had no trouble from the union or the mill management … The labor official would always warn me when he was coming, and when he came I used to fold Rs. 200 into an empty cigarette box and give it to him.Footnote 79
Workers were routinely denied the higher wages they were due, and even when these negotiations were effective, it was through the idiom of “personal relationships.” TLA representatives during this period occupied a range of roles—they doubled up as contractors and small-time money lenders—and lubricated the channels of patronage for the payment of a fee.Footnote 80 Recruitment remained one of the key mechanisms through which the pratinidhi exerted his influence, dispensing employment to relatives or members of the same village or community.Footnote 81 The centrality of this figure in negotiating the world of work (through the process of recruitment) and the home (through increasing mediation in civic and neighborhood affairs) reminds us just how crucial it was for workers to cultivate relationships with union representatives. The pratinidhi, in a sense, operated in the interstices between formal and informal regulatory mechanisms. He occupied a paradoxical position, being a formally elected representative, while also drawing upon and displaying the informal authority of a contractor. This figure was then staged to occupy both worlds, his authority relying as much on his formal position as a TLA representative as his command over informal processes of recruitment, disciplining, and patronage.
Within the neighborhood, the TLA's latta khatta, the area department that focused on everyday problems, was one of the most crucial elements in the union's functioning precisely because it served as the main link between the union and the workers and was therefore essential in maintaining the TLA's presence in the working-class areas. The union's active involvement in municipal politics invested it with the legitimacy to negotiate the quotidian problems of working-class life. As the TLA officer-in-charge of the latta mahajan mentioned in Ward Berenschot's fascinating ethnographic study, they were able to help solve everyday problems because the TLA could pressure government officials. “Government workers listen to us,” he argued, “because we have a good image, and we have much credit because, once, even a prime minister came from here.”Footnote 82 These everyday mediations were conducted through “personal contact and talk [as] officials of the TLA look to the solution of big and small complaints with regard to estate, water, light, tax, sanitation, engineering, education, hospitals, birth and death certificates and bus arrangements.”Footnote 83
The latta mahajan was a product of the model of Gandhian seva, or social service. It was formed with the specific intention of doing civic work in the working-class areas:Footnote 84
We in the TLA felt that we should do some work of civic significance in the localities where the workers stayed. We established what were known as Latta Mahajans (locality unions). This helped us to improve our membership in the mills where the employer's agents created difficulties in enlisting members.Footnote 85
A pratinidhi was put in charge of forty to fifty households and was entrusted with the task of attending to their social and moral well-being. His (for they were mostly men) responsibilities would then include providing assistance during social or personal events, negotiating with the municipal corporation over the supply of services, and keeping a watch on immoral activities such as gambling or drinking.Footnote 86 Regular meetings would be organized by the latta department in order to discuss problems of sewage, sanitation, cleanliness, and temperance. According to the Majoor Sandesh, the TLA's official publication, the pratinidhis would conduct fortnightly visits with municipal officials in order to address these problems.Footnote 87
The relationships between these units of the TLA, the pratinidihis, and the workers were formed and consolidated at various levels—within the mills, in the neighborhood, during social and cultural events, and, especially, during elections. “The activities of the Association,” it was declared, “therefore, include not merely a machinery for disposal of industrial disputes but cover all aspects of a workman's life both inside the factory and at home.”Footnote 88 This focus on the home and the prosaic concerns of the mill workers translated into a heightened engagement in local level politics. “Realising the need of making workers conscious of their rights and duties,” stated the Union's Annual Report of 1950, “the Textile Labour Association began to actively participate in municipal affairs.”Footnote 89 The participation was vigorous, as was the discourse surrounding it, which signals, to an extent, the pride taken in this civic involvement. The union's electoral contributions were striking: In the early 1950s, twenty-two of their candidates were elected to the Municipality, out of which seventeen were mill workers. Extracts from the official publications, such as the following, celebrate the civic and municipal work carried out by the union: “While participating in the general work of the municipality, the workmen's representatives have been drawing attention to the urgent needs of the localities where the labouring and the lower middle classes live.”Footnote 90 The result of the TLA's dominance in the municipality was reflected in the public services that were provided to the mill areas during this period, though it must be noted that they were far from adequate. The TLA's municipal complaints' sections played an active role in addressing everyday issues of these neighborhoods including, but not limited to, the question of tenancy rights. It would appear that the provisions of civic amenities were prompted by the union's active engagement with municipal affairs. It was the TLA that prepared lists of roads to be asphalted, pressed the municipality for schools in the mill districts, demanded that water connections be installed and waste water plants constructed.Footnote 91 Some of the TLA's reportage would be undoubtedly self-congratulatory, as suggested by this extract from the Annual Report of 1965, describing the collapse of the close association between the municipal corporation and the TLA after the Congress Party's municipal defeat: “Those matters [civic complaints] which were formerly dealt with expeditiously were retarded and obstructions in obtaining required facilities were noticed. Workers felt convinced about the obvious delay occurring in getting their complaints redressed.”Footnote 92
However, it would appear that the process of spatially integrating the working-class neighborhoods into the broader city space began at the time when the TLA was most dominant in the municipal corporation. Memories of residents of the mill areas also date the involvement of the corporation to the early years of the 1950s.Footnote 93 The central position occupied by the TLA representative was enhanced by their political connections.
The same TLA member (representative) would either be elected to the Municipality or the State Assembly…They could influence voting since all our necessary work would be done by them…If you needed better water supply or needed a new water tap installed, you would tell them (the pratinidhis) and they would facilitate matters with the municipal corporators.Footnote 94
Other neighborhood-level institutions, such as the Majoor Seva Dal, were also significant in promoting the TLA's presence in the mill areas. A labor volunteer corps, the Seva Dal was maintained as a reserve for civic and electoral duties. Presently a depleted force, the group still retains a feeble military air about it. Called to perform during union events, it now comes armed with a brass band and uniforms. This very masculine institution enlisted young men between 18 and 40 years of age.Footnote 95 The bulk of recruitment was from mill workers, their sons, and in the gymnasiums and akhadas. These spaces were known as the haunts of the local dadas and strongmen and offered an arena where a dominant masculine self could be fashioned.Footnote 96 These young men, who were presumably recruited for their display of masculine aggression, (given that akhadas were the very spaces where masculinities took on deeply aggressive forms), were then deployed for TLA's social and political work, which included, among other things, enforcing prohibition.Footnote 97 The Seva Dal's role as primarily a regulatory and disciplining force—managing and overseeing meetings and processions—bears testament to the fact that a certain ability to command respect was valued in the lower levels of the TLA.Footnote 98
These masculine idioms honed in the akhadas and on the street corners shaped the practices of the grassroots-level TLA functionaries. This style of functioning was hardly unique to Ahmedabad—trade union practices and shop-floor control across industries have long relied on muscular tactics and a performative display of aggression.Footnote 99 What makes these figures particularly striking in the case of Ahmedabad is the contradiction they pose to the official stand of the union. The Gandhian orientation of the TLA ensured that much of the union's focus was on producing docile, prudent, and obedient workers who zealously guarded their morality from the onslaught of any antisocial elements. The existence of highly volatile union representatives—who, while involved in union activities, also performed a range of other functions—presents an ambivalent picture. These representatives, whose influence took the form of dadagiri—the ability to command respect, inflict violence, and extend patronage—also moonlighted as contractors, bootleggers, and strong-arm supporters during elections. As I argue through the following section, it was the practice of dadagiri that, in a sense, allowed TLA to establish an impressive apparatus of local control.
The official discourse of the TLA posed a clear distinction between the model worker (illustrated by the pratinidhi) and the “anti-social element,” the goonda or dada:
A representative fulfills his obligation of preventing workers from going on the wrong path in own interest, not as a leader. But by making himself a humble servant. It is the duty of the representative to observe and get observed all resolutions passed by their organization. Observance of discipline, behaving with workers with civility, humbly and sweetly, to refrain from addictions, maintain honesty and render service devotedly without any expectation of return are the Panch Sheel for representatives.Footnote 100
While advocating frugality, temperance, cleanliness, and other such desirable habits, the union's civilizing mission also targeted the unruly worker. Militancy and violence was not something that was officially sanctioned, or even tolerated, by the TLA. One of the union's most cherished successes was curtailing the power exercised by the jobber.Footnote 101 Before the TLA's intervention, the jobber would have absolute power over workers, hiring and firing indiscriminately, and even charging money for recruitment.Footnote 102 The Majoor Sandesh, the union's mouthpiece, regularly carried reports of threats of violence by jobbers. Not only were these threats made on the shop floor, they sometimes spilled over to the neighborhood, as in the case of Lala Dana, the head jobber of the throstleFootnote 103 department of the Vivekanand mills. Not only did Lala Dana, a mathabhari character, abuse workers within the mill, his relatives also did so, on the strength of his name, outside the mill.Footnote 104
The TLA's civilizing mission, it would appear, had not been quite as successful as it was envisioned. Every neighborhood “used to have a few dadas, leaders of loosely structured gangs known for their toughness and bravado. Labeled as goondas in the language of authority, they competed with each other for deference and fear in the local gymkhanas, betting shops, and drinking booths.”Footnote 105 However, figures such as Jeevanbhai, one of the current municipal corporators of Ravipur, point toward an interesting contradiction. Local dadas, feared and respected in the neighborhoods, were also TLA representatives, Congress Party mobilizers, and then eventually local politicians themselves.
The TLA's official stand on working-class toughs remained predictable throughout—they railed against the excesses of this particular kind of worker, his unruly ways, his casual use of violence.Footnote 106 However, it would appear that they needed this very kind of worker in order to retain their control over the working class. The authority of the dada stemmed both from his position in the mill and his status within the neighborhood. The legitimacy with which he was invested was then constituted mutually by both these spaces. He was dominant and “useful” in the mill because he occupied a position of strength in the neighborhood. Simultaneously, he was important in the neighborhood because he had the authority to negotiate with the higher TLA officials and the management. Explaining the institutional structure of the TLA, Sanjaybhai (name changed) a Dalit scholar and activist, elaborated:
There were two dimensions to this—they exercised their control through the pratinidhis. The pratinidhis would have to go there [the TLA office] every week, either to deposit the fees collected or to register complaints. Since this was a regular, everyday affair, it was inevitable that the pratinidhi would exercise control over the neighborhood … And the people in high places, such as the secretaries … they would, of course, listen to the pratinidhis … And if the pratinidhis had such a reach, then he could also exert control [over the neighborhood]. This was the structure of the TLA.Footnote 107
To be a pratinidhi, the most crucial element was pakkad (literally translated, as “hold”), and dadagiri is a term specifically used to describe exactly what kind of hold the pratinidhi exercised.
The fractures in the political field of the late 1950s, in the wake of the Maha Gujarat agitation, were also reflected in the local tensions in the industrial neighborhoods. The Doffers Strike of July 1958, led by Karsandas Parmar, not only “crippled production” in forty of sixty-four mills in the city,Footnote 108 but also appeared to have signaled a moment for Dalit solidarity in the mill neighborhoods of Ahmedabad. Nine thousand workers poured out from the mill neighborhoods and joined in a procession that culminated in a demonstration at the TLA building in Lal Darwaza, where they demanded to present their grievances to the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC)Footnote 109 working committee.Footnote 110 The police forcibly removed demonstrators to outlying areas of the city, where they were later set free.Footnote 111 Despite this palpable change in the TLA's support base, the union maintained that this trouble was being fomented by “outsiders” and not an indication of any real resentment.Footnote 112 The union's control over civic politics from the late 1950s onward began to slacken (with the notable exception of the Municipal elections of 1961), as other contenders for power emerged on the scene. “Workers turned away from the TLA,” Sanjaybhai Parmar recounted to me. “Partly, this was to counter the kind of dadagiri exercised by the TLA pratinidi. So Indulal Yagnik formed the Sangram Samiti.” He repeats himself, emphasizing the phrase “Sangram Samiti” with a certain theatrical air, investing his retelling with the same dramatic charge that the moment might have carried for him as a young man. “This spelt an end to the stranglehold of fear that the Mahajan had.”Footnote 113
The TLA membership dwindled between 1961 and 1964, dropping from 101,315 to 82,287 before rising marginally in the mid-1960s.Footnote 114 Perhaps these figures were indicative of the growing attraction of communist and socialist ideologies among mill workers in the early years of the 1960s—an appeal that did not really translate into electoral success for the MGJP, except during the Municipal elections of 1965.Footnote 115
The TLA dadas (and also the pratinidhis) appeared to have worked hard during this period, disturbing meetings, breaking up demonstrations, and threatening and intimidating communist and socialist supporters. Ajay Singh, a TLA pratinidhi and a jamadar (gate keeper) at the Sarangpur No. 2 Mill, who was also alleged to be a key perpetrator of violence against Muslims in 1969, was a formidable TLA dada during the height of the communist and socialist mobilization of the 1960s. “Wherever there was a trade union movement and struggles for workers' rights, then they (the TLA) would send goondas to break it up, to threaten workers, to physically intimidate them. Mostly, they would bother lone workers cycling or walking to work.Footnote 116 Competing social spaces also emerged during this time, as young communist supporters began frequenting akhadas, admittedly to fortify themselves and build “muscle tushule.”Footnote 117 Militant Hindu nationalism crept up on the mill areas by the end of the 1960s, and there was an accompanying investment in education and physical culture.Footnote 118
I am not suggesting that all TLA pratinidhis were dadas, or vice versa. However, there seems to be an indication that the qualities required of a pratinidhi, such as having a hold on the area, having the ability to mobilize workers and issue favors, being able to perform violence, and so on were the same as those of the local tough.
The hierarchical nature of the Union ensured that grassroots contact was mediated through neighborhood-level figures and institutions, whose power was constituted on the one hand by their position in the mill and within the neighborhoods, and on the other by their ability to negotiate with state agencies.
The Making of a Dada
Characters such as Jeevanbhai or Ajay Singh point to the fact that these figures occupied a whole range of positions and performed several functions in the neighborhood. Ajay Singh was one of the reigning dadas of the 1960s, a mill worker, and a TLA representative. Among other things, he also ran a brothel, a betting outfit, and an akhada. Ajay Singh not only dabbled in petty acts of defiance, such as stealing cloth from the mill, but was also allegedly involved in the massacre of Muslims in neighboring Amraiwadi in 1969.Footnote 119 “These people were like my brothers,”Footnote 120 said Jeevanbhai once, seemingly establishing kinship with the most dangerous of the dadas in Ravipur. “There is nobody left now . . . just me.”Footnote 121 Speaking about his youth, he describes himself as mathabhari. The image of being mathabhari appeared to have been crucial in the self-presentation of the dada. The term encompasses the styles of behavior necessary to be a dada—the reputation of hot headedness, the ability to inflict violence as well as extend protection, defiance of established structures of authority, and always, just a hint of disrepute. Often a borderline “antisocial element,” there was nothing a mathabhari person could not do.Footnote 122 Respect, however, was not garnered merely through the performance of violence, but also by the accompanying capacity to dispense favors and some form of justice in quotidian matters. A dada of this period, thus, seemed to straddle two kinds of imaginaries—one, as a person who possessed an ability to intimidate. As Jeevanbhai recounts, “Nobody would have the guts to even speak in front of me, I could beat up anyone.”Footnote 123 The other imaginary, as a keeper of peace and order in the neighborhood, the dada was someone who was invested with the moral authority to declare to the police and the trade unions, as well as the politicians that “there should not be any trouble in our territory.”Footnote 124
Jeevanbhai's career as a dada-turned-politician presents us with a lens through which we can map these practices of dadagiri and explore the links between the aggressive masculinity that the dada embodied and the practices through which the TLA established its control. During his early days in Sarangpur No. 2 Mill, Jeevanbhai was already established as a local tough. So great was his clout that as a worker in the last shift, he could go off to sleep whenever he pleased and receive no censure or punishment. The supervisors and the managers would, instead, go out of their way to avoid him, so as not to confront him. His heavy drinking and excessive cigarette smoking marked him as someone with “vices,” a necessary attribute for a dada. Yet he was no wastrel who would squander his money on drink. He was a TLA pratinidhi, a representative to the Joint Board of the Union, a Congress party mobilizer and, later, a politician. His ascent and, indeed, his importance in the neighborhood reveal that dadas and other “anti-social” and “criminal” characters did not appear in the mill neighborhoods after the collapse of the TLA. The “righteous struggle” of the TLA, which was directed partly at creating a docile and nonconfrontational worker, was buttressed by those who were seen as “unruly elements.”
The aesthetics and style of dadagiri construct a different sort of masculinity than that of the TLA's model worker. Here, the dada is “virile” and manly, bullying his wife, ensuring that no romantic transgressions take place in the neighborhood, partaking of entertainment that was also possibly heavily sexualized. The average male mill worker, on the other hand, was being urged to be prudent, nonviolent, and respectable. A person such as Jeevanbhai, in his time as a Congress Party mobilizer, would also be entrusted with making key electoral calculations on the ground. “The candidates would come to me,” he explained, “and ask me to take care of the neighborhood votes … they would just fill the forms and we would take care of the rest … Those who liked to drink, we gave them alcohol… Those who liked to eat, we fed them … That's how votes are won ... Nobody wins just like that.”Footnote 125 The TLA pratinidhi remained an ambivalent figure, simultaneously an enforcer of a model code of conduct and its challenger.Footnote 126
The public persona of an Ahmedabad dada was no different from other hypermasculine figures. From Chitra Joshi's compelling narrative of masculinities in deindustrialized Kanpur to contemporary accounts of the Shiv Sena activist, aggression and self-assertion appear as key markers in the making of a dada.Footnote 127 The construction of a dada retained, at its heart, a fundamental anxiety—the perpetual threat of emasculation—and the dada armed himself against this by relentlessly honing his mathabhari image.Footnote 128 Jeevanbhai coming home drunk, his wife mute despite her annoyance, his alcohol supplied by a close friend who was apparently part of a prohibition committee, his fondness for cheroots, which he described as “cigarettes foreigners smoked,” his easy cursing—as he replayed his life story for me, he fashioned himself carefully as a man possessed of a short temper, impressive connections, and love for the good life.
What Jeevanbhai recounted to me could very well be colored by nostalgia and a manufactured sense of glory attributed to his dada days. However, the representation of himself as a tough, violent person who defies established structures of authority is resonant of contemporary dadas as well.Footnote 129 Jeevanbhai equates the dada culture of the mill neighborhoods with the dakus of Chambal,Footnote 130 both marked by a similar structure of hierarchy and command.Footnote 131 The skills of street fighting, the capacity to command a gang, and the ability to pose a challenge to an established dada, were all necessary attributes in the making of such a figure.Footnote 132 The contours of a dada's authority in the mill areas were shaped by several forces. On the one hand, the TLA relied on the techniques of control perfected by the dada, even though the figures of the dada and the pratinidhi were placed on opposite ends of the union's moral spectrum. In the actual practices of local power, the worlds of these two figures often overlapped. Even if the pratinidhi was not, in real terms, the commander of a gang of local strongmen or practiced in the art of street fighting, his mode of control was distinctly that of dadagiri.
The dada's authority was often territorially defined, with each one protecting and controlling a particular turf. As Chandavarkar demonstrates, this turf could be anything from a street corner to a neighborhood.Footnote 133 The tensions between dadas and their entanglements with broader structures of power, such as the TLA, the police, or the municipality defined and limited their spheres of influence to a certain extent.
Jeevanbhai's introduction into the world of the dada demonstrates how notions of masculinity, reputation, and respect operate in the making of such figures. Sometime in the mid-1950s, a scuffle broke out in which Jeevanbhai's father, also a TLA pratinidhi, was injured. The perpetrators of this act of violence were Nur Ahmad's gang. Nur Miyan was also a mill worker as well as such an accomplished dada that his name was retained on the muster rolls even though he would hardly ever show for work. Later that day, Jeevanbhai went to Nur's side of Ravipur to avenge his father's injury. He drew him into a fight, during the course of which Jeevanbhai cracked open Nuru's (as he was sometimes affectionately or irreverently referred to) skull. The cycle of revenge and retribution continued—after Nur Miyan had been taken to the hospital, his gang came after Jeevanbhai. He had no choice but to flee Ravipur and seek refuge with another “mashoor”Footnote 134 dada, Manga Bhoot, a caste brother. Manga Bhoot, a worker at the Calico mills and a Dalit dada from Jamalpur, sheltered him for a few days and also gave him a revolver for self-defense. During this period of conflict, Jeevanbhai had to disguise himself when he went out to work so that he wouldn't be caught by Nur Miyan's toli (gang). Eventually, peace was brokered by Pathan money lenders from the area.Footnote 135
Jeevanbhai and Nur Miyan became associates of sorts, controlling adjacent areas of Ravipur. A few years later, Jeevanbhai and Nur, along with their respective gangs, went to watch a film. The cinema happened to be very crowded that day, and the dadas were made to suffer the ignominy of having to stand in a queue. Jeevanbhai recounts that Nur Miyan repeatedly goaded him into breaking the queue. He resisted this heckling, until Nur called him a “hijra.”Footnote 136 Incensed that his masculinity was being questioned, he dove right into the middle of the queue. He was shoved and pushed, and in the ensuing melee, he stabbed a man to death. This dramatic spectacle may have been significantly less charged in reality—there is no way of knowing for certain. However, it presents two poles in Jeevanbhai's imagination—his emasculation at being mocked as a “hijra” and the reclaiming of his masculinity by committing a very public murder.
This public posturing of masculinity spilled over into the cultural life of the neighborhood, as dadas organized dance performances across the mill districts. “There was a time,” Jeevanbhai once told me, “all dadas of Ahmedabad would gather. We would get dancing girls from Bombay.”Footnote 137 These would be large gatherings with a full troupe of musicians and three or four women dancers. He would organize these performances at the same char rasta where he would meet me. Beginning at 11 p.m. and ending at dawn, these dos were attended by dadas from across the city. Each one of them would be armed and accompanied by his gang of mathabhari men. “I am the dada of the Ravipur post office area, so if I attend these functions then I should have twenty to twenty-five men with me. And we have to be ready to face death. Some would take hockey sticks, some knives. A person should have enough strength to crush another.”Footnote 138
During these years as a TLA representative, Jeevanbhai doubled as a Congress Party worker who dealt not only with everyday issues of neighborhood life but also as a strong-arm supporter during elections and, post-1969, as a rioter. Later in his political career, he capitalized on these very networks—of patronage and of dadagiri—to gain electoral support for himself. Though this article does not deal with the fate of the dada after the decline of the TLA, it can hint at the forms this figure has assumed since. The period after the late 1960s has been marked by a series of communal and caste riots as well as a rapidly changing political field, which drew on emergent caste alliances.Footnote 139 With the TLA/Congress alliance broken, and their traditional support base denuded, the political landscape of the mill neighborhoods changed considerably and dadas and other local big men proliferated. In this changed socioeconomic climate following the rationalization of the textile mill industry and its eventual collapse in the mid-1980s, local power was reconfigured and entered new orbits of patronage. Drawing on the vestiges of the TLA's mode of functioning, dadas, bootleggers, and social workers of various kinds grew in significance as mediating agents between state institutions and citizens. The political economy of bootlegging, while never of inconsiderable importance in the neighborhood, appeared to have grown in scale.Footnote 140 As the links between dadas, politicians, and the police were being consolidated, the role of the local dada was also being diversified. He was now called upon also as a general mathabhari type, who could be sent out to riot. Political parties had taken to rewarding local leaders for their involvement in riots. From 1985, when many accused rioters were elected to the AMC, especially from Muslim minority mixed areas, to Jitu Waghela's Legislative Assembly candidacyFootnote 141 after he embellished his reputation for violence during 2002, this signified a disturbing yet very powerful form of political practice.Footnote 142 What were initially Congress goons in the neighborhood, were now being mobilized by other parties, as this news report highlights:
Anti-social elements, mainly bootleggers still play a major role in connivance with the police, politicians, and religious bigots. There was a time when the Congress was suspected to be the main culprit. Now it is the turn of the BJP, with its blatantly Hindu card designed to instill fear in the minds of the minority community.Footnote 143
To summarize, we can highlight three key aspects of political practice during this time: One, due to the particularly hierarchical structure of the TLA, the union maintained its grassroots control through certain institutional mechanisms, such as the pratinidhis and latta khata. Two, it was these institutions and figures, which operated in the interstices between formal and informal modes of regulation, that were crucial in the everyday mediations between the residents of these neighborhoods, the mills, and the state agencies. Three, the TLA representatives, whose primary mode of engagement with the workers was the practice of dadagiri, were not only dominant within the mills, but were also deeply embedded in the neighborhood structures of power. These relationships of power were marked by a certain reciprocity of obligations in the neighborhood. The dada's dominance depended, to a large extent, on his ability to do things for his constituents.
In Jeevanbhai, we see someone who complicates the understanding that dadas and goondas emerged in the vacuum left by the dissolution of the TLA. Instead, it seems that local dadas were deeply implicated in the TLA's mode of functioning. We have already seen that the union kept its command over the neighborhood through its massive network of pratinidhis and through its well-oiled channels of patronage. In Jeevanbhai, we have a pratinidhi who was also a well-respected and feared dada in Ravipur. His authority in the mill was largely dependent on the respect he commanded in the neighborhood, while his command over the neighborhood was in part constituted by his closeness to other important figures, to whom he had easier access through the TLA and the Congress Party. Thus, these dadas, who are often thought of as criminal elements who emerged after the collapse of the TLA, appear instead to have been constituted by the TLA's very structure of power. These characters are made ambiguous by the fact that they have played several roles over a lifetime, shifting from union leaders to dadas to goondas to local leaders and politicians, while never really shedding any of their previous incarnations.
