That fear is by no means exaggerated. Baba Siddique, a local politician and real estate developer who was friends with famous actors, was gunned down as he was getting into his car in October. A gang member who claimed responsibility said in a Facebook post that “Bollywood, politics and real estate deals” were behind the killings.
Bombay was known as a megacity until 1995, but organized crime and show business have long been closely linked. The golden age of Indian cinema began around the time of independence from British rule in 1947 and lasted for two decades. In the late 1960s, politics took a cynical turn and popular culture began to reflect a loss of idealism. Bollywood scripts brushed aside the social concerns of the young republic and became the escapist fantasy the world knows today.
By the early 1970s, hundreds of Hindi films were released in India. Banks didn’t lend to them. Then someone like Haji Mastan appeared. One of the most powerful dons in Mumbai at the time, Mastan was a man with an eye for charm. The stylish boss, dressed all in white, has become something of a private equity player in the entertainment industry since he started financing movies for his actress girlfriend.
The mob made its initial money by smuggling gold and electronics from Bombay’s docks. As it reinvented itself toward a more open economy in the 1980s and 1990s, bootlegging and extortion gave way to money laundering, drug and gun trafficking, and even more movies. A 2003 report by the Institute for Peace and Conflict Research notes that dons are no longer satisfied with profit-sharing. They wanted a “partnership by becoming a producer and acquiring rights to film and music distribution overseas.” The change was led by Dawood Ibrahim, the son of a police officer who rose to prominence as the city’s most feared gangster in the post-Mastan era. Dawood began operating from Dubai in the mid-1980s, and his syndicate, known as D Company, is believed to have carried out the assassination of the founder of music production giant T-Series in 1997. It was the same with that murder case. Then, an attempt on the life of producer son Hrithik Roshan, who was reigning as a teenage frenemy, shocked the industry. Mr. Ibrahim was suspected of involvement in the 1993 Mumbai terrorist attacks, in which 257 people were killed in a series of bombings across the city, creating an urgent need to clean up the area. There’s a whole crime noir in Bollywood dedicated to so-called “encounter specialists” who simply execute underworld operatives rather than arrest them and bring them to justice. One of my personal favorites is Ab Tak Chhappan, or “56 so far,” which refers to the number of kills.
Just when the city seemed to have escaped the cycle of violence, new signs of unrest began to emerge. In February 2021, a car laden with explosives was found parked outside the home of India’s richest businessman Mukesh Ambani. An elite detective, a former “encounter specialist”, is awaiting trial on the case. The court had rejected the ex-cop’s bail application last year, saying the aim was to spread fear in the hearts of the Ambani family.
Siddiq’s murder deepened this feeling. Police invoked tough 1999 laws designed to crack down on organized crime. However, police do not know the current level of involvement of the underworld. Ibrahim’s close aide Chota Shakeel said in a 2001 interview after authorities busted a high-profile case involving mafia film financing: “We made 20 to 25 movies and made a profit too.” It must be,” he boasted. “Rather than extorting money from the biggest names in the movie industry, we wanted to do business with them.”
Have the proceeds of crime once again slipped through the surface of the corporatization of Bollywood? It’s an important law enforcement issue. As Indian investigative journalist Swati Chaturvedi recently wrote, “Nowhere else in the world does a film industry of this size face such a systematic threat.”
Its influence extends beyond the entertainment industry. Lawrence Bishnoi, the leader of the group suspected of killing Siddique, has been accused by Canadian police of colluding with Indian government officials to kill and harass members of the country’s Sikh diaspora. That the gangster at the center of the diplomatic spat is also threatening to eliminate one of India’s biggest film stars, Salman Khan, adds a new dimension to the threat.
Arthouse Indian cinema has always felt closed off to kitsch. The situation has worsened in recent years, with right-wing propaganda films competing with regular song-dance-action routines. But now, Mumbai is losing control of even its signature flamboyant entertainers. A studio in the southern city of Hyderabad managed to produce two of its biggest hits in a dull year. It’s exactly the same as in 1984, when Mumbai’s industry crime-fighting efforts began in earnest. Meanwhile, the critically acclaimed drama “All We Imagine as Right,” which was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and won this year’s Cannes Grand Prix, is struggling to find exhibitors domestically.
The second-generation Mumbai producer recently sold half of his studio to Adar Poonawalla, a billionaire vaccine maker who has made huge profits during the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic marked an important beginning. This increased the demand for original content that could be streamed at home on homegrown apps like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hotstar+ when cinemas were under lockdown. Nowadays everything is released, but viewers are tired of boring movies on big and small screens and don’t go out to watch movies or click on big budget web dramas.
Things take an ominous turn in Mumbai as everything in Bollywood starts to explode.
