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  35. Ibid., 12.

  36. Ibid., 6–7.

  37. Ibid., 6.

  38. “Diary of Margaret C Godley.”

  39. Thapar, All These Years, 20.

  40. Secy, Home (special), G. G. Drewe to Governor of Bombay, September 3, 1946, “Fortnightly Reports from the Governor of Bombay, 1946,” BL, OIOLR, L/PJ/5/167.

  41. J. C. Masselos, “The City as Represented in Crowd Action: Bombay 1893,” EPW 28, no. 5 (1993): 182–90.

  42. The full details of the violence are contained in Government of Bombay, The Police Report on the Bombay Riots—February 1929 (Bombay, 1929).

  43. Patrick Kelly, Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to Secretary, Government of Bombay, Home Department, September 29, 1932, BL, OIOLR, L/PJ/7/371.

  44. Mss. Eur. F97/26, BL, OIOLR, Brabourne Collection.

  45. The account of violence in the city is contained in “Fortnightly Reports from the Governor of Bombay” for the years 1946 and 1947.

  46. The effect of the circulation of rumors is mentioned ibid.

  47. A. C. Clow, Governor, to Archibald Wavell, Viceroy, September 17, 1946, “Fortnightly Reports from the Governor of Bombay, 1946.”

  48. Abbas, I Am Not an Island, 277.

  49. Saadat Hasan Manto, Stars from Another Sky: The Bombay Film World of the 1940s, trans. Khalid Hasan (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998), 74–75.

  50. Ibid., 76.

  51. Chugtai, “Mera Dost, Mera Dushman,” in My Friend, My Enemy, 209.

  52. Aamir Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 207–8.

  53. Saadat Hasan Manto, “Toba Tek Singh,” in Dastavez 2:192–98.

  54. Manto, Stars from Another Sky, 73.

  55. Saadat Hasan, “Mozail,” in Dastavez 2:249–67. The English translation appears in Bitter Fruit, 26–38.

  56. Abbas, I Write as I Feel, 315–16.

  57. Chugtai, “Communal Violence and Literature (Fasaadat aur Adab),” in My Friend, My Enemy, 3–5.

  58. The above two are cited ibid., 6–7.

  59. Abbas, I Am Not an Island, 289.

  60. Abbas, I Write as I Feel, 317.

  61. Cited and translated in Mir and Mir’s Anthems of Resistance, 122.

  62. Erik Barnouw and S. Krishnaswamy, Indian Film, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 155.

  63. I have drawn on the following: Rashmi Varma, “Provincializing the Global City: From Bombay to Mumbai,” Social Text 81, vol. 22, no. 4 (2004); Gopal, Literary Radicalism, 123–62. See also Madhav Prasad, “The State in/of Cinema,” in Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian Nation-State, ed. Partha Chatterjee (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Ravi Vasudevan, introduction to Making Meanings in Indian Cinema, ed. Ravi Vasudevan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 1–36.

  CHAPTER 5. THE TABLOID AND THE CITY

  1. John Lobo, “Now It Can Be Told—the Nanavati Story,” in Leaves from a Policeman’s Diary (New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1992), 21. Unless stated otherwise, what follows is taken from Lobo’s account, 21–22.

  2. In September 1958 the Law Commission of India had already recommended the abolition of the right to trial before jury, which in any case was confined to the old presidency towns of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. See Government of India, Law Commission of India: Fourteenth Report, vol. 2 (Delhi: Ministry of Law, 1958), 873. The Nanavati trial appeared to have sealed the case for abolition.

  3. “For the Love of Sylvia,” Time, March 28, 1960, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,826134,00.html (accessed April 15, 2008); Emily Hahn, “Commmander Nanavati and the Unwritten Law,” New Yorker, November 26, 1960, 188–205.

  4. Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (London: Jonathan Cape, 1980), and Indra Sinha, The Death of Mr. Love (London: Scribner, 2002). The case was also loosely fictionalized in Hindi in Tapan Ghosh’s Nanavati ka Mukadama va Anya Kahaniyan [Nanavati’s Case and Other Stories] (New Delhi: Vishwa Sahitya, 2002).

  5. Vijaya Sharma, “Prem Bhagwandas Ahuja,” http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/proj_tabloid/nanavati1.shtml (accessed April 15, 2008).

  6. P. Sainath, “R. K. Karanjia: Living through the Blitz,” http://www.hindu.com/2008/02/06/stories/2008020652441100.htm (accessed February 28, 2010).

  7. The following description of Karanjia’s family background is taken from his brother’s autobiography. See B. K. Karanjia, Counting My Blessings (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2005), 1–15.

  8. Homi D. Mistry, “The Young Rebel,” in Blitz: Four Fighting Decades (Bombay: Blitz Publications, 1981), 3. What follows is drawn from this article, 3–4.

  9. “To Our Readers, February 1, 1941,” cited in Blitz, February 25, 1961.

  10. “Mighty All-Party Rally Felicitates Editor Karanjia,” Blitz, February 27, 1965.

  11. Blitz, June 25, 1960. Below the main story was another headline: “Did US Spy Chief Dulles Meet [the Naga leader] Phizo?”

  12. Ibid., April 16, 1960.

  13. “Festival of Indo-Arab Amity,” Blitz, July 3, 1965.

  14. “Great Morarji Fraud,” Blitz, January 19, 1952.

  15. Cited in Homi D. Mistry’s “Sins of Shri No. 2,” in Blitz: Four Fighting Decades, 97.

  16. “U.S.A. Welcomes Indian Mediation in Korea,” Blitz, July 19, 1952.

  17. A summary account of the case appears in “Chester Bowles Forgery Case,” by Homi D. Mistry, in Blitz: Four Fighting Decades, 54–55.

  18. Blitz, October 4, 1952.

  19. Ibid., August 1, 1953.

  20. Cited in “The Racket-Buster,” Blitz, February 25, 1961.

  21. These headlines are from Blitz, December 2, 1961, and March 13, 1965.

  22. The following description comes from “Naval Officer Says He Is Not Guilty,” Times of India, September 24, 1959.

  23. John Lobo, “Now It Can Be Told: The Nanavati Story,” in Leaves from a Policeman’s Diary, 28. The excluded testimony appears in his memoir.

  24. “Nanavati Says He Did Not Kill Intentionally: ‘Bullets Went Off during the Struggle for Revolver,’” Times of India, October 6, 1959.

  25. “‘Reason for Bringing Gun from the Ship Was to Shoot Myself’: Commander Nanavati Is First Defence Witness,” Times of India, October 7, 1959.

  26. “Prem Ahuja Tried to Avoid Marrying Accused’s Wife: Mrs. Nanavati’s Evidence in Murder Case,” Times of India, October 14, 1959.

  27. Hahn, “Commander Nanavati,” 194–95.

  28. Blitz, October 31, 1959. Unless stated otherwise, what follows is from Blitz, October 10, 17, and 25, 1959.

  29. For the defense address, see “No Offence Committed by Accused, Says Defence Counsel: Address to Jury in Ahuja Murder Case,” Times of India, October 15 and 16, 1959; for the prosecution address, see “Lesser Offence Suggested by Prosecution: ‘Jury Entitled to Return Verdict of Homicide,’” Times of India, October 17, 1959.

  30. The following description comes from R. P. Aiyar, “The Full Story of the Trials of Nanavati . . . the Ahuja Murder Case,” Blitz, January 6, 1962.

  31. “Nanavati Is Not Guilty, Says Jury. Judge Disagrees: Refers Case to High Court,” Times of India, October 22, 1959.

  32. Blitz, October 24, 1959. Unless stated otherwise, what follows is from Blitz, October 24 and 31, 1959.

  33. “For the Love of Sylvia.”

  34. Mohan Deep, “Line of Fire,” http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/specials/proj_tabloid/lof1912.shtml (accessed April 15, 2008).

  35. V. Gangadhar, “Dial M for Murder,” http://www.rediff.com/style/1998/mar/14gang.htm (accessed April 15, 2008).

  36. Blitz, November 7, 1959. Unless otherwise stated, what follows is from Blitz, February 6, 13, 20, 27, and March 5, 1960.

  37. “Commander Nanavati Found Guilty of Murder,” Times of India, March 10, 1960.

  38. Blitz, March 12, 1960.

  39. Ibid.

  40. “Naval Custody for Nanavati till Appeal Is Heard,�
�� Times of India, March 12, 1960.

  41. “Mr. Nehru Says He Advised Governor,” Times of India, March 15, 1960.

  42. “Suspension of Sentence Deplored: Resolution Adopted by C.P.I. Secretariat,” Times of India, March 17, 1959.

  43. “Full Bench of High Court May Hear Writ Issue Tomorrow,” Times of India, March 16, 1960.

  44. Blitz, March 19, 1960. What follows is from Blitz, March 19 and 26, 1960.

  45. “High Court Says Governor’s Order Is Valid,” Times of India, March 31, 1960.

  46. Blitz, April Fool number, 1960.

  47. Ibid.

  48. “Governor Has No Power to Suspend Life Sentence: Supreme Court Ruling in Nanavati Case,” Times of India, September 6, 1960.

  49. Blitz, September 17, 1960.

  50. “Nanavati’s Plea Dismissed by Supreme Court,” Times of India, November 25, 1961; for full judgment, see 1961 indl aw sc 397 [Supreme Court of India], State of Maharashtra v. K. M. Nanavati.

  51. Blitz, December 2, 1961.

  52. Ibid. Another article by its “constitutional expert” also made similar arguments.

  53. R. P. Aiyar, “The Full Story of the Trials of Nanavati . . . the Ahuja Murder Case: Great Trials That Rocked India. . . .” The first installment appeared in Blitz, December 2, 1961, and continued for every subsequent week until January 13, 1962.

  54. Gerson da Cunha, “Decline of a Great City,” Seminar 528 (August 2003): 15.

  55. Aarti Sethi, “The Honourable Murder: The Trial of Kawas Maneckshaw Nanavati,” in Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts, ed. Monica Narula, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Jeebesh Bagchi, and Geert Lovink (Delhi: CSDS, 2005), 444–53.

  56. Blitz, April 7, 1962.

  57. The following details come from Nalini Gera, Ram Jethmalani: The Authorized Biography (New Delhi, Viking, 2002.

  58. Blitz, March 21, 1964.

  CHAPTER 6. FROM RED TO SAFFRON

  1. Times of India, June 6, 1970.

  2. Times of India, June 9, 1970; Vaibhav Purandare, The Sena Story (Mumbai: Business Publications, 1999), 145.

  3. Yugantar, June 14 and June 21, 1970.

  4. Blitz, June 13, 1970, 10.

  5. Ibid., June 20, 1970, 1.

  6. Raj Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), ch. 5. What follows draws heavily from this meticulously researched work.

  7. See the transcript of the oral testimony of Khatu, a retired mill worker, in Neera Adarkar and Meena Menon, One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices (Calcutta: Seagull, 2004), 107–8.

  8. Raj Chandavarkar, “From Neighborhood to Nation,” ibid., 24–25.

  9. See the transcript of Madhukar Nerale’s oral testimony in Adarkar and Menon, One Hundred Voices, 121–24.

  10. The pamphlet Gandhi vs. Lenin and the journal Socialist are reprinted in S. A. Dange, Dange: Selected Writings, vols. 1 and 2 (Bombay: Lok Vangmaya Griha, 1977).

  11. What follows draws on Raj Chandavarkar’s Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, c. 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 129–31.

  12. S. V. Ghate, “Girni Kamgar Hadtaal,” in CPI, Jan Sangharshon ki Amar Gaathaayen (Delhi: New Age Printing Press, 1975), 10–11 (in Hindi). This text consists of the reminiscences of Ghate, a prominent trade union and Communist activist in the mills, recorded in 1971.

  13. Dange provided a detailed description of his involvement in the labor movement at this time in his statement at the Meerut Conspiracy Case trial in 1931 and 1932. See the text of his statement, running over three hundred pages, in S. A. Dange, Dange: Selected Writings, vol. 3 (Bombay: Lok Vangmaya Griha, 1979).

  14. Ghate, “Girni Kamgar Hadtaal,” 11.

  15. Dange, Selected Writings 3:154–66.

  16. Adarkar and Menon, One Hundred Voices, 156; and Ghate, “Girni Kamgar Hadtaal,” 12.

  17. Ghate, “Girni Kamgar Hadtaal,” 12–13.

  18. Dange, Selected Writings 3:55.

  19. Ibid., 227.

  20. On mill committees, their formation, functions, and influence, see Dange, Selected Writings 3:191–201, and Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics, 132.

  21. See A.D.D. Gordon, Businessmen and Politics: Rising Nationalism and a Modernizing Economy in Bombay, 1918–1933 (Columbia, Mo.: South Asia Books, 1978), particularly chs. 5 and 6.

  22. Adarkar and Menon, One Hundred Voices, 133.

  23. “Shahir Com Da. Na. Gavankar,” Saaptahik Yugaantar (Marathi), April 4, 1971, 3.

  24. Adarkar and Menon, One Hundred Voices, 131.

  25. See David Bradby and John McCormick, People’s Theatre (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978).

  26. “Shahir Com Da. Na. Gavankar,” 3.

  27. Sheikh Jainu Chand’s oral testimony’s transcript in Adarkar and Menon, One Hundred Voices, 140.

  28. Kusum Ranadive’s oral testimony transcript, ibid., 161–62.

  29. Ahilya Rangnekar’s oral testimony transcript, ibid., 159.

  30. Prema Purav’s oral testimony transcript, ibid., 163.

  31. Author’s interview with Tara Reddy, September 1, 2005.

  32. Sitaram Jagtap’s oral testimony transcript, in One Hundred Voices, by Adarkar and Menon, 165.

  33. On CPI’s policies during the war, see M. R. Masani, The Communist Party of India: A Short History (London: Derek Verschoyle, 1954), 76–86.

  34. On the mutiny, see Subrata Banerjee, The RIN Strike (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1954).

  35. Interview with Tara Reddy.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, vol. 8, ed. Mohit Sen (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1977), 65.

  38. For an account of the shifts in the CPI’s policies, see Gene D. Overstreet and Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 276–93.

  39. See H. Van Wersch, Bombay Textile Strike, 1982–83 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1992), 66–70.

  40. The epigraph is from Rushdie, Midnight’s Children, 228.

  41. Marshall Windmiller, “The Politics of States Reorganization in India: The Case of Bombay,” Far East Survey 25, no. 9 (1956): 129. See also Jyotindra Das Gupta, Language Conflict and National Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 116–17.

  42. Windmiller, “Politics of States Reorganization,” 130.

  43. Kosambi, Bombay in Transition, 129.

  44. Windmiller, “Politics of States Reorganization,” 131.

  45. Y. D. Phadke, Politics and Language (Bombay: Himalaya Publishing House, 1972), 20, 61–62.

  46. Windmiller, “Politics of States Reorganization,” 132. Unless indicated otherwise, what follows is based on this article.

  47. Cited ibid., 138.

  48. Phadke, Politics and Language, 149. Chapters 3–7 contain a detailed account of the different phases of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement.

  49. Ibid., 154–58.

  50. Adarkar and Menon, One Hundred Voices, 255.

  51. Ibid., 261.

  52. See the transcripts of Ahilya Rangnekar and G. L. Reddy’s oral accounts, ibid., 230, 234.

  53. Cited in Windmiller, “Politics of States Reorganization,” 139.

  54. S. A. Dange, “People of Maharashtra Have Rejected Bilingual State,” Blitz, April 13, 1957, 15.

  55. Marmik, May 25, 1997, 4. Purandare, Sena Story, 21.

  56. Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, Ethnicity and Equality: The Shiv Sena Party and Preferential Policies in Bombay (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 49.

  57. Purandare, Sena Story, 40.

  58. The account of the public meeting is drawn from Purandare’s Sena Story, 41–45. See also Jayant Lele, “Saffronization of the Shiv Sena: The Political Economy of the City, State and Nation,” in Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India, ed. Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 187.

  59. A. N. Confectioner, The Shiv Sena: Why? An
d Why Not? (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1967), 8–10.

  60. Lele, “Saffronization of the Shiv Sena,” 189, and Sujata Patel, “Bombay and Mumbai: Identities, Politics, and Populism,” in Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition, ed. Sujata Patel and Jim Masselos (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 10.

  61. Katzenstein, Ethnicity and Equality, 76.

  62. Ibid., 76–77.

  63. Ibid., 48, 51.

  64. My analysis of Thackeray’s politics draws on Ernesto Laclau’s discussion of populism in his On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005).

  65. “The Interview of Purnashambu for Marmikam,” Marmik, August 15, 1965, cited and translated in Katzenstein’s Ethnicity and Equality, 50.

  66. Kapilacharya, Shiv Sena Speaks: Official Statement (Bombay: Marmik Cartoon Weekly, 1967), 3.

  67. Ibid., 24.

  68. Katzenstein, Ethnicity and Equality, 66, 79.

  69. Ibid., 48–49.

  70. Purandare, Sena Story, 66.

  71. Ibid., 75–78.

  72. “Shabbas Pralhadkhan Atre! Anantali Bhide,” Marmik, March 12, 1961, 4.

  73. Marmik, August 29, 1965.

  74. Purandare, Sena Story, 70.

  75. Cf. Ram Joshi, “The Shiv Sena: A Movement in Search of Legitimacy,” Asian Survey 10, no. 11 (1970): 975.

  76. Purandare, Sena Story, 69.

  77. Justice D. P. Madon, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Communal Disturbances at Bhiwandi, Jalgaon and Mahad in May 1970, excerpted in Sabrang, Damning Verdict (Mumbai: Sabrang Communications and Publishing, 1998), 264. Unless indicated otherwise, the following account is drawn from the excerpts on 252–323.

  78. Ibid., 292. For details of events leading to the conflagration, see 280–93.

  79. Cf. Julia Eckert, The Charisma of Direct Action: Power, Politics, and the Shiv Sena (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003). See also Gérard Huezé, “Cultural Populism: The Appeal of the Shiv Sena,” in Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India, ed. Patel and Thorner, 211–47, and Thomas Blom Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 56.

  80. Purandare, Sena Story, 107–8. What follows is drawn from 103–31 and E. S. Modak, Sentinel of the Sahyadris (Memories and Reflections) (Delhi: Originals, 2001), 115–22.