ANALYSING THE MOVIE GANGUBAI

KATHIAWADI
VINAYAK BS (HS22H058)
Alia Bhatt starrer Gangubai Kathiawadi is a movie that primarily discusses the challenges, problems, and
institutionalized discrimination that prostitutes face in our society. The movie set is in the backdrop of
1950s Bombay, where industrialization had brought uneven economic benefits to people and how a
mafia culture first developed in the city. The movie focuses on how the Red Street prostitutes used their
influence over the Bombay underworld to gain their rights power and influence that were otherwise
denied to them.

Before venturing further, we need to understand the socio-economic background of Bombay. India was
just in its first decade of independence and the primary thrust of that period was building a centrally
planned economy with massive government-led public investments in Heavy industries to create
adequate capital for economic development. This approach was however inherently flawed and as it
didn’t cater to the needs of unemployment and skill development, As noted by famous economist PN
Bhattacharya “the lack of initiative from Government towards creating a sufficiently strong consumer
goods industry had meant that India’s rural indebtedness and unemployment was here to stay”. This
created a social condition in which massive internal immigration started taking place in India. This meant
that industrial centres like Bombay acted as magnets for attracting people as they provided them with
opportunities. This also led to an influx of a lot of rural women to these cities who were suffering the
worst effects of poverty in these urban centres. They became the pool from which prostitutes emerged.

The enchanting question to which the film dwells is that of the question of agency. The movie even
though represents the hardships faced by the prostitutes, and how society treats them, stops or abruptly
ends at a point arguing that sex work is to a certain extent a matter of choice and the movie also
dignifies sex work in many instances. This can be found in the way Gangu bai addresses a huge crowd in
the climax portion, where she declares that prostitution has been present in the world ever since human
civilization dawned and it is here to stay, she concludes the speech by declaring that prostitution was the
one of the first occupations of human race and it will survive till the extinction of humans. Another
instance of this glorification of prostitution to highlight the agency of the women involved in that work
was the scene in which Gangu bai was meeting India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru where she
had asked the prime minister to legalize prostitution in the country. The problem with this kind of
approach towards female agency in prostitution is that it doesn’t give importance to the underlying
socio-economic factors that force these women to get involved in prostitution and the reality of their
dearth of choices. The women who come to this profession are coerced either through economic means
or are cheated by their relatives or would be sold by their parents against their will to escape from
poverty. Another important sphere of discussion is the way that power dynamics was portrayed in the
film. In this context we must understand the subtle nature of patriarchy in the movie and how Gangubai
used patriarchy itself to fight patriarchy and secure her power. Power dynamics are highly tilted against
the protagonist and there is a very violent nexus between the chief pimp of her brothel, the local police
inspector, and the area don. To rise amongst these troubles, she first united all her fellow prostitutes
around her and then she demanded a wage raise for the prostitutes on each client they met, this was
followed by the announcement of declaring Sunday as a holiday for all the prostitutes. The unionizing of
the sex workers had led to these nexus members ganging up against her and one of the thugs molested
her so hard that she was in ICU for 3 days (as shown in the movie). Gangu had fought against this by first
strengthening a strong peer network among fellow prostitutes, then she took the help of a rival gang
leader (loosely resembling real-life gangster Karim Lala) to beat the gang that abused her. By driving out
the hostile local gang and consolidating her hold over other prostitutes she rises to power in
Kamathipura. These are some of the scenes depicting sisterhood and its power in the movie, the Women
come together for just one goal of asserting their rights. There is a scene in the movie of the period
1960s, where it is shown that a newly formed local quasi-fascist organization ( loosely modelled on SHIV
SENA) beating the pulp out of 13 red street prostitutes, The underworld was not willing to help Gangu in
this incident and she again used this idea of sisterhood to get her revenge and challenge the local power
dynamics. This was done through lobbying with the political group and mobilizing her network among
prostitutes extending from Dharavi to Byculla (official estimates according to the 1961 census pegged the
figure of prostitutes around the number 7000), which eventually led to the defeat of the Shiv Sena
candidate.

Another important point of analysis is how people are portrayed in this movie. Let's begin with
protagonist Gangu bai, her character is modelled on Catherine Barry’s concept of 4 stages of
dehumanization, which are distancing, disengagement, dissociation, and disembodiment. (quoting from
Kulaya Pongpan’s article Empowering Resistance), is the distancing phase where Gangu bai distances her
former character and wears a defensive posture by which she becomes a new character as a prostitute.
The scene in which Gangu bai burns the notes she received after pleasuring her first client is a metaphor
for her former self being burned down to a new one. The second stage of dehumanization is
disengagement, which is portrayed by how Gangu bai disengages herself from the activities as well as
the world around her by going into substance abuse and alcoholism. The third stage of dissociation
stems from the whore symbol attached to women and the relegation of prostitutes as individuals
without agency and just sex toys in the hands of men, In Gangu Bai's case she being a lady with some
command and control she could dissociate from this sex toy image and could become a more
independent lady, her white sari is used as a metaphor by the director in this instant, with white being
the symbol of purity in Indian culture. The last stage is the stage of disembodiment which is like the
culmination of the dehumanization process, in this stage, the only desire or instinct that remains in
Gangu bai is the desire for survival and for this, she becomes a ruthless matriarch. This lack of choices
makes it imperative for the woman to destroy her very individuality and agency.

Now let’s delve into another important character, for whose portrayal the director has received severe
criticism. It is how the director portrayed hijras or trance genders. The hijra character Razia bhai is shown
as a snake in this movie. There is a dialogue in the movie that says everything, “Razia is a shameless and
cunning slut who will sleep with anyone for her goals”. Throughout the entire movie, this character is
portrayed in a very negative shade, even Razia’s victory in the Kamathipura election is shown in a bad
light by mixing it with her character, trance phobia is still prominent in Bollywood even now and it is a
highly normalized phenomenon.
Gangu bai Kathia wadi also shows how caste has become a dominant marker of social identity in India
and how even gender experiences are influenced and shaped by caste. This intersectional approach
came to the forefront in particularly two scenes, The first scene was that of a 15-year-old girl Madhu
who was sold to a brothel house and there was a dialogue from the chief pimp of the brothel who states
that girls like Madhu coming from the chamar(a Dalit caste) caste won’t have that much demand in the
market and they would eventually be forced to traffic her outside the country for money. This one shot
shows the power of caste and the accompanying identities in formulating the everyday lives of people. A
second example is that of the children of prostitutes being denied entry into the nearby convent school
by the school authorities despite paying 5 months of advance fees. The children were brutally beaten by
the convent people, and one of the dialogues said by one of the sisters of the convent was how these
mahars dared to come out of section 13 in the red-light district and join our school. It is very important
to understand here that women who come to this job are coerced by economic hardship as well as other
underlying factors. And since in our society the lower castes in general and Dalits in particular are the
most severely affected by this, the women among these sections are generally the people who fill the
pool of prostitution in cities like Bombay. As I said in the initial sections of this discussion about the lack
of jobs and opportunities forcing people to migrate towards urban areas and even among these people
these lower caste women don’t even have adequate education and they are more often directly
displaced from being a landless tenant’s daughter or wife to a prostitute. These lower caste women are
further disadvantaged and discriminated against in their workplaces as prostitutes. This was depicted in
the movie in the above-mentioned scene. Here we must bring in another interesting observation made
by Dalit economist Prof. Kunjaman, who argued that Gangu bai herself was advantaged by her caste
identity of being a baniya in getting resources as well as respect in the group. Thus, the question of
agency and choice is severely and more brutally coerced by caste rather than gender in real life at least
in India.

The movie’s basic aim or intention is to make society aware of the problems faced by prostitutes in the
country and improve their living standards. The question now to be analysed is how to map prostitution
in the sphere of women's empowerment. A set of liberal feminists argue that prostitution could be the
only living that will be available to women, and this would be their only way to survive in the world.
Banning prostitution in a state or country will just change the demand and distort the supply of the
domestic market and new outflux grows towards the international market and human trafficking
becomes rampant, so it is better to upskill and educate these people rather than outlawing their
profession. A second group argues that Prostitution basically limits women to becoming sex toys and
fulfilling the fantasies of men and it continually perpetuates the existing inequality and discrimination
and would further be disadvantageous to these women. Concludingly what I feel is that prostitution is a
problem that our society faces, but solving this problem should not damage the human
beings(prostitutes) involved in it further, so to address this concern the only way forward is the upskilling
of rural women, creating female specific employment programs and more importantly the spread of
education only this can solve the problems faced by these communities.

REFERENCES
1:. Pongpan, K. (2023). GANGUBAI KATHIAWADI (2022): THE EMPOWERING

RESISTANCE. Literature & Literacy (Online), 1(2), 81–94.

https://doi.org/10.21831/litlit.v1i2.26

2: Sumarsono, I., & Masofa, I. (2022). Women’s Empowerment in The Matriarch of

Kamathipura, a part of Hussain Zaidi’s Mafia Queens of Mumbai. Lensa (Semarang.

Print), 12(2), 166. https://doi.org/10.26714/lensa.12.2.2022.166-179

3: Shah, S. P. (2014). Street Corner secrets: sex, work, and migration in the city of Mumbai.
http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB19074477

4: Becker, M. A. (2014). A review of the Prostitution of Sexuality: The Global Exploitation of

Women. Depaul Law Review, 52(3), 1043.

https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1524&context=law-review

5: The movie Gangubai Kathiawadi

6: The wikipedia page on feminist views on sex industry