Personality: Haji Mastan

So, apparently, Amitabh Bachan's character (Vijay Varma), in Deewar (1975), is based on the life of the late, great Haji Mastan Mirza.

He was popularly known as just plain Haji Mastan, and was a notorious Mumbai gangster during the 1960s and 70s. He became the first celebrity gangster of the city, and extended considerable influence upon the Hindi film industry, had ties to the legendary actor, Dilip Kumar. There he is above, looking quite nonchalant, on the far left. Actress Saira Bano seems visibly, though only slightly, perturbed.

Haji Mastan started off as Umar Ansari; he migrated from Uttar Pradesh at the age of 17 to Bombay, in 1955, where he became a small-time thug in Pydhonie. His contemporaries included one Vardhabhai, who, during the 1960s, controlled bootlegging in the Bombay dockyard. Vardhabhai was always able to give the authorities a run for their money. Haji Mastan specialized in smuggling gold and silver, and later invested his money in construction and real estate business. His hold was limited to the South Mumbai and the dockyard area. Evidently, he was a man of style. The imposition of the Indian Emergency in 1975, broke up the monopoly that the gangs of Vardhabhai and Haji Mastan exerted, and provided opportunity for young blood (unemployed youth and petty smugglers) to come up.

By the 1980s, Haji Mastan became a self-styled Muslim leader forming the Dalit Muslim Surakhsha Maha Sangh in 1985-86. Anyone know anything about this organization? The most I could come up with was that Haji Mastan's son, Shekar Sundar Mirza, who was arrested a few years back, is the chairman of a political party, Bhartiya Minorities Suraksha Mahasangh (BMSM).

Oh, and Haji Mastan exerted quite a bit of influence on the political leadership of Maharashtra.