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The Decline of Gangsters and Politicization of Violence in Urban Bangladesh

David Jackman ABSTRACT Contrary to the Weberian ideal of a central state monopolizing the means of violence, political order in many societies requires a balance of interests between diverse ‘violence specialists’. In urban Bangladesh, gangsters have been identified as powerful actors, closely linked to politicians and the state. Often called mastan, they are portrayed as mediating access to work and public services, as running extortion networks and providing political muscle. Since the early 2000s Dhaka has seen radical change, largely undocumented to date: these gangsters are in significant decline. Many of the roles associated with these gangs continue, but now under the direct control of lower-level factions associated with the ruling political party — a transition that has brought a greater degree of stability to the urban context. These arguments are developed through ethnographic research from a large marketplace in the centre of Dhaka, examining the rise and fall of an infamous local gangster. In developing this case, it is argued that closer attention should be given to changes in the organization of violence within societies.

INTRODUCTION

Violence is organized and used differently across the world (North et al., 2009; Tilly, 1985). In some societies the ability to use violence is largely confined to the apparatus of the state such as the police and army, and in a still smaller number of contexts it is managed within these institutions according to the rule of law. By contrast, many societies are characterized by a wide range of actors using violence, often on a significant scale, to meet a broad set of purposes. Examining the emergence of modern states in Europe, Tilly (1985: 173) describes a ‘continuum’ of actors specializing in violence, which ‘ran from bandits and pirates to kings via tax collectors, regional power holders, and professional soldiers’. This observation I would like to thank Joe Devine and Geof Wood for reviewing earlier drafts of this article, as well as three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/J50015X/1). Development and Change 00(0): 1–25. DOI: 10.1111/dech.12428 2018 The Authors. Development and Change published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Institute of Social Studies. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. C

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resonates with literature from across the world today; for example work on mafia (Blok, 1974; Gambetta, 1993; Siniawer, 2012; Varese, 2001; Volkov, 2002), gangs (Arias, 2017; Johnson, 2005; Rodgers, 2006) and political brokers (Berenschot, 2011; Michelutti, 2007). An association between violence and the actors described above is often understood normatively, and seen as indicating dysfunctionality and disorder. Recent political theory, however, challenges such a view, arguing that political order in most of the world’s societies in fact rests on a dispersed set of violent actors forming a ‘ruling coalition’, extracting rents from society, and dominating rivals on that basis (Khan, 2010; North et al., 2009). In line with this argument, literature has pointed to there being complex relationships between state authorities and wider violence specialists, characterized not only by opposition and competition, but also by cooperation and partnership. In 1920s and 1930s Japan, for example, it has been argued that the yakuza were utilized by the state to suppress left-wing political parties and unions (Siniawer, 2012: 627), as were the mafia by the Christian Democrats in 1940s Sicily (Blok, 1974: 205), where they have also provided vote banks. More recently, Arias (2017) systematically traces relationships between the state and gangs within cities in Brazil, Colombia and Jamaica. In urban Bangladesh violent figures often referred to as mastan in the literature have been portrayed as dominant and powerful, embedded in poor communities while deeply connected to party politics and the state. In popular culture these mastan have been widely depicted in films, and prominent figures have become infamous throughout the country, evoking fear and glamour, reminiscent of the mafia in the West. Some commentators see the role of mastan as so significant that they have described the Bangladeshi state itself as a ‘mastanocracy’ (Ahmed, 2004). Despite their perceived significance, there has been surprisingly little research into who these actors are, how they are organized and what roles they play. This article aims to fill this gap, telling a different story to that which has been told to date. Researching the significance of mastan at the street level in Dhaka today, I often heard variations on the following themes: the mastan are from the past, they have no importance now; they have been killed; they have fled to India; they are in prison; they have become beggars. Since the early 2000s Dhaka has seen radical change largely undocumented by research: these infamous gangsters have significantly declined due to the concerted efforts and alleged extrajudicial killings by successive governments. Most famous leaders have been killed, are in prison or in hiding. Despite their decline, however, many of the roles associated with these figures such as extortion, controlling illegal businesses and mediating access to services continue, but now under an explicitly party political guise, directly controlled by wings of the ruling political party as well as the police. In pointing to this transition, this article argues that we need to give greater attention to how the organization of violence changes in society, and the significance of this for understanding development and the state.

The Decline of Gangsters in Urban Bangladesh

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These arguments are developed on the basis of a year-long ethnography conducted in 2014–15, primarily in a large marketplace at the centre of Dhaka city called Karwan Bazar. Karwan Bazar is situated next to some of the country’s major media outlets; it is near a five-star hotel, a high-end shopping centre, adjacent to a large slum and close to the city’s largest drugs market, along the railway line. The bazaar is locally infamous for its association with crime and violence, and was seen as a heartland for powerful gangsters. The key methods employed in the research were long-term participant observation with a group of labourers, and key informant interviews with local residents and business people, as well as crime journalists, NGO staff, lawyers and academics. Research was also conducted in a number of secondary locations, including at Dhaka University and the adjacent Osmani Uddyan Park. Following this introduction, the article is divided into four sections: the first establishes the theoretical framework of violence and political order guiding the research; the second examines the literature on mastan from Bangladesh, outlining prominent ways in which they have been conceptualized, and contextualizing them in relation to broader literature and discourse from South Asia; the third develops the key empirical arguments through the case study of a prominent gangster; and the fourth section concludes.

UNDERSTANDING POLITICAL ORDER

The observation that diverse violence specialists play significant roles in societies across the world can be understood by examining how political order is maintained in such societies. It is common for states to be unable to directly monopolize the means of violence1 within the territory in which they have formal jurisdiction. In such contexts, political order — meaning the absence of widespread and large-scale violence — does not stem from the monopoly on violence held by a central state as in the Weberian model, but instead on more complex relationships including diverse actors both within and outside of the formal state (Arias, 2017; Khan, 2010; North et al., 2009). Recent political theory concerned with ‘Limited Access Orders’ (North et al., 2009) and ‘political settlements’ (Khan, 2010) conceptualize this in broadly similar ways, highlighting how political order is contingent on a balance of power being maintained between actors who are able to use violence. In particular, these authors argue that order2 stems from a range of violence specialists collectively forming a ‘ruling’ or ‘dominant’ coalition. This coalition dominates rivals on the basis of a superior capability for 1. Violence is understood here as referring to coercion through physical force and threats (North et al., 2009). 2. North et al. (2009) use the broader term ‘social order’; however, the term ‘political order’ is preferred here.

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violence, and actors within it are motivated not to use violence because of the access they gain to rent-seeking opportunities. Violence is therefore used ‘entrepreneurially’ (Blok, 1974; Volkov, 2002), and constitutes a valuable skill, which actors deploy to achieve economic and political ends. This framework is designed to describe a whole range of ostensibly different societies, which share the basic structural characteristic of having a ruling coalition organized as hierarchically linked factions. Indeed, as M.H. Khan (2010: 12) argues, ‘looking from the bottom up, the basic component of any party or coalition, however large, is a myriad of basic patron–client factions. Each of these is organized around a single or small group of leaders’. Khan (2010, 2013) offers a way of conceptualizing the different forms that such coalitions take, arguing that they differ according to the relative power controlled along horizontal or vertical lines — the former referring to the balance of power between factions within and outside the ruling coalition, and the latter referring to the balance of power between higher and lower factions within the coalition. A prominent form of ruling coalition is one that exists in a ‘competitive clientelist’ arrangement, in which both excluded factions and lower-level factions within the coalition are strong. In such societies a ruling coalition balances the inclusion of potential factions with the ability to distribute benefits, and factions outside of this coalition mobilize to either attempt inclusion or to form a new coalition (ibid.). The argument that political order in many societies stems from the formation of a ruling coalition which incorporates actors at different hierarchical levels of society, raises critical questions about the forms this takes at ground level. Who, for example, are the violence specialists operating in any given context, what relationships do they maintain with other actors both within and outside the state, and how does this organization change over time? Indeed, ruling coalitions have been observed to be temporary, it being common for new factions and coalitions to emerge through processes that are often violent (North et al., 2009). This line of thought can be advanced through considering recent work on ‘micro-level armed regimes’ (Arias, 2017). Arias examines the relationships between the state and communitylevel armed groups (which he often terms ‘gangs’ for shorthand). Rather than see the state and gangs as dichotomous, representing order and disorder respectively, Arias argues that gangs are often closely integrated into political systems, maintaining complex interdependencies with the state. More precisely, Arias argues that state–gang relationships differ according to two variables: first, the extent to which the ‘armed regime’ has consolidated power at the local level; and second, the degree of relationship this regime has with the state (whether it is cooperative and collaborative or competitive). This translates into four types of micro-level political order. Where cooperation with the state is low, groups typically compete with the state, resulting either in a situation of ‘criminal disorder’ and widespread violence when they have low levels of consolidated power, or situations of ‘divided governance’ when the group has consolidated local power. Where


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cooperation with the state is high, this results either in ‘tiered governance’, if the group has low levels of consolidated power, where armed groups operate at the behest of political leaders; or ‘collaborative governance’, where groups operate more in partnership with the state (Arias, 2017: 24– 25). When married with the macro framework outlined above, this typology suggests a way of distinguishing how factions are organized within coalitions, and the forms of governance that such arrangements entail at ground level.

VIOLENCE SPECIALISTS IN URBAN BANGLADESH

For decades, literature from Bangladesh has identified informal actors as central to understanding the organization and use of violence in urban areas, particularly in the lives of the poor. These figures are most often referred to by the term ‘mastan’ and have been associated with a number of roles, including political mobilization and muscle, brokering access to the state and other services, controlling illegal businesses and running extortion networks. For the most part, mastan have been referenced as important, but not directly examined; as such, there is a significant gap in the literature relevant to an understanding not only of the lives of the urban poor, but more broadly of the urban political economy and political order. There are a few exceptions to this, insights from which this article intends to build upon (Ahmed, 2004; Atkinson-Sheppard, 2017; Devine, 2007). This section consolidates existing understandings of mastan, and engages with the phenomenon the term denotes, in light of recent work on violence and political order (North et al., 2009) and by drawing upon a wider body of literature and sources from South Asia. Gangsters, Violence and the State

The notion of a mastan came to be widely used in Bangladesh from at least the late 1980s, and within academic literature expressed what were perceived as new forms of violent organization at the urban grassroots. The precise translation of the term into English differs; Bangladeshis often portray it as meaning ‘muscle man’, some use the term ‘strong man’ (Khan, 2000), ‘hoodlum’ (Siddiqui et al., 1993), or ‘bully boys’ (Abdullah, 1991). Van Schendel (2009: 252) describes mastan as follows: ‘the archetypal mostan is young, urban, armed and testosterone-charged. He acts officiously as the leader of a locality, pushing aside respected elders and appointed authorities. An upstart, he rules through fear’. The term is thus clearly associated with violence, and to say that someone does mastani (mastani kora) indicates an involvement with violent crime, or a joking suggestion that they are up to mischief (Devine, 2007). Writing in the early 1990s, Abdullah

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(1991: 98) described the ‘mastanisation’ of urban local-level politics, where the influence of mastan ‘almost guarantees victory in ward commissioners elections’, and speculated that ‘perhaps the foundations are being laid for the formation of “gangs”’ (ibid.: 99). Later references portray the mastan as exactly this — individuals within hierarchically and territorially organized groups or gangs (Khan, 2000; Wendt, 1997). I.A. Khan (2000) describes the slum he researched in Dhaka as having a ‘mastaan structure’, led by a top mastan who was always accompanied by five more junior mastan, and then below them ‘full-time’ and ‘part-time’ mastan, as well as pati-mastaan (small mastan) and rangbaj (gang member, criminal). In the slum studied by Khan, the top mastan had around 50 members in his group, and was in competition with other mastan gangs for control. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, the role of mastan had become emblematic of a corrupt political system, with their growth deeply connected to competition between Bangladesh’s two main political parties, the Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Politicians were understood as depending on these figures for protection, to wage successful political events and campaigns, and to provide vote banks. Media documented this need for mastan: ‘Mastans are able to sustain [themselves] because of the various vested interest groups of the society. Whether the cause is political, commercial or personal, there is invariably a constant demand for mastans in the society’ (The Daily Star, 10 June 1999, quoted in Government of Canada, 2003). These mastan gangs can be understood as forming part of the coalitions which vie for power, dominated by the political parties. In Khan’s (2010) analysis, mastan — whom he describes as ‘petty mafia bosses’ (ibid.: 12) — are one example of the actors who sit at the head of factions at the lower levels of the ruling coalition. This is supported by qualitative research, which has portrayed mastan as local gangs hierarchically under party political leaders (Khan, 2000; Wendt, 1997). The connections between mastan groups and party politics are understood to be complex and multifarious, reflecting the negotiations and manoeuvrings of groups for opportunities. For Devine (2007: 23), arguing from a rural context, although mastan are legitimized by political networks, the actual control over them by political leaders is ‘neither dominant nor comprehensive’, and they can therefore be understood as having a reasonable degree of independence and entrepreneurialism, competing with other groups of mastan and switching political allegiances. As such, mastan are perceived as having a unique ‘strategic role’ (Ahmed, 2004: 101) or ‘structural position’ (Devine, 2007: 21) in Bangladeshi society. One prominent commentator describes this as representing the ‘criminalisation of politics’ (Sobhan, 2004: 4105), while others take it a step further, writing of Bangladesh itself as a ‘mastanocracy’ (Ahmed, 2004), or as having a ‘mastan structure’ (Ahmed, 2004; Devine, 2007; Wood, 2014).


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Mastan are often perceived as representing a ‘new’ or ‘unique’ development and distinguished against other, similar terms for violence specialists in Bangladesh, such as goonda, cadre or shontrashi.3 Ahmed (2004: 100), for example, writes that while goonda are professional killers or the cadre are ‘underground party members who own arms’, the mastan are ‘unique’. He does, however, appear to equate mastan and shontrashi (ibid.: 102), while Devine (2007: 21) makes a distinction between the two. An understanding of the mastan phenomenon can be deepened through better contextualizing these figures within South Asian history. While the terminology differs, understandings of mastan closely resemble how goonda were conceptualized in early 20th century Bengal, and still are in modern India.4 These parallels suggest that the phenomenon denoted by the term mastan has longer historical roots than are often acknowledged. Colloquially, other labels such as godfather, mafia and don have permeated everyday language throughout the subcontinent and are commonly used to refer to people seen as resembling the entrepreneurial, violent and sometimes heroic figures portrayed in Western and South Asian films. The term goonda is historically translated as ruffian or hooligan, and emerged most clearly in Kolkata in the 1910s and 1920s as a way of identifying an urban criminal figure (Bhattacharya, 2004; Chakrabarty, 2000; Das, 1994; Ghosh, 1991; Nandi, 2010). Similar to mastan, analyses of goonda in historic Kolkata have described them in terms of ‘goonda gangs’ (Nandi, 2010), often labelled as clubs, based from ‘local gymnasia and physical training centres’ (Das, 1994: 2880), and in competition with other groups for local power.5 Based on historical analysis of police records in colonial Kolkata, Das (ibid.) describes the goonda as involved in wide-ranging crimes such as ‘snatching, extortion, theft, murder, robbery, dacoities, wagon-breaking, smuggling, gambling and blackmarketeering’. As discourse around goonda emerged, a defining feature has been a connection to party politics and the institutions of the state. In the early 20th century, this was perhaps what distinguished them from being labelled dacoit (robber, bandit, outlaw), or badmash (meaning an ordinary criminal, a term often used as an insult).6 In the 18th century, Kolkata had seen what Banerjee (2003: 2047) calls 3. The term shontrashi is often translated into English as terrorist, but it perhaps has more the connotations of outlaw and gangster than terrorist has today. 4. It should be acknowledged that further historical research is required to better understand the precise emergence of mastan in Bangladesh post-independence. This account is intended to offer the basis for such research, but not represent a comprehensive analysis of this development. 5. There is an interesting parallel here with the rise of gangs and gangsters through gyms and martial arts in Russia during the 1990s (Volkov, 2002). 6. The extent to which the identification and legislation around goonda was a response to the emergence of a new form of criminality has, however, been questioned. Nandi (2010) argues that it rather reflected elite fears around hooliganism, which were by then well established within an urban European context.

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‘urban dacoity’ — gangs of men sometimes including Europeans numbering into their hundreds and hiding in nearby jungles, who robbed the city’s elite. The goonda were portrayed as similarly brazen and violent; unlike the dacoit, however, they were often closely linked to political parties and sometimes the state.7 Bhattacharya (2004: 4278) argues that it was partly the involvement of goonda in the non-cooperation movement that motivated ‘The Goondas Act’ of 1923 for West Bengal, which empowered the police to identify and deport goonda without trial.8 Goonda have been identified as both instigators and protectors in Hindu– Muslim communal clashes (Das, 1994; Ghosh, 1991), as being used by the Indian National Congress and Muslim League in the late 1940s, and as acting ‘like the foot soldiers of an army’ in this respect (Samaddar, 2017: 44). Bhattacharya (2004: 4281) writes of colonial Kolkata that the ‘skill of producing violence was a skill that was as much in demand as that of a lawyer and expertise in this skill brought the “subaltern” of the city in close proximity of the “elite” political and industrial bosses’. Similar to mastan in Bangladesh, in India today goonda have come to represent the violent nature of party political competition, and are symbolic of brokered state–society relations, particularly for poor communities (Berenschot, 2011; Michelutti, 2007; Piliavsky and Sbriccoli, 2016). Terms such as ‘goonda raj’, ‘goodaism’, ‘goonda politics’ (Michelutti, 2014: 291) and ‘goondashahi’ (Gooptu, 2001: 413) express a similar sense to ‘mastanocracy’. Goonda have been identified as deploying violence to maintain control for party politicians, help rig elections and raise money for political campaigns (Berenschot, 2010, 2011); indeed, many politicians themselves have criminal backgrounds (Vaishnav, 2017). Martin and Michelutti (2017) explore the intimate relationship between mafia-style protection racketeering and party politics in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, arguing that ‘criminal’ practices are integral to how political parties are organized. Their dynamics also reflect the degree of inter- and intra-party competition, with situations of political ‘competition’ enabling a greater role for goonda and tending towards higher levels of insecurity; and political ‘monopoly’ tending to keep goonda at arms’ length from the higher echelons of the party. Sources from the Bangladesh National Archives suggest that historically goonda were also identified as present and problematic in Dhaka. A letter from the President of the Dacca District Scavengers’ Union on 5 May 1943, for example, describes the ‘pro-fascist goondas’ sabotaging the union’s work

7. Although some dacoit were clearly linked to the state and influential actors. Describing the 18th century, Taylor (1840: 276) wrote of the gangs of armed dacoits who roamed East Bengal, robbing and murdering: ‘they formed organized bands, frequently amounting to 1,500 men in number, and headed by daring leaders, generally under the protection of some powerful Zemindar who shared the plunder with them’. 8. Equivalent legislation in Bangladesh is the ‘Control of Disorderly and Dangerous Persons (Goondas) Act’ of 1954.


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in Dhaka (Dacca District Scavengers’ Union, 1943). Similarly, in another letter the same year, the Inspector-General of Police for Bengal laments the lack of a Detective Department in Dhaka, the main drawback of which he describes is the lack of ‘direct touch with the goonda type of criminal’ which he identifies as ‘primarily responsible’ for the ‘communal clashes’ seen in the city (Superintendent of Police, Bakarganj, 1943). Later, just prior to independence, there is a reference to ‘Gundas’ attacking methors (waste workers) in ‘Ganaktuly’, preventing them from going to work (Municipal Office, Dacca, 1970). Although these references are limited, when combined with scholarship from Kolkata, they suggest that the figure of the mastan represents a modern articulation of a more deeply rooted phenomenon. What does appear to be ‘unique’ during the 1980s and 1990s — the period in which such figures appear to have gained prominence in Bangladesh — is the scale and importance of these groups. One possible explanation for this is the political environment in which they thrived, which was dominated by party political competition between the BNP and Awami League. According to the logic of competitive clientelism, each party had a need for street-level muscle to compete with their rivals (Khan, 2013), and as political competition intensified so did a dependency on mastan groups. Indeed, it should be noted that low-level violence entrepreneurs have been observed to emerge during periods of political change more widely (Arias, 2017; Blok, 1974; Sidel, 1989; Varese, 2001; Volkov, 2002) — a finding that aligns with the analysis here.

Urban Communities and Intermediaries

Mastan are understood to play significant roles in the lives of the urban poor, operating as ‘intermediaries’ or ‘brokers’ to the state and wider society (Atkinson-Sheppard, 2016, 2017; Banks, 2008; Khan, 2000; Wood, 2003). Banks (2008: 369) describes one such role: this ‘interaction exchanges a vote bank that is mobilized by the mastaan in return for improved services or other benefits from elected officials’. They have also been portrayed as mediating access to services such as water, gas and electricity; as controlling land, community institutions and employment opportunities; as running extortion networks, as well as sheltering thieves, drug dealers and gambling dens (Khan, 2000). For Khan (2000: 233) the mastan fill a ‘structural hole’, where ‘gusti [lineage groups] and lineage based neighbourhoods . . . do not exist or are not as strong in the urban bustee [slum] context’. Hence mastan build norms and maintain ‘informal rights’ (ibid.). More recently it has been argued that the mastan operate as representatives for concerned parties in bastee land disputes (Suykens, 2015), and also that they use street children in their illegal activities (Atkinson-Sheppard, 2016). Returning to historic Kolkata, goonda are similarly identified as having ‘dominated life in working-class bustis . . . and bazaars’ (Chakrabarty, 2000: 110), running

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extortion networks and illegal businesses, particularly brothels (Das, 1994; Ghosh, 1991).9 Within this literature there is also the sense of mastan as ambiguous characters in terms of the values they embody, the roles they play, and how they are identified within society. On the one hand their characterization as violent and pervasive figures has led to the perception that the mastan are a significant obstacle or constraint to the urban poor (Banks, 2012; Wood, 2003; Wood and Salway, 2000). As Khan (2000: 85) writes: ‘everyone knows the price to be paid for resisting or challenging mastaans’ — violence. In line with this the World Bank (2007: 57) describes mastan as a ‘major obstacle to reaching the poor’. On the other hand, although they are associated with criminality and lawlessness, they are also seen as ‘honourable heroes’, protecting victims of injustice (Devine, 2007: 9), and may also portray themselves in this way (Ruud, 2014: 316). Work on popular culture in Bangladesh has highlighted this ambiguity well; Hoek (2013: 122) records the slogan of one cinema poster reading ‘he is killer but not terrorist’, implying a sense of righteous violence. This ambiguity can even be seen in the etymology of the word. According to Kaur (2005: 174), the term refers to ‘he who is in a state of mast, or of being wholly absorbed into the love for God or his representative’. At root, the mastan is then a ‘mystic figure’ within the Sufi tradition (ibid.).10 Ahmed (2004: 101) argues that these spiritual connotations are at the heart of why the mastan are so prominent in popular imagination, representing someone who is willing to sacrifice themselves for a greater good.11 There is also the sense that mastan have emerged from poor communities and are thus embedded morally and socially. Similarly, some goonda in the colonial period in Kolkata were previously doormen, some were labour leaders (sardar in Bengali) (Bhattacharya, 2004; Chakrabarty, 2000), and some were from the middle class.12 More recent commentary from Bangladesh portrays diverging understandings about the place of mastan in contemporary urban society. One study argues that ‘mastaans operate in every slum in Dhaka’ (Atkinson-Sheppard, 2016: 237). By contrast, others have expressed a greater degree of ambiguity. In the context of a slum in Chittagong, Suykens (2015: 496) writes that the ‘line between being a mastaan, a jomidar or a community leader 9. One explanation for the rise of goonda in Kolkata is the opportunities for, and need to regulate, prostitution after the influx of American soldiers during World War II (Das, 1994: 2880; Ghosh, 1991: 4). 10. My experiences in the mazar (Islamic shrines) of Dhaka suggests that the term can still occasionally have religious connotations. 11. However, 19th century English translations from Hindustani define the term mast as meaning ‘drunk, intoxicated, lustful’ (Shakespear, 1834: 1896), and it is this root that is highlighted by Mitra et al. (2015: 239) in their political and economic dictionary of South Asia. 12. Some goonda in colonial Kolkata were identified as wealthy individuals (Bhattacharya, 2004), from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, even Anglo-Indians and a Chinese man (Das, 1994).


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was sometimes thin and blurred’. Building on this comment, Banks (2016: 278) describes some leaders in Dhaka’s slums as being mastan, others as having been so in the past, while some as not being mastan at all. Indeed, although Hossain (2011, 2013) and Hackenbroch and Hossain (2012) briefly reference the mastan as significant in Dhaka’s slums, it is actually the explicitly party political nature of local power that these studies highlight. Studying the provision of urban water services, Hossain (2011) describes how state services are ‘politicised’, and subject to the interests of the ruling party. Party politics provides a legitimacy to the informal provision of water, and urban residents are heavily dependent on party leaders. Similarly, Hackenbroch and Hossain (2012) show how once Awami League affiliated leaders came into power they took control over key community structures (such as the salish, bazaar and mosque committee), which they used to extract rents from the community. In the context studied, it was party political connections that allowed preferential access to government services and a good relationship with the police. This literature therefore indicates a diverging picture about the role of mastan today, and the intention of the empirical narrative of this article is to build on this work to offer a clearer understanding about how violence is organized in contemporary urban Bangladesh.

PARTY POLITICS AND THE DECLINE OF GANGSTERS ‘David, do you know who the biggest shontrashi in Bangladesh is? Them! The Awami League!’. (Shumon, a labourer, watching an Awami League meeting at Karwan Bazar)

Karwan Bazar is infamous for its long association with violence, crime and politics, and this was the perception I took to the market when I began research there in early 2014. After a couple of months, however, I began to reflect on warnings that I should never go there at night, and that it is one of the most dangerous places in Dhaka. Aside from the odd fight and jostling for work, I had seen little evidence of significant violence, and started to suspect I had been duped by some upper-class hysteria. And so I asked labourers at the bazaar what it used to be like. Responses were clear and theatrical. ‘You wouldn’t have been able to come here back then’, many people told me. ‘You would have been robbed as soon as you arrived, this nice phone, gone, your “money bag”, gone’, Nazir, a labourer, explained.13 Words were often accompanied by gestures and noises: ‘bang bang bang’ pistols firing, the whistle of bombs being thrown overhead, the guttural noise of a knife meeting flesh. Through these conversations I learnt that through the 1990s until the mid-2000s gangsters had dominated Dhaka, 13. All names other than those of key mastan themselves have been anonymized. Conversations with labourers, Dhaka, July 2014.

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but that today they are no longer perceived as powerful. While the term mastan has been most often used within the literature and discourse to refer to such figures, in practice a range of terms are deployed, and often used interchangeably. Hence people also spoke of these figures through the terminology of shontrashi, top terror, mafia, mafia don and godfather.14 Names rang out and became almost mythologized by the public. Within Dhaka, Karwan Bazar was perceived by many as the nerve centre, and within Karwan Bazar one name stood above the rest: picchi Hannan.15 It is through understanding the rise and fall of this famous gangster that the main arguments of this article will be developed. The Rise and Role of Picchi Hannan

Picchi Hannan was from Chandpur district, south-east of Dhaka.16 He came to the city after failing class seven at school, and joined his father and brothers who were already established and working. As one informant described it, he first ‘lived on the road at Karwan Bazar, at that time everyone lived on the road!’.17 Through the 1970s and 1980s the city saw a mass influx of migrants, often settling wherever they could, on pavements, banks of canals or adjacent to the railway line. Hannan found work in the nearby CSD godown, a government warehouse just north-east of the bazaar. There he worked as a coolie for a couple of years, though left apparently because the work was too irregular. His father was a rice seller, a retailer rather than a wholesaler, who sold on the roadside at the bazaar. As they do today, retailers primarily open during the day and wholesalers at night, so picchi Hannan used to hang his mosquito net up next to the bags of rice and sleep there, guarding his father’s small business. Other sources inaccurately cite his roots as a scavenger (tokai), but truthfully point to his humble past. He was, then, very much like the labourers you find today, a poor young man sleeping at the market.

14. These terms will henceforth be used interchangeably or in line with how they were used in the context described. 15. Picchi is a colloquial way of saying ‘short’ in Bengali. 16. Descriptions presented here are made firstly on the basis of interviews and discussions with people who knew picchi Hannan personally at Karwan Bazar. This includes someone who described himself as having been his ‘karam board and gambling partner’ in youth, as well as established business owners, labourers and former members of his gang. I particularly draw upon the experiences of a group of labourers known as the jupri (shack, shed) group, some members of which used to be in Hannan’s gang. Secondly, analysis is based on a number of secondary sources, pieced together from references in academic articles or the media. Undoubtedly with a figure of his stature, myth often overtakes reality. This account should be considered a sketch, partial and incomplete and, as such, a call for further research. 17. Interview, key informant, Dhaka, December 2014.


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By the mid-1980s Hannan had got married, apparently a ‘love marriage’,18 and began working as a security guard for a daily wage. He quickly became known as a good fighter, and when called to fight in the area he would go. ‘He was a good cadre. He had the guts to fight’, an informant explained.19 Before the return to parliamentary democracy in the early 1990s, two shifts appear to have taken place that set the stage for coming decades. Firstly, there are descriptions of a new form of political involvement and organization among the labourers and poorest groups under President Ershad. Descriptions from Karwan Bazar suggest that this period saw a significant increase in makeshift political clubs, no more than tin shacks (as many still are today), where people met, discussed politics, had adda (gossip), and where food and relief were also distributed. One informant described President Ershad attempting to galvinize support for his Jatiyo Party in the run-up to the 1986 election by doubling certain labourers’ wages if they joined his party.20 If accurate, this can be understood in relation to Ershad’s need to build popular support throughout society in order to maintain a ruling coalition and political order (Khan, 2013). As Khan (2013: 29) writes, the ‘new clientelist logic was to selectively include enough political organizers in the ruling coalition to minimize the required threat of force to an acceptable level’. At the same time, shontrashi or mastan gangs are identified as taking on a greater significance at the lowest levels of urban life. At Karwan Bazar, informants described groups of labourers and workers (truck drivers, butchers, market coolie) uniting under leaders to control areas of the bazaar, the illegal businesses and extortion rackets. In this period picchi Hannan came under the shelter of the Jatiyo party, and during Ershad’s rule he went from being ‘a good person, a labourer, a poor man’21 to fighting his way to be a chief of a unit, ruling a side of Karwan Bazar, as an informant who knew him growing up described. But at this stage he was still only a low-level player in a sea of mastan. From the early 1990s, with the return to parliamentary democracy, the rise of these groups continued. As has been documented elsewhere, picchi Hannan rose up the ranks through his relationship with Sweden Aslam who was the top shontrashi in the area (Ahmed, 2004). A common perception is that they met in prison in the mid-1990s, and that Hannan capitalized on Aslam’s re-arrest in 1997, effectively taking over control from him (ibid.). What is clear is that by the late 1990s, Hannan had emerged as the premier gangster in the area. His territory was seen by some as focusing on the bazaar and surrounding neighbourhoods, while those from the area see him as having been the premier gangster across the city — the gangster to whom 18. The term often used in Bengali to refer to a couple who marry after falling in love as opposed to the marriage being arranged by family. 19. Interview, key informant, Dhaka, November 2014. 20. I have been unable to verify this, and it should be the subject of further research. 21. Interview, key informant, Dhaka, December 2014.

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others paid homage. Abul, a labourer who grew up at the bazaar, described him to me as having been the king of Dhaka.22 Having risen to power, picchi Hannan was simultaneously connected to political and state institutions, while also being a wanted man. He used to have to move from shelter to shelter to avoid capture by the police, resembling the image of an outlaw or bandit. Members of his gang recall seeing him surrounded by his bodyguards, describing him as small (hence his name ‘picchi’), and fat, because he never did manual work. He had a reputation for spending his time with women and doing drugs. Although wanted, he was also sheltered politically, as one informant who was a friend of his in youth described: ‘when Jatiyo Party was in power, he was doing Jatiyo party. When BNP were in power, he did BNP. When X23 came to power he started working for him. He worked for whichever party was in power’.24 Part of these relationships involved sending labourers to political rallies and meetings, though the dynamics of these relationships were undoubtedly more complicated. In line with the earlier analysis, Hannan thus formed part of a ‘ruling coalition’ dominated by the ruling political party. Despite these affiliations he is not understood as having had an explicitly party political identity, and the quote above suggests a high degree of independence. Most people — including those previously in his gang — do not see him as having been a party political person. In fact, some of the lower-level factions of these political parties were his rivals. Recognizing this is central to understanding the subsequent shifts in power explored in the next section. The same informant describes events following the 1996 general election victory for the Awami League: A lot of members of Jubo League25 at Karwan Bazar were killed. At that time they were powerful. So he killed most of them. Jubo League’s Ward Secretary Khaleque, killed. Jubo League’s President Hanif, killed. Jubo League’s next secretary Delu, killed. Jubo Dal members were also killed. He killed Jubo Dal’s secretary, but he killed more of the League than the Dal. He would kill whoever wanted to do extortion using political power. He wanted to do the extortion on his own.26

Picchi Hannan and similar figures are seen as having been powerful on the basis of the network of people underneath them that they could mobilize and control. At his strongest, Hannan is described by many as having controlled a network of over 2,000 people structured hierarchically with clearly 22. As a reviewer helpfully pointed out, it is important to acknowledge that there are complexities to the decades described here which cannot be captured by this brief analysis. The way that the phenomenon of mastan changes between political parties through the 1990s, for example, is one topic on which further research is required. 23. This pseudonym refers to a former local Awami League MP and a current high-profile businessman. 24. Interview, key informant, Dhaka, February 2015. 25. The Jubo League is the youth wing of the Awami League, the Jubo Dal is the youth wing of the BNP. 26. Interview, key informant, Dhaka, February 2015.


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delineated roles, similar to Khan’s (2000) description of a Dhaka slum. He reportedly had five bodyguards, and each bodyguard was in charge of dozens or hundreds of men. Among the rank and file members of the gang, some were armed and enforced Hannan’s interests, others were informers, and some were in the reserve force, ready to be called when needed. Some were drug dealers selling mostly phensedyl on the nearby railway line, a popular drug across north India at the time. For poor and often young men such networks offered employment, a degree of security and status. There is hence a close association between these gangs and people who lived or grew up on the streets. Similar dynamics have been documented in Kolkata. Ghosh (1991: 5–6) notes how the ‘rootless’ people (chinomul) living on the side of the road joined the goonda underworld, and there was a particular association between poor migrants and goonda gangs. Nazir, the labourer cited earlier, grew up at Karwan Bazar after running away from a madrassa as a child, and used to be one of 20 phensedyl sellers under Hannan. He explained his involvement to me: I used to sell phensedyl on the rail line, there used to be a spot for drugs there. All the robbers and thieves used to come to the point to buy from us. I used to work under him [picchi Hannan] so it wasn’t risky for him but just for me. When I worked under him I did all sorts of work like stealing, hijacking, beating people, even shooting people and throwing bombs. In the morning there used to be bombings and shootings, you might even see dead bodies when he was here . . . . Then I was put in prison for three years.27

Labourers would describe Nazir and others as having been a rangbaj (gangster, gang member). On the basis of people like Nazir, Hannan became extraordinarily wealthy and created monopolies at the market, sold drugs and arms, controlled prostitution, regularly kidnapped and extorted people, ran protection racketeering, and took slices of government contracts.28 But rather than taking money from the poor, he was seen as taking money from the rich. The moral ambiguity of mastan described previously is also evident here. He was described to me by labourers as a terrible person, but also as having had a lot of affection (dorot) for poor people, and as building a mosque in his home village. Despite this, according to Abul, everyone was scared of his name. At Karwan Bazar Hannan operated a vast network of toll collecting (chanda) from businesses in the area, and Ahmed (2004: 104) cites his income from this source alone as being over 1 million taka a month.29 Locals explained how the vegetable wholesalers would be regularly kidnapped. He would send 15 to 20 of his men to capture someone, take them to a private place and start torturing them. They would have to pay anything from 50,000 27. Interview, Nazir, a labourer, Dhaka, October 2014. 28. As one example of his wealth, he apparently constructed the 13-storey Babul Tower, which he named after a friend, which stands today to the north of the bazaar. 29. In the early 2000s, US$ 1 was equivalent to approximately 50 Bangladeshi taka.

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taka to 1–2 lakh taka30 to be set free. Similarly, if someone was constructing a building they would have to give 5, 10, or 15 lakh taka to his group or the workers would be beaten up and construction forced to stop. One role of the informers was to monitor who was doing well, and who would be targeted next. At Karwan Bazar Hannan also enforced monopolies on certain goods to maximize his rents, as a local business person described: When picchi Hannan was in power, only two businessmen could sell Indian tomatoes here, and no-one else. If someone else tried to sell them, picchi Hannan’s people would kidnap them . . . . When tomatoes were imported from India for 40 taka per kg they would be sold for 55 taka per kg, making 15 taka profit. If everyone could sell them, they would sell for 42 taka per kg, because 2 taka profit would be enough. But people weren’t allowed to. Only picchi Hannan’s people could sell tomatoes. ‘Murgi Milon’31 made crores of taka by selling tomatoes. They gave a portion of the profit to picchi Hannan. When chicken was 80 taka a kg, only picchi Hannan’s people would sell them. This is how they controlled business.32

This period of Dhaka’s history is associated with extreme forms of dayto-day violence and insecurity; this is not only evidenced in some of the descriptions above, but was also clear from research in other contexts across the city. Rubel, a labour leader of a group known as jupri (shack, shed) at Karwan Bazar explained how ordinary people could just be standing around chatting and then a bomb would hit them, one losing a leg, another a hand. Nazir explained why this was the case: ‘before, there were lots of “grouping”, I used to work for one big brother, you used to work for another, so if you kill one big brother then you will get contract money from the boss, and your boss will be able to take over that group’.33 The clearest source of violence, then, was inter-gang rivalry. Throughout Dhaka, areas were associated with the name of a mastan, often prefixed with a defining characteristic such as black, small, scavenger, destitute, chicken, and Sweden, as seen from the references so far. ‘There was a competition to show off who was the most powerful. If they weren’t pushed back, they would take control’, another local informant explained.34 But these gangs were themselves factionally divided and fluid, in competition for power and control. When Hannan emerged during the 1980s and 1990s, Karwan Bazar continued to be divided between different leaders, referenced by labourers as ‘godfather’, each associated with a particular area of the bazaar, and control of the business and extortion there. Picchi Hannan’s gang used to be a coalition of these groups. As mentioned above, labour groups used to be part of this, with some labour leaders (sardar) identified as having also become mastan. Mohammed, a labourer in the jupri group, described how they used to have to fight because of mafia, and described the situation in 30. A lakh is 100,000. 31. Murgi Milon (chicken Milon) was a famous mastan of the time, killed in 2000 by a rival, reportedly tokai Sagar (scavenger Sagar) of kala Jahangir’s group (black Jahangir). 32. Interview, businessman, Dhaka, January 2015. 33. Interview, Nazir, a labourer, Dhaka, October 2014. 34. Interview, key informant, December 2014.


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the late 1990s and early 2000s: ‘there used to be lots of fighting between the jupri and other groups. We used to be on two sides running against each and fighting. The trucks used to be left at the side not even unloaded! We would fight, then sleep, then the whistle would come and we would run and fight again’.35 This suggests that a further source of violence in this period was factional conflict within gangs. As suggested at the beginning of this section, today Karwan Bazar, and Dhaka in general, are comparatively stable, with far fewer incidents of large-scale violence. Continuing the story of picchi Hannan enables us to understand why this is the case. Despite his rise to power, wealth and fame, a few years later Hannan found himself in the custody of Bangladesh’s newly formed elite force, the Rapid Action Batallion (RAB). Understanding the fall of Hannan illuminates the changing face of political order in urban Bangladesh. RAB and the Party Politicization of Violence ‘The days of there being these big brothers are finished, many have died, many are drug addicts, many are beggars and many just steal from beggars’. (Naseema, a low-level Hawkers League leader)36

In 2001 the BNP returned to power with a public commitment to bring an end to the high levels of violence and crime seen in Dhaka and throughout Bangladesh. The powerful mastan or shontrashi were identified as central to this endeavour, and the government offered rewards for information leading to the capture of ‘23 top terror’, including picchi Hannan. In late 2002 this mission acquired a name, ‘Operation Clean Heart’, and was driven by the mass deployment of the military. As a result, many top mastan fled to India, often sheltering in Kolkata, as was the case for Hannan who even earned a reference in the BBC News (2002). Despite around 10,000 people being arrested, crime and violence continued, mastan resumed their business (HRW, 2006), and there was the perception that existing state forces were inadequate to deal with the power of mastan. However, the operation was given a major boost with the formation of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in 2004. RAB is an elite force formed from the police and army, designed to fight terrorism and high-level crime. Often called a ‘death squad’ in international media (The Guardian, 2010a), they initially received training from the British (The Guardian, 2010b), and became infamous internationally for extrajudicial killings. When people at Karwan Bazar and Dhaka in general explain that ‘the mastan have been killed’, it is usually followed by ‘RAB killed them’. Having spent years in hiding, picchi Hannan was almost apprehended on 25 June 2004. Bangladesh’s The Daily Star reported that RAB had attempted 35. Interview, Mohammed, a labourer, Dhaka, November 2014. 36. Interview, Naseema, Dhaka, February 2015.

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to arrest Hannan and some members of his gang in Uttara, north Dhaka. The account describes the ‘notorious’ Hannan and his gang shooting their way through a ‘40-member strong Rab team’ before getting away in a car under gunfire and with one tyre burst (The Daily Star, 2004a). Such events have since fed public imagination, strengthening him as a heroic figure, someone who was able to take on RAB. It appears from reports, however, that he was arrested the next day while receiving treatment for bullet wounds in Savar, north of Dhaka (The Daily Star, 2004b).37 Having been taken into custody, Hannan was killed by RAB on 6 August 2004.38 In a pattern that became a trademark, RAB reported that they had taken Hannan with them to arrest some of his accomplices and he had died in an ensuing gun battle (HRW, 2006: 26). This pattern has become known euphemistically as ‘crossfire’. The death of Hannan represented the first high-profile success for RAB and reportedly sent a serious message of intent to other such figures (ibid.). The subsequent role of RAB in arresting or killing many of the mastan was not confined to the figureheads, but also took out those lower in the hierarchy. Babul, for example, was one of Hannan’s senior men, feared throughout Karwan Bazar for kidnapping and extortion. After the death of Hannan, Babul was allegedly shot in the feet by RAB. Though not killed, he was permanently disabled. The once powerful Babul became known locally as lengra Babul (crippled Babul); he became an addict, slept at the bazaar and died in 2014 of an overdose. It is this phenomenon that is described by the low-level Hawkers League leader at the beginning of this section — the sense of mastan fading away. Similarly, immediately following Hannan’s death, Sahib Ali, one of his bodyguards, took control of his network at Karwan Bazar, before himself being allegedly killed by RAB. Over subsequent years, RAB and the police are seen as having radically changed the fabric of urban society in Bangladesh, killing or arresting many more mastan, while forcing others to flee to India as fugitives. There is a common belief that some mastan managed to move into party politics, becoming local leaders of the various wings of the ruling party, while some are identified in Karwan Bazar as having become fruit and vegetable wholesalers. Some of the lower-level members who were not killed or imprisoned became small business owners or labourers. Nazir, who we heard from earlier, explained the significance of this: ‘when I was in jail RAB arrested my boss and shot him, all of his gang scattered and went in different directions 37. A letter to the editor in The Daily Star of 26 July 2004 asks: ‘Picchi Hannan reportedly offered a little gift of Tk 50 lakh to RAB officials. Who are the other men who enjoyed the gifts of Picchi Hannan in the past?’ (The Daily Star, 2004c). 38. In leaked classified cables from the US Embassy in Dhaka from 2005, the death of picchi Hannan is referenced, stating ‘opposition figures alleged that Hannan and victims with BNP links were killed to protect BNP “godfathers”’ (Wikileaks, 2005).


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to save their lives, and so the group ended. It’s because of this that it’s completely different here to before’.39 The sense that the situation today is ‘completely different to before’ was a common one. The gangsters referred to by terms such as mastan and shontrashi, and identified with the notion of a ‘mastanocracy’ (Ahmed, 2004), are now perceived as being from a past era. At the same time, however, in Dhaka there are still powerful, dangerous (and often armed) figures running any given area. The end to large mastan gangs has not meant that there are no longer powerful ‘violence specialists’ outside of the police and wider state bodies in Dhaka. Rather, the decline of the likes of Hannan has led to a transition in how violence specialists are organized at the lower levels of urban society. Parvez, another labour leader in the jupri group, articulated this concisely: ‘Karwan Bazar used to run under the godfather but now everything runs under politics’. Many of the roles once associated with powerful gangsters such as running extortion networks, mobilizing people politically, mediating access to services and personal security, all continue, but now under an explicitly party political guise, directly controlled by the wings and associated bodies of the ruling political party. Nozrul, a young vegetable wholesaler, explained the situation: There used to be many shontrashi here. They used to extort people, take money from them. These killers were shontrashi, but they weren’t involved in politics. Now these types of offences have been reduced but what has happened? Now the people on the government’s side are doing the same thing! Haven’t you seen them? Now all day they stick posters on the walls, they are all thieves. They have captured this place and after capturing it take money from people on the street. Isn’t it torture?40

At Karwan Bazar the bodies of the ruling political party that had been rivals to picchi Hannan, and sidelined during his rule, have become dominant. Today it is lower-level factions within Awami League bodies such as the jubo league (youth league), chattro league (students league) and sramik league (workers league), who now dominate the ‘structural position’ (Devine, 2007) once taken by mastan gangs, running extortion networks, controlling access to space and security. A newspaper report from 2009 documented this transition in Karwan Bazar, citing a vegetable wholesaler: After the death of Picchi Hannan, other extortionists had also gone into hiding and we were running our business smoothly. But soon after the formation of [the] new government, various groups introducing themselves as the leaders and activists of Chattra League, Jubo League and Sechhashebak League [volunteers league] have started visiting our business places and demanding tolls. Even these groups have been locked in clashes among themselves over establishing supremacy in the area. We are very much concerned and worried over such illegal toll collection from us by the associate bodies of ruling Awami League. (Dhaka Mirror, 2009)

39. Interview, Nazir, a labourer, Dhaka, October 2014. 40. Interview, vegetable wholesaler, Dhaka, February 2015.

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The sense of this party politicization of local power following the deaths and decline of mastan gangs was a common theme across other sites in Dhaka, and was substantiated through discussions with local politicians and journalists. Indeed, it should be remembered that mastan were often portrayed as powerful actors alongside party political leaders, and were not identified as controlling all areas of Dhaka equally (Khan, 2000; Wendt, 1997). This is also supported by Hossain’s (2013: 213) finding that in his studied area, mastan were challenged around 2003 by local residents with the backing of some police and political leaders to retake control of the bosti bazaar. He writes that the bazaar has since been in the hands of ‘ruling political party supporters, but their activities are not that different to those of the previous mastaan group’. The argument, then, is that there has been a transition in violence specialists since the early 2000s that has been neglected by research to date. This can be characterized as a decline in the infamous gangsters who came to be associated with the term ‘mastanocracy’, and the consolidation of violence directly within party political organizations.41 It should also be acknowledged, however, that while in radical decline, some of the gangsters who rose to fame during the 1990s and early 2000s still operate in some diminished form. Labourers at Karwan Bazar and journalists pinpoint Mirpur as one area where this form of violence specialist continues to operate, and there is some evidence to support this (Atkinson-Sheppard, 2016, 2017). Given that mastan gangs dominated many but not all areas of Dhaka, the degree to which there has been a transition differs. There are also reports that some of the once powerful shontrashi such as Sweden Aslam at Karwan Bazar still play some role behind the scenes, directing activities from inside prisons (Dhaka Tribune, 2014). Furthermore, this is not to claim that the terminology of mastan, goonda and shontrashi is no longer used. Although political leaders and factions are not generally understood organizationally as shontrashi or mastan gangs, some may have been in the past, and they certainly display many similar characteristics to these actors. Hence political leaders or the police may derogatorily be referred to as shontrashi, because they act like them, as in the earlier quote from Shumon.42 Indeed, as informants often made clear to me, because power at the street level is now consolidated directly within political parties who are closely supported by the apparatus of the state, there is no space for new gangsters in the mould

41. This is not to claim that the party politicization of violence is particular to this period, as there is a long history of party political actors controlling and using violence at the local level in Bangladesh (Khan, 2010). 42. People from middle- or upper-class backgrounds in particular may refer to entrepreneurial and violent political leaders now in control as mastan, while at the street level a clearer distinction is generally drawn. Furthermore, individuals operating in support of political leaders may be referenced as mastan, goonda or more often ‘killer’, to indicate a particular ability to use violence.


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of picchi Hannan to emerge on such a scale and attempt to use violence entrepreneurially.

CONCLUSION

This article has argued that the way in which violence is organized in urban Bangladesh has changed significantly since the early to mid-2000s and yet this change has been largely undocumented to date. Most infamous gangsters referred to through terms such as mastan and shontrashi have lost power. Many have been killed in ‘crossfire’ with RAB or the police, or are in prison or in hiding, and some have managed to change professions. As has been emphasized, however, this does not mean that many of the roles associated with these figures have ceased, but rather that the way in which they are organized has changed. Low-level party political factions have risen in power relative to the more independent gangsters; this represents a shift in the character of factions, which can be mobilized and included within the ruling coalition. Understood through Arias’s (2017) typology, this can be seen as a transition away from a situation of ‘divided governance’ or ‘criminal disorder’ towards a more ‘collaborative governance’ or ‘tiered governance’ arrangement, where local-level violence specialists are more closely integrated into the state. However, when placing a case within a typology, it is important to acknowledge the complexity of the situation on the ground. When in power, picchi Hannan was both a wanted man while also politically aligned, suggesting that the state should not be treated as a unitary actor to which one simply has a collaborative or non-collaborative relationship. Much remains to be understood about why the transition identified here occurred, and the implications of this for understanding development and the state in Bangladesh. It was argued that gangsters such as picchi Hannan became instrumental to party political competition during the 1990s and early 2000s, and yet their decline also occurred during a period of ‘competitive clientelism’. One plausible explanation for this is that the high levels of public crime and violence associated with such gangsters outweighed the advantages to political parties of having them on side, resulting in the state developing the capability to directly confront these figures (through the formation of RAB, for example); this subsequently enabled lower-level factions of the ruling party to consolidate control of the resources these gangsters once held. This would help explain why far lower levels of violence are experienced day to day in Dhaka city compared to during the period of these gangs. At Karwan Bazar, for example, hijackings, robberies, kidnappings and inter-group violence are all seen as being far less frequent than under the period of picchi Hannan. Although factional conflict is still rife and often extremely violent, because the lower-level factions within the ruling coalition are organized directly within the political parties, competition for

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inclusion and their general behaviour can perhaps be more closely controlled by political elites. Examining this transition also highlights the importance of interrogating the structure and character of ‘ruling coalitions’ and how their organization changes. This article has suggested that where political order is contingent on balancing the interests of diverse violence specialists, the factions included in ruling coalitions can change in complex ways. This resonates with Arias’s (2017) analysis, which highlights frequent shifts in the relationships between low-level violence specialists and the state in cases from Latin America and the Caribbean. In Bangladesh the organizational character of factions has changed at the lowest levels of the coalition, as has the degree of proximity of these factions to the wider coalition. This draws attention to the need for understanding not only how and why such changes occur, but also how such transitions relate to broader processes of political and economic development. Indeed, the normative implications of the transition observed in Bangladesh are far from clear. The party political actors who have risen in the absence of these gangsters, and operate in many similar ways, have a far closer relationship to the apparatus of the state such as the police. Rather than being wanted men, moving from safe house to safe house, political leaders are able to draw upon and develop relationships of mutual support and assistance with the police. One can therefore ask whether, despite a decline in physical violence, the potential for violence that such party political actors embody can in some sense be more threatening and potent than the brute violence of previous gangsters. This normative ambiguity is all the more striking when viewed in light of the subsequent transition in power seen recently, which appears to be moving away from a competitive clientelism arrangement and towards the continued dominance of the Awami League. Much therefore remains to be understood about how violence is organized in Bangladesh, how this is changing, and its implications for development. REFERENCES Abdullah, A. (ed.) (1991) Modernization at Bay: Structure and Change in Bangladesh. Dhaka: University Press Limited. Ahmed, I. (2004) ‘Mastanocracy, Violence and Chronic Poverty: Issues and Concerns’, in B. Sen and D. Hulme (eds) Chronic Poverty in Bangladesh: Tales of Ascent, Descent, Marginality and Persistence, pp. 100–09. Dhaka: Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. Arias, E.D. (2017) Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean. New York: Cambridge University Press. Atkinson-Sheppard, S. (2016) ‘The Gangs of Bangladesh: Exploring Organized Crime, Street Gangs and “Illicit Child Labourers” in Dhaka’, Criminology & Criminal Justice 16(2): 233– 49. Atkinson-Sheppard, S. (2017) ‘“Mastaans” and the Market for Social Protection: Exploring Mafia Groups in Dhaka, Bangladesh’, Asian Journal of Criminology 12(4): 235–53. Banerjee, S. (2003) ‘“City of Dreadful Night”: Crime and Punishment in Colonial Calcutta’, Economic and Political Weekly 38(21): 2045–55.


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David Jackman ([email protected]) is a Research Associate at the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre, University of Manchester, UK. His research examines the political economy of violence in South Asia, with a focus on brokerage, party politics and crime in Bangladesh. He holds a PhD in International Development from the University of Bath.