The Tamil Godfather of Mumbai

Words by Steffen Kajendra

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The front cover of the New Yorker Magazine issue from July 22, 1961. It shows three tourists from South Asia looking through binoculars from a skyscraper viewing platform. (Available as print)

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The Tamil Godfather of Mumbai

Varadarajan Mudaliar on the front cover of the The Illustrated Weekly of India Magazine - 1985

‘Are you a good person or a bad person?’

This is the most famous line from the 1987 South Indian masterpiece: Nayakan, directed by Mani Ratnam. At the end of the film, an aging gangster named Velu is being asked this question by his three year old grandson. The character of Velu is based on a man named Varadarajan Mudaliar who started his life as an orphaned boy in Thoothukudi, a port city in Tamil Nadu and went on to become the most powerful crime boss in Mumbai. He was directly involved in illegal smuggling and contract killings on a very large scale. If a toddler had posed this question to the real Varadarajan, what would he have said? Most tales of Mumbai crime bosses have been lost  or altered, becoming Mumbai lore and myth but it is possible to trace Varadarajan’s life.