Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1

Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1 is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language epic black comedy crime film directed by Anurag Kashyap, and written by Kashyap and Zeishan Quadri. It precedes Part 2 as the first part of the movie Gangs of Wasseypur, centered on the coal mafia of Dhanbad, and the underlying power struggles, politics and vengeance between three crime families from 1941 to the mid-1990s. Part 1 stars an ensemble cast, featuring Manoj Bajpayee, Richa Chadda, Reema Sen, Piyush Mishra, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vineet Kumar Singh, Pankaj Tripathi, Huma Qureshi, Anurita Jha and Tigmanshu Dhulia.
Although both parts were shot as a single film measuring a total of 319 minutes, no Indian theatre would screen a five-hour film, so it was divided into two parts. Gangs of Wasseypur was screened in its entirety at the 2012 Cannes Directors' Fortnight, marking one of the only Hindi-language films to achieve this. It was also screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2013. It was filmed in Varanasi, Bihar, and Chunar, with these settings inspiring the film's soundtrack, which consists mainly of Indian folk.
The film was theatrically released on 22 June 2012, but was banned in Kuwait and Qatar for violent content. Upon release, Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1 received widespread critical acclaim, and won a number of awards. It received nominations for Best Film and Best Director for Kashyap at the 55th Asia-Pacific Film Festival, and won for Best Audiography at the 60th National Film Awards, while Siddiqui won a Special Mention for acting at the same ceremony. Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1 also won four Filmfare Awards, including the Critics Award for Best Film, while Chadda won the Critics Award for Best Actress, at the 58th Filmfare Awards.
In January 2004, a gang of heavily armed men attack a house in Wasseypur. After heavy firing, they retreat, convinced they have killed everyone within. The leader informs minister J.P. Singh that the family has been successfully executed but he is double crossed by JP as a firefight erupts between them and a police check post blocks their escape route. The scene cuts abruptly for a prologue by the narrator, Nasir.
During the British Raj, Wasseypur and Dhanbad were located in the Bengal region. After India gained independence in 1947, they were carved out of Bengal and redistricted into the state of Bihar in 1956. In 2000, Wasseypur and Dhanbad were redistricted for a second time into the newly formed state of Jharkhand where they remain. The village has been historically dominated by the Qureshi Muslims.
During British colonial rule, the British had seized the farm lands of Dhanbad for coal which began the business of coal mining in Dhanbad. The region was the domain of the faceless dacoit Sultana Qureshi who robbed British trains in the night and thus held some patriotic value for the locals.
In 1941, Shahid Khan, a Pashtun, impersonates the faceless dacoit, Sultana, a Qureshi, to rob British ferry trains. The Qureshi clans eventually find out and order the banishment of Shahid and his family from Wasseypur. They settle down in Dhanbad where Shahid begins work in a coal mine. He is unable to be at his wife's side during childbirth, and she dies. The enraged Shahid kills the coal mine's muscleman who had denied him leave on that day.
In 1947, the British coal mines are sold to Indian industrialists and Ramadhir Singh receives a few coal mines in the Dhanbad region. He hires Shahid as the new muscleman of one of the coal mines. One day, Ramadhir overhears Shahid's ambitions of taking over the coal mines. Ramadhir has him murdered by an assassin named Yadav and sends Ehsaan Qureshi to murder Shahid's family, but Nasir flees from the house with Shahid's son Sardar in the nick of time. Ehsaan lies to Ramadhir that Shahid's family has been murdered, burnt, and buried. Sardar learns the truth about his father's death, upon which he shaves his head and vows not to grow his hair until he has avenged his father's murder.
Jagjivan Ram, India's first Labour Minister, starts the Coal Welfare Association in 1954 and in 1960, the National Trade Union which allowed mine supervisors to pressurise mine owners, the movement of which is led by a much older Ramadhir. In 1962, the Trade Union becomes the mafia and begins extortion in exchange for union membership. Union workers start lending money and keep the workers' income as interest. In 1965, Ramadhir enters politics, wins the election and becomes the local workers' leader.
In 1972, the coal mines are nationalised. Ramadhir has grown into a local strongman and has S.P. Sinha, a Coal India official, assassinated for interfering in his business. After Sinha's murder, Ramadhir's reputation for ruthlessness grows, and he becomes feared in Dhanbad.
Sardar marries Nagma Khatoon, with whom he has three sons: Danish, Faizal, and Babua (aka Perpendicular). Sardar has a proclivity for whoring, so the pregnant Nagma gives her consent for Sardar to sleep with other women but with the condition that he won't bring them home or dishonour the family name. Eventually, Sardar, his cousin Asgar, and Nasir start working for J.P., Ramadhir's son, in order to secretly sell the company's petrol in the black market. Later, they rob a petrol pump and a train bogie belonging to the Singh family and usurp Ramadhir's land, thus forcing the two families to confront each other for talks. The meeting ends in a scuffle, and Sardar and Asgar are jailed for assaulting J.P., but Ramadhir realizes that Sardar, the son of Shahid, is not dead like he had assumed.
In 1979, Sardar and Asgar escape from jail. While hiding in Wasseypur at the home of Qamar Makhdoomi, Sardar marries a woman named Durga working as a cook for Makhdoomi. Asgar informs Nagma that Sardar has taken a second wife, leaving Nagma seething but unable to take any action.
Meanwhile, in the '80s, Wasseypur has merged with Dhanbad and the Qureshi clan, now led by Sultan Qureshi, a nephew of Sultana raised by his uncle Ehsaan, continues to terrorise the non-Qureshi Muslims. After Makhdoomi's offer for negotiation is rejected by Sultan, he approaches Sardar for help, pitting the two rival gangs against each other. During Muharram, Sardar launches a major bomb attack on many Qureshi shops and houses, angering Sultan. When word spreads about Sardar's raids, his reputation grows and he commands more fear than the Qureshi clan.
Eventually, Sardar returns home to Nagma, but she gets pregnant again and he leaves out of sexual frustration, instead going to his second wife, who gives birth to another son, Definite. Ramadhir, noticing that Sardar has abandoned his first family, tries to reach out to Nagma through Danish, but she rejects his money. A thirsty Faizal wakes up in the middle of the night to find Nagma and Nasir having sex; feeling betrayed, he storms out of the house and becomes a stoner, permanently seen with his chillum. Nasir reveals that the desires were never consummated, but Faizal and Nasir never see eye-to-eye again.
In 1985, a Wasseypur girl, Sabrina Khan, is abducted by four drunk men at night. Sardar forces Ramadhir to work together to retrieve her and makes an example of the abductors while making Mohsin, the lone survivor watch. He then forces Mohsin to divorce his first wife and marry Sabrina. Sensing Sardar's increasing clout, Ramadhir and Sultan become allies against their common enemy. Sultan asks Ramadhir for modern automatic weapons which the latter promises to provide.
By 1989, coal theft has become a common, petty crime and the big money has moved to fraudulent contracts for logging hollow mines and filling up defunct mines, so Sardar quits coal and starts stealing sand off the riverbank.
Sardar gets the contract to fill the defunct mines in Dhanbad. He becomes the most feared man in Wasseypur, pushing the Qureishis out of Wasseypur and shifting his business to stealing iron ore. An older Danish joins the family business. A failed attack from Sultan leaves Danish with minor injuries but allows Sardar and Nagma to reconcile their differences. Sardar finds Ramadhir and warns him of terrible consequences if anything ever happens to his family.
The older Faizal is seriously affected by Bollywood movies as he starts behaving like Bollywood characters. Sardar sends Faizal to Varanasi to buy guns, but Faizal is caught and jailed. Upon release, he kills the gun seller Yadav, unwittingly avenging his grandfather's murder. An uneasy peace is maintained between the Qureshi and Khan families when Danish convinces Badoor Qureshi, uncle of Sultan, to stop the war and marries Shama Parveen, Sultan's sister. Sultan detests the marriage and tries to prevent it, but to no avail. Faizal begins romancing Mohsina Hamid, another kin of Sultan.
While high on marijuana, Faizal reveals to his friend, Fazlu (Sanjay Singh) that his father would be travelling without security the next day. However, Fazlu works for Sultan and informs the Qureshis. The next day, Sardar visits Durga, who also informs the Qureshis of his whereabouts. The Qureshis track down Sardar's car and launch an attack, hitting him with several rounds. Sardar staggers out of his car and collapses.
The filming style adopted by Anurag Kashyap in Gangs of Wasseypur bears a striking similarity to the styles of Sam Peckinpah. The scenes are short in length, several in number and often a series of montages take the story forward. Anurag Kashyap never has to resort to extraneous elements like stylised entries, editing patterns or camera motions to add to the effect because the story has an intrinsic impact of its own. However the film doesn't fall short of any technical finesse. There's unabashed blood, gore and abuse wherever the scene demands.
Lines like "Tum sahi ho, woh marad hai," ("You are right, he is male") said in resigned agreement to a wronged wife stand out for their cruel truths of rural life. Kashyap's use of occasional bursts of music and comedy to punctuate the slowly augmenting tension at different junctures is highly reminiscent of Spaghetti Westerns. Kashyap's use of dark humour to judiciously propagate violence bears an uncanny similarity to Quentin Tarantino's style of movie-making. Absorbing styles as diverse as those of old-school Italo-American mafia classics a la Coppola, Scorsese and Leone, as well as David Michod's taut crime thriller Animal Kingdom,Kashyap never lets his influences override the distinct Indian colour. The pacing is machine-gun relentless, sweeping incoherence and repetitiveness under the carpet as it barrels forward with hypnotic speed.
The movie chronicles the journey of the saga associated with coal mines. It portrays the gang lords of Wasseypur like Shafi Khan, Faheem Khan and Shabir Alam. The film has also been inspired from the story of rivals Shafi Khan and Surya Dev Singh. Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN calls the movie, a gang warfare and notes that "On the surface, Gangs of Wasseypur is a revenge saga, a tableau of vengeance between generations of gangsters. Scratch that surface and you'll discover more than just a grim portrait". While some of the critics noted that the film, is a powerful political film, which underlines the party politics system (at that time) allowing the growth of illegal coal trading and mafias in the region (Bihar) and their use as a political tool, thus making the allotment of coal blocks, one of the most powerful expressions of controlling power in the region. Despite its grim theme, the film also has an inherent sense of humour that comes quite naturally to it from its series of events. The scene where Reema Sen is charmed by Manoj Bajpai over her daily chores or the one where Nawazuddin goes on a formal date with Huma Qureshi are outrageously hilarious. The household politics is one of the many subplots rendering layers to the story. You realise Sardar's family is emerging into a Corleone set-up of sorts. His sons - the brooding Danish and the doped-out Faizal (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) from Nagma, and the enigmatic Definite Khan (Zeishan Quadri) from Durga - will become key players in this revenge story. Violent as his screenplay is, Kashyap reveals wit while narrating his tale. Ample black comedy is used to imagine the gang war milieu. The humour lets us relate to the intrinsic irreverent nature of men who live by the gun. Character development can best justify the length of Part 1.
The soundtrack album of the two-part compilation of Gangs of Wasseypur has 27 songs, composed by Sneha Khanwalkar and Piyush Mishra, with lyrics by Mishra and Varun Grover. However, the album was split up according to the film's release. Part 1 has 14 songs which were released on 1 June 2012. The film's soundtrack is heavily influenced by traditional Indian folk songs. The film score is composed by noted Tamil composer G. V. Prakash Kumar.
The audio launch of this film took place in a unique way at a road show event, held in the streets of Mumbai, where Manoj Bajpayee, Huma Qureshi and Anurag Kashyap, had driven a jeep around the suburbs and the team danced on the streets wearing red gamuchas and has been making public appearances in them ever since.
The marketing of Gangs of Wasseypur was noted for its uniqueness. Gamchha, a thin traditional East Indian towel was taken to Cannes, the Gangs of Wasseypur team danced on the streets wearing red gamchhas, after the Cannes Film Festival and has been making public appearances in them ever since. While most music launches in India happen with a big party in a 5-star banquet hall in Delhi or Mumbai, and formal announcements before the press, the music of this film, was launched in Patna.
In another effective way of building the world of Wasseypur for the audience, a fictitious newspaper was made available online which was named Wasseypur Patrika.
In keeping with the language and setup of the film, wall paintings instead of posters, reading Goli Nahi Marenge, Keh Ke Lenge – Gangs of Wasseypur were painted on walls across 20 cities.
Gangs of Wasseypur mementos — The Gangs of Wasseypur team has made a memento consisting of bullets of a different era. While all sorts of weapons have been used in the film, this is the best thing one could give as a memento.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 94% of 32 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.1/10.
Bikas Bhagat of Zee News gave the movie 4 stars out of 5, concluding that "So if you want to experience an all new wave of cinema in Bollywood, Gangs of Wasseypur is your movie. It has some really quirky moments which I'll leave for you to explore in the film. Watch it for its sheer cinematic pleasure!"
Subhash K. Jha of IANS gave the movie 4 out of 5 stars, saying that "Brutal, brilliant, dark, sinister, terrifying in its violence and yet savagely funny in the way human life is disregarded Gangs of Wasseypur is one helluva romp into the raw and rugged heartland. Not to be missed." Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, saying that "On the whole, Gangs of Wasseypur symbolizes the fearless new Indian cinema that shatters the clichés and conventional formulas, something which Anurag Kashyap has come to be acknowledged for. It has all the trappings of an entertainer, but with a difference. The film prides itself with the substance that connects with enthusiasts of new-age cinema. But, I wish to restate, one needs to have a really strong belly to soak up to a film like Gangs of Wasseypur. Also, this striking movie-watching experience comes with a colossal length and duration. The reactions, therefore, would be in extremes. Gangs of Wasseypur is for that segment of spectators who seek pleasure in watching forceful, hard-hitting and gritty movies."
Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN gave the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, concluding that "Bolstered by its riveting performances and its thrilling plot dynamics, this is a gripping film that seizes your full attention. I'm going with three-and-a-half out of five for Anurag Kashyap's Gangs of Wasseypur. Despite its occasionally indulgent narrative, this bullet-ridden saga is worthy of a repeat viewing, if only to catch all its nuances. Don't miss it." Mansha Rastogi of Now Running gave the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, commenting that "Gangs of Wasseypur works like an explosive leaving you wanting for more. Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 2 will definitely be a film eagerly awaited! Devour part one in the meantime!"
Madhureeta Mukherjee of The Times of India gave the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, saying that "Director Anurag Kashyap, in his trademark style of story- telling – realistic, with strong characters, over-the-top sequences, and unadulterated local flavour (crude maa-behen gaalis galore), gruesome bloody violence and raw humour – interestingly spins this twisted tale. This first of a two-part film, is ambitious indeed; showing promise of brilliance in parts, but not bullet-proof to flaws. With a runtime this long, meandering side tracks and random sub-plots, countless characters, documentary-style narrative backed with black and white montages from actual history, it loses blood in the second half because of the Director's over-(self)indulgence. So, hold on to your guns, gamchas and 'womaniyas'."
Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV gave the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, concluding that "It may not be for the faint-hearted and the prissy. Gangs of Wasseypur is a heavyweight knockout punch. You're down for the count!" Blessy Chettiar of DNA gave the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, commenting that "Even though there's so much going for Part 1, there's something always amiss, something that leaves you underwhelmed after all those expectations. May be its a hope of a dashing Part 2. Let's wait and watch."
On the contrary, Raja Sen of Rediff gave the movie 2.5 stars out of 5, concluding that "It is the excess that suffocates all the magic, originality dying out for lack of room to breathe. Kashyap gets flavour, setting and character right, but the lack of economy cripples the film. There is a lot of gunfire, but like the fine actors populating its sets, Wasseypur fires too many blanks."
Mayank Shekhar of theW14.com said, "Most movies have a definite beginning (starting point), middle (turning point) and end (high point), or what playwrights call the three-act structure in a script. There doesn't seem to be one here, at least on the face of it. The genre it comes closest to then is an epic, spelt with a capital E, along the lines of saying Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, or this film's immediate inspiration Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002). And, of course, it is like all mythologies are supposed to be. You enjoy them for the parts rather than caring merely for the hero's final goal. If it wasn't a film, this would’ve been a stylised graphic novel. But you would’ve missed a memorable background score and striking sound design."
The film met positive international reviews. Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "an extraordinary ride through Bollywood's spectacular, over-the-top filmmaking". Referring to the violence and pace of the film she says "Gangs of Wasseypur puts Tarantino in a corner with its cool command of cinematically inspired and referenced violence, ironic characters and breathless pace". Maggie Lee of Variety notes Kashyap never lets his diverse influences of old-school Italo-American mafia classics a la Coppola, Scorsese and Leone, as well as David Michod's taut crime thriller "Animal Kingdom," override the distinct Indian colour. Calling the film "the love child of Bollywood and Hollywood," she felt the film was "by turns pulverizing and poetic in its depiction of violence." Lee Marshall of Screen International writes "the script alternates engagingly between scenes of sometimes stomach-churning violence and moments of domestic comedy, made more tasty by hard-boiled lines of dialogue like "in Wasseypur even the pigeons fly with one wing, because they need the other to cover their arse". He describes song lyrics "as if mouthed by a Greek chorus of street punks" commenting sarcastically on what's happening onscreen.
Gangs of Wasseypur collected ₹10.63 crore in the first weekend and ₹17.70 crore in the first week. Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1 grossed ₹35.13 crore total worldwide.
The success party for the film was held at Escobar in Bandra, Mumbai on Thursday, 5 July, late evening.
Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 1 will re-release in Indian theatres on February 28, PVR Cinemas announced on X on February 25, 2025.
The film mainly draws its story from the real life gang wars that took place in the region of Dhanbad, Jharkhand.
Most of the gang wars were between the gangs of Wasseypur, not with the Singhs, who had been instrumental in instigating these wars, but never participated in them. The character of Ramadhir Singh is based on Suryadeo Singh. There was no character akin to Shahid Khan.
In the film, Sardar Khan marries the Bengali girl but in real life, the woman was maintained as a mistress. In one scene, a Muslim girl is kidnapped by Singh's men. In real life, the victim was a local Hindu girl and the kidnappers were a few goons from Wasseypur. The members of the Singh family ultimately had to threaten the entire Wasseypur community to return the girl in 24 hours. The girl was eventually returned as the Singhs were regarded in the village with might and fear.