BOMBAY TO MUMBAI CHANGING PERSPECTIVE

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

INTRO

Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, is India's economic and cultural capital. It is the

most populous city in India. Located on the northern portion of India's western coastline,

the Konkan coast, Mumbai is the major port, financial center and cultural producer among

Indian cities. As such, it is responsible for the plurality of India's trade functions and tax

revenue. Dreams of Mumbai's economic opportunity continue to draw countless migrants

to the city: it is known for some of the largest informal housing settlements in Asia and

some of the starkest income disparities in the world. It draws its population from every

corner of India and, increasingly, the world. However, unlike most major Indian cities,

Mumbai's urbanism - its exponential urban growth and population density - is a relatively

recent phenomenon.

The city of Bombay originally consisted of seven islands, namely Colaba, Mazagaon, Old

Woman's Island, Wadala, Mahim, Parel, and Matunga-Sion. This group of islands, which

have since been joined together by a series of reclamations, formed part of the kingdom

of Ashoka, the famous Emperor of India.

PRE COLONIAL MUBAI

In the 13th century Raja Bhimdev set up his capital in Mahikawati-- present-day Mahim. A palace, court of

justice and a temple were set up in Prabhadevi. Land was brought under cultivation, and fruit growing trees

were planted on several islands. The Pathare Prabhus, Bhois, Agris, Vadvals and Brahmins came to Bombay at

this time.

In 1343 the island of Salsette was invaded by the Muslim kings of Gujarat. In the ensuing wars, Mahim fell to

the Gujarati kings. Kings of that province of India ruled for the next two centuries. The Konkani people seem

to have appeared around this time. The mosque in Mahim dates from this period.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

PRE INDEPENDENCE

The rule of the Sultans of Gujarat over the archipelago of Bombay came to an end with the arrival of the

Portuguese. In 1508 the first Portuguese ship, captained by Francis Almeida sailed into Bombay harbour. The

Portuguese were already at war all along the coast of India. In 1534, with just 21 ships, they managed to

defeat the kingdom of Gujarat, and extracted, among many concessions, rights to the islands of Bombay.

This led to the establishment of numerous churches which were constructed in areas where the majority of

people were Roman Catholics. There used to be two areas in Bombay called "Portuguese Church". However,

only one church with Portuguese-style facade still remains; it is the

The Portuguese also fortified their possession by building forts at Sion, Mahim, Bandra, and Bassien which,

although in disrepair, can still be seen.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

St. Andrew's church at Bandra.

mahim durga

The northern parts of the Portuguese holdings in India, mainly on the coast of Gujarat, were defended out of

their fort in Bassein, present day Vasai, on the mainland north of the islands, and stronghouses were built

in Bandra, Mahim, and the harbour of Versova. Control over Bombay was exerted indirectly,

through vazadors who rented the islands.

They named their new possession as "Bom Baia" which in Portuguese means "Good Bay".

A hundred and twenty-eight years later the islands were given to the English King Charles II in dowry on his

marriage to Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza in 1662. In the year 1668 the islands were acquired by

the English East India Company on lease from the crown for an annual sum of 10 pounds in gold; so little did

the British value these islands at that time. The Company, which was operating from Surat, was in search for

another deeper water port so that larger vessels could dock, and found the islands of Bombay suitable for

development. The shifting of the East India Company's headquarters to Bombay in 1687 led to the eclipse of

Surat as a principal trading center. The British corrupted the Portuguese name "Bom Baia" to "Bombay". The

Kolis used to call the islands "Mumba" after Mumbadevi, the Hindu deity to whom a temple is dedicated at

Babulnath near Chowpatty's sandy beaches.

The first Parsi to arrive in Bombay was Dorabji Nanabhoy Patel in 1640. The Parsis, originally from Iran,

migrated to India about 900 years ago. This they did to save their religion, Zoroastrianism, from invading Arabs

who proselytized Islam. However, in 1689-90, when a severe plague had struck down most of the Europeans,

the Siddi Chief of Janjira made several attempts to re-possess the islands by force, but the son of the former, a

trader named Rustomji Dorabji Patel (1667-1763), successfully warded off the attacks on behalf of the British

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

Vasai fort Bandra fort

Versova fort Mahim fort

Sion fort

with the help of the 'Kolis', the original fisher-folk inhabitants of these islands. The remnants of the Koli

settlements can still be seen at Backbay reclamation, Mahim, Bandra, Khar, Bassien and Madh island.

Sir George Oxenden became the first British Governor of the islands, and was succeeded later by Mr. Gerald

Aungier who made Bombay more populous by attracting Gujerati traders, Parsi ship-builders, and Muslim and

Hindu manufacturers from the mainland. He fortified defenses by constructing the Bombay Castle (the Fort,

since then vanished except for a small portion of the wall) and provided stability by constituting courts of law.

By 26 December 1715, Boone assumed the Governorship of Bombay. He implemented Aungier's plans for the

fortification of the island, and had walls built from Dongri in the north to Mendham's point in the south. He

established the Marine force, and constructed the St. Thomas Cathedral in 1718, which was the

first Anglican Church in Bombay. In 1728, a Mayor's court was established in Bombay and the first

reclamation was started which was a temporary work in Mahalaxmi, on the creek separating Bombay

from Worli. The shipbuilding industry started in Bombay in 1735 and soon the Naval Dockyard was established

in the same year.

In 1737, Salsette was captured from the Portuguese by Maratha Baji Rao I and the province of Bassein was

ceded in 1739. The Maratha victory forced the British to push settlements within the fort walls of the city.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

Dwelling at mazgaon

Through the 18th century British power and influence grew slowly but at the expense of the local kingdoms.

The migration of skilled workers and traders to the safe-haven of Bombay continued. The shipbuilding industry

moved to Bombay from Surat with the coming of the Wadias. Artisans from Gujarat, such as goldsmiths,

ironsmiths and weavers moved to the islands and coexisted with the slave trade from Madagascar. During this

period the first land-use laws were set up in Bombay, segregating the British part of the islands from the black

town.

Under new building rules set up in 1748, many houses were demolished and the population was redistributed,

partially on newly reclaimed land.

With British control of Bombay confirmed, city planning began. In the mid 80's roads began to be built at right

angles to each other; restrictions were placed on the heights of buildings; segregation was enforced. In the

Indian parts of the town, rule by panchayats was set up. Indians became more active in local politics.

With increasing prosperity and growing political power following the 1817 victory over the Marathas, the

British embarked uponreclamations and large scale engineering works in Bombay. The sixty years between the

completion of the vellard at Breach Candy(1784) and the construction of the Mahim Causeway (1845) are the

heroic period in which the seven islands were merged into one landmass. These immense works, in turn,

attracted construction workers, like the Kamathis from Andhra, who began to come to Bombay from 1757 on.

A regular civil administration was put in place during this period. Apparently, this was thought to be necessary,

since, in a count made in 1794, it was found that there were 1000 houses inside the fort walls and 6500

outside.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

In 1803 Bombay was connected with Salsette by a causeway at Sion. The island of Colaba was joined to

Bombay in 1838 by a causeway now called Colaba Causeway and the Causeway connecting Mahim and Bandra

was completed in 1845

In 1853 a 35-km long railway line between Thana and Bombay (Victoria terminus) was inaugurated-- the first in

India. Four years later, in 1854, the first cotton mill was founded in Bombay. With the cotton mills came large

scale migrations of Marathi workers mostly from the Ghats. Most often, the mill workers were men whose

families stayed back in their villages. To begin with, employers accommodated these workers in specially

constructed chawls near the mills. Modelled after army barracks, each building had three floors. Every floor

contained rooms, each given over to one person, and a common toilet. Sometimes, several such chawls would

border a common enclosed space. Such a group of chawls was called a wadi. With the rapid increase in the

number of mills, the rooms were often occupied by several people. Eventually, families of workers began to

migrate to Bombay, and each room in a chawl would have to accommodate the whole family. Later, even this

became impossible, and slums developed around the mills and the harbour.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

Colaba Causeway construction using timber (c. 1826)

Cotton Green Mills, Mumbai Slums in Mumbai

Victoria terminus( 1870)

The city had found its shape. Bombay began to attract fortune hunters by the hundreds and the population

had swelled from 13,726 in 1780 to 644,405 in 1872, in a little less than a hundred years. By 1906 the

population of Bombay was to become 977,822.

Around 1860 the piped water supply from Tulsi and Vehar lakes (and later Tansa) was inaugurated. One reform

which met with much superstitious opposition, before it was implemented, was the sealing and banning the

use of water from open wells and tanks that bred mosquitoes. A good drainage system was also constructed at

the same time. However, several decades later, the same wells were to serve Bombay by providing non-

potable water to supplement the same from the lakes. This was true especially during those years when the

monsoons failed to provide sufficient water in the catchment areas of the lakes. However, well water is now

used all over the city to supplement the water received from the lakes.

The later half of the 19th century was also to see a feverish construction of buildings in Bombay.

The Princess Dock was built in the year 1885 and the Victoria Dock and the Mereweather Dry Docks in 1891.

Alexandra Dock was completed in 1914.

The last years of the 19th century ended with a textile manufacturing boom, and attracted huge numbers of

workers to a city unprepared to give them healthy living quarters. Slums spread across the city and epidemics

of plague added to the already high mortality rates. The 20th century began with a damage limitation

exercise.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

Tulsi lake Vihar lake

The fashionable areas of Bombay in the 19th century were the inner suburbs on the east-- Parel,

Sewri and Bycullah. The mills and their effluents began to push the British and the Parsi merchants out of

these areas. The plague completed this process and transformed these areas along with Worli into working

class areas. The upper classes moved into Malabar Hill. Other opportunities had to be developed for the

middle classes.

Several city planning agencies were set up in the aftermath of the plague epidemics. The City Improvement

Trust developed the suburbs of Dadar, Matunga, Wadala and Sion to house about 200,000 people. New roads

connected the inner city to these suburbs. By 1925 electrified suburban trains were running in the city, and

the distant northern suburbs were already being built.

In the first years of the century, the inner city was already as congested as the rest of Bombay became in the

1980's. The CIT sought to open up these areas by building wide roads through them to channel the westerly

breezes from the sea..

Meanwhile, the Fort area had already become a business district. The Gothic revival of the late 19th century

gave way to the exuberant Indo-Saracenic style of architecture. The first building in this style was the General

Post Office. A spate of Bombay's loveliest buildings followed-- the Prince of Wales Museum, the Gateway of

India, the Institute of Science, the offices of the BB&CI Railways (now the Western Railways), and many others.

This phase of British imperial confidence, culminating with George V's Delhi Durbar 1911 was to come to an

end with the new political developments set into motion when the lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, returned to

India from South Africa in 1915.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

Government house, Malabar point Mumbadevi street-1880

POST INDEPENDENCE

The city became a strong base for the Indian independence movement during the early 20th century and was

the epicentre of the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919 and Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of 1946. After India's

independence in 1947, the territory of Bombay Presidency retained by India was restructured into Bombay

State. The area of Bombay State increased, after several erstwhile princely states that joined the Indian union

were integrated into Bombay State.

In 1947, India's independence meant its Partition and the birth of Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of refugees

from what became Pakistan arrived in Mumbai, and the city's multi-ethnic population grew and diversified

further. While Gujarati and Parsi elites continued to congregate in the southern tips of the city (replacing the

departed British), the growing middle-class began to follow the development pattern and move to northern

suburbs. The south of the city continued to support institutional architecture befitting the city's motto

Over 100,000 Sindhi refugees from the newly created Pakistan were relocated in the military camps five

kilometres from Kalyan in the Bombay metropolitan region. It was converted into a township in 1949, and

named Ulhasnagar by the then Governor-General of India, C. Rajagopalachari.[174] In April 1950, Greater

Bombay District came into existence with the merger of Bombay Suburbs and Bombay City. It spanned an area

of 235.1 km2 (90.77 sq mi) and inhabited 23.39 lakhs of people in 1951.

Throughout the postcolonial period, Mumbai maintained most of the governmental structure of the colonial

bureaucracy, which meant that any attempt to address Mumbai's urban growth was limited to proscriptive

land use controls rather than proactive infrastructural planning or increased service delivery.

At no point in Mumbai's history has a sufficient amount of housing been available. Congestion has remained

consistently the primary policy priority among the urban problems that have beset Mumbai. The initial post-

Independence Master Plan for the city in 1947 was the first of many policy papers to propose mainland

development to redress the limitations of Mumbai's physical geography and the challenges of its

overpopulation.

With the success of the back-bay reclamation scheme in the late 1960s and early 1970s Nariman Point

became the hub of the business activity. Several offices shifted from the Ballard Estate to Nariman Point

which ultimately became one of the most expensive real estate in the world as high demand pushed prices to

astronomical limits.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

In the early 1960s, the Gujarati and Marwaris communities owned majority of the industry and trade

enterprises in the city, while the white-collar jobs were mainly sought by the South Indian migrants to the city.

The Shiv Sena party was established on 19 June 1966 by Bombay cartoonist Bal Thackeray, out of a feeling of

resentment about the relative marginalization of the native Marathi people in their native state Maharashtra.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Shiv Sena cadres became involved in various attacks against the South Indian

communities, vandalising South Indian restaurants and pressuring employers to hire Marathis. In the late

1960s, Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade were reclaimed and developed. During the 1970 Bombay-

Bhiwandi riots, many Muslim places of worship were attacked by Shiv sena activists. During the 1970s, coastal

communication increased between Bombay and south western coast of India, after introduction of ships by

the London based trade firm Shepherd. These ships facilitated the entry of Goan and Mangalorean Catholics to

Bombay.

Several masterplans later, plans for a new town on the mainland began in earnest in 1965. Three of India's

leading architects - Charles Correa, Pravina Mehta and Shirish Patel - proposed the basic guidelines for the new

town in an issue of the influential Indian design journal MARG (Modern Architects' Research Group). Drawing

on elements from Ebenezer Howard's "Garden City" model, the architects suggested a politically autonomous,

multi-nucleated series of mixed-use and mixed-income neighborhoods that would neither be bedroom

communities for commuters to Mumbai nor dormitory suburbs for the industrial sector of the mainland.

Instead it was to be a "growth pole" or "counter-magnet" to the original city. In 1970, work on the new city

began and continues to this day. At 344 square kilometers, Navi Mumbai bills itself as the largest planned

development in the world.

Critics agree that Navi Mumbai has not fulfilled its promise to stem urban growth in Mumbai proper nor to

stimulate the tertiary sector on the mainland and has only succeeded, in practice, in providing middle-class

housing. Whether the development ever achieves its stated goals or reworks the complex urban-regional

dynamics of metro-Mumbai, its innovative architecture, wide roads and clear and enforced land use

designations attest to an urbanism altogether distinct and yet inextricable from that of old Mumbai.

In August 1979, this sister township of New Bombay was founded by City and Industrial Development

Corporation (CIDCO) across Thane and Raigad districts to help the dispersal and control of Bombay's

population.

Mumbai has long been India's migrant city - a microcosm of India's internal linguistic, religious and ethnic

diversity - and it has also witnessed extremist nativist sentiment arising from within the mainstream

cosmopolitan attitude.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.

1992 also marked the year that India began a series of sweeping reforms to deregulate the national economy.

Mumbai's economy, as the trade and financial center of the country, grew exponentially. Built testaments to

the new global economy are everywhere. While much of the city's financial activity remains in the south of the

city, commercial complexes are increasingly found in the city's northern suburbs. The Bandra-Kurla complex is

an important cluster of office towers that hosts some of the most influential Indian and multi-national firms.

Western-style shopping malls and other forms of privatized space appear increasingly, especially in the

northern suburbs. But large scale development continues to retrofit South Mumbai as well. One architecturally

notable example is Charles Correa's Kanchanjunga Apartments, which applies the indigenous protective

verandah typology to the modern high-rise.

Mumbai is projected to overtake Tokyo as the most populous city in the world by 2025. Mumbai remains

India's aspirational city, both for the central government's stated policy objective of creating a global city of

advanced financial and technological services to compete with Shanghai and the for the dreams of countless

migrants who continue to flock to the city.

RITU SAKA FOURTH YEAR B’ARCH L.S. RAHEJA S.O.A.