BOMBAY

BOMBAY India's modern metropolis of Bombay, known for its fashions, films, financial industries, cotton mills, skyscrapers, and squalor, was once an archipelago of seven sleepy islands, inhabited only by Buddhist monks and the tribal deep-sea fishermen called Kolis, whose stone goddess, Mumbadevi, gave the principal island its present name, Mumbai. For the British, Bombay was their main harbor and the nucleus of the British East India Company's fort on Mumba Island, from which the modern city grew. Present-day Bombay, or Mumbai, stretches from Dongri (the congested inner city, one of the oldest parts of Bombay) on the east to Malabar Hill on the west. The other islands include Colaba—the most expensive real estate in the world in 2005; Old Man's Island, also called Old Woman's Island; Mazagaon, famous for its mango groves; Worli, known for the Haji Ali Dargah, a mosque-tomb named after a Sufi saint; Parel, which is possibly named after the Shaivite Parali Vaijanath Mahadev temple of the thirteenth-century kingdom of Raja Bhimdev (the island is also called Matunga, Sion, and Dharavi); and Mahim, the capital of Raja Bhimdev to the west of Parel, north of Worli, named after the Mahim River.

Bombay changed hands many times, from the Buddhist Mauryan emperor Ashoka to the Muslim rulers of Gujarat to the imperial Mughals, remaining marginal to Indian history because neither the Hindu rajas nor the Muslim rulers placed much importance on maritime trade—and whatever maritime trade flourished between the ninth and thirteenth centuries in the Indian Ocean was limited to Aden (Yemen), west coast cities of Africa, and Calicut, south of Bombay on the Malabar coast. However, under both the Ahmedabad sultans and the Mughals, Bombay experienced Islamization. The oldest surviving Hindu structures in the archipelago are the Elephanta Caves containing fresco paintings and, possibly, a portion of the Walkeshwar Temple Complex, both dating back to the late thirteenth century. The mosque in Mahim dates back to the Ahmedabad sultanate period.

With the advent of the Europeans in the sixteenth century in the Indian Ocean, Bombay was soon pushed from the margins of Indian history to center stage. Soon after Francis Almeida in 1534 sailed into the deep-water natural harbor of the island that the Portuguese called Bom Bahia (the "good bay"), the Portuguese realized Bombay's potential importance. The Portuguese, who already controlled Goa, Daman, and Diu off the west coast of India, forcibly occupied Bombay until 1662, when it was given to England's King Charles II in dowry on his marriage to the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza. Under the Portuguese Jesuits, Christianity came to Bombay, with the building of churches and vigorous attempts to proselytize the indigenous Kolis. The Portuguese built a fort in Bassein. Still, the Portuguese never realized Bombay's full potential as a strategic natural harbor or a vital commercial center of imperial power.

The British first reached Gujarat on 24 August 1608, when Captain William Hawkins of the East India Company dropped anchor off Surat, at the mouth of the Tapti River. Hawkins found the port city crowded with Indians, Arabs, Jews, Armenians, Portuguese, Dutch, and other merchants engaged in a trade of goods encompassing luxuries as well as necessities: indigo, cotton, carpets, and satin, ready for export. Hawkins feared that Portuguese Jesuits "had helped convert Indian apathy and neutrality toward Englishmen into a positive aversion." But the Anglo-Portuguese rivalry culminated in Hawkins's victory over the Portuguese fleet off Surat in November 1612. However, the growing demand for indigo and salt-peter, combined with the famine of 1630 in Surat, persuaded the British to look for a new location. The archipelago of Bombay, considered worthless by the British, was turned over by Charles II to the East India Company for an annual rent of only £10 in 1668.

George Oxenden became the first British governor of Bombay, but it was Gerald Aungier, the second governor, who had the vision to turn the archipelago into a trading port that would rival other ports in the Indian Ocean. He first secured the island by building a fort (a small portion of the wall has survived), and through a variety of inducements he attracted skilled workers and traders from Gujarat: Parsis, Bohras, Jews, and Hindu Banias. Bombay's population soared from 10,000 in 1661 to 60,000 in 1675. Bombay soon displaced Surat as the western gateway to India.

After finally defeating the Hindu Marathas in 1818, the British embarked upon reclamations of land and large-scale public works projects in Bombay. From 1784 to 1845 the British successfully fused Bombay's seven islands into a single landmass. In 1850, Thana (a suburb) was linked with Bombay by a 21-mile (35 km) railway line, and in 1854, the first cotton mill was built. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, cotton exports from Bombay became an important part of the colonial economy. The Bombay Municipal Corporation was founded in 1872 and its Stock Exchange opened in 1875. The city witnessed the erection of several imperial monuments well into the twentieth century, including the Flora Fountain, Victoria Terminus, Hanging Gardens, Gateway of India, General Post Office, and the Prince of Wales Museum. The British employed High Victorian and Edwardian architectural language, fused with features derived from twelfth-to fifteenth-century English, French, and Venetian Gothic, augmented by elements of the Indo-Saracenic style.

As a result of the efforts of Governor Mountstuart Elphinstone in the 1820s, Bombay became India's center of English education and social reform. The establishment of the Bombay University in 1857 provided a new impetus to English-language education: Indians gained proficiency in English in the hope of economic success and social mobility. With the spread of English education came printing presses, newspapers, periodicals, libraries, and cultural and political associations that would initiate reform movements whose impact would be felt throughout India. Inevitably, Bombay became an important center of Indian nationalism; the first meeting of the Indian National Congress was held there in 1885.

In postcolonial India, Bombay witnessed a surge in its population as its economic growth attracted Indians from all parts of the country. In 1960, Bombay state was bifurcated into Maharashtra and Gujarat, based on linguistic differences, with Maharashtra retaining Bombay city as its capital. With the completion of the back-bay reclamation project in the early 1970s, Nariman Point (named after the former mayor K. F. Nariman) became the hub of commercial activity. Bombay itself was renamed Mumbai in the late-1990s, which also witnessed the computerization of its stock exchange. The Bombay Stock Exchange itself was shifted to the twenty-eight-story Phiroze Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy Towers, named after its former Parsi chairman. Bombay was also the home of the famous Parsi industrialist Sir Jamsetji N. Tata and several nationalist leaders, including Dadabhai Naoroji.

How this city of over 18 million people will cope with overcrowding, health problems, pollution, and sanitary issues is difficult to predict. But the Mumbaikars are completing Navi Mumbai (New Bombay) across the bay as a possible solution to overcrowded old Bombay, much as the British built New Delhi as an alternative to overcrowded Old Delhi.

Ravi Kalia

See alsoUrbanism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Daivd, M. D. Bombay, the City of Dreams: The History of the First City in India. Bombay: Himalaya Publishing House, 1995.

Furtado, Joseph Vernon. Bombay the Beautiful. Bombay: Thacker, 1957.

Kalia, Ravi. Gandhinagar: Building National Identity in Post-colonial India. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Mehta, Suketa. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

Tindall, Gillian. City of Gold: The Biography of Bombay. London: Temple Smith, 1982.