http://www.economist.com/cities/citiesmain.cfm?city_id=MBI
Mumbai-Maharashtra
Mumbai is a young town: its development into the city we know today started in the 1600s. The site of the modern city was originally an archipelago of seven islands: Colaba, Mazagaon, Old Woman’s Island, Wadala, Mahim, Parel and Matunga-Sion. The earliest known settlers were the Kolis, tribal fishermen whose descendants still exist in scattered coastal communities (notably the Worli fishing village in the northern suburbs). The islands came under the tutelage of Ashoka’s Buddhist Mauryan Empire from about the 3rd century BC.
From the 6th to the 13th centuries, Hindu dynasties such as the Chalukyas and, later, the Siharas were ascendant, a legacy still visible in the carved caves on Elephanta Island and the Walkeshwar temple on Malabar Point (both dedicated to Shiva, a Hindu deity). Islam appeared in 1343, when the sultanate of Gujarat annexed the archipelago—the dramatic Haji Ali mosque on Mahim Bay (present midtown Mumbai) dates from this period.
Making maps
By the 16th century, Europe’s imperial powers were taking an interest in the subcontinent. Portugal made the first move. In 1508, Francis Almeida dropped anchor, and dubbed the deep natural harbour “Bom Bahia” (“Good Bay”). An early attempt at conquest of the sultanate failed, but in 1534 a 21-ship Portuguese invasion forced Bahadur Shah, the Gujarati ruler, to cede control to Portugal.
Bombay was not a priority for the Portuguese—they regarded it as a way station for control of the spice trade, further east. But the spreading of Christianity was enthusiastically pursued by Portuguese Jesuits: the Kolis were subject to both forcible conversion and intermarriage. An inquisition was established in India in 1560. Churches (St Andrews, at Bandra, is one of the few Portuguese-style churches remaining) and forts (at Sion, Mahim, Bandra and Bassein, on the mainland to the north) were built. Administration of the archipelago was carried out by Garcia da Orta, a vazador (possessor), who rented the islands until his death in 1568, when control passed to his sons. Coconuts and coir (a fibre derived from the coconut palm) were exported on a small scale.
Enter the British
The Fort was first
During the 17th century, Portugal’s imperial significance declined, while Britain’s was on the ascendant. Bom Bahia was included in the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, the king of Portugal’s sister, for her strategic marriage to King Charles II of England in 1661. After some resistance from the Portuguese garrison, the other islands came under British control by 1665, and the name of the tiny port was anglicised to “Bombay”.
Like the Portuguese, Bombay’s new masters had little use for the islands. However, the terms of ownership were favourable: this was Britain’s first proper “colony” in India. The East India Company, which had a monopoly over trade under royal warrant, saw the potential of the fine harbour: its position on the Arabian Sea was convenient for trade routes both east and west. In a canny deal, the company acquired the islands for an annual lease of £10 in 1668, and began to develop the port. Sir George Oxenden, a company man, was appointed the first governor.
At first, the company took a relaxed approach to developing its new prize. Eventually, governor Gerald Aungier (1672-1677) kicked off efforts to turn Bombay into a trading post to rival the mainland kingdoms. His promises of land holdings and religious freedom attracted skilled workers and merchants—among them Gujaratis, Brahmins, Jews, Armenians, Bohras and, in particular, the Parsis, persecuted elsewhere for their Zoroastrian beliefs. The Parsis, along with the Kolis, were instrumental in defending the islands in 1689-90 when the Siddi, a mainland kingdom, made several attempts to seize Bombay whenever the British were laid low by cholera and malaria (outbreaks were frequent).
Building up Bombay
By 1675, Bombay’s population had reached 60,000 (from 10,000 at the time of Portuguese handover). The East India Company moved its headquarters from Surat to Bombay in 1687. Construction on the Fort itself started in 1715, under the governorship of Charles Boone, who oversaw the creation of St Thomas Cathedral. Trade in salt, rice, ivory, fabrics, lead, iron and gold grew steadily. Shipbuilding was also established, and Bombay became a stopover for slave-trade ships. Yet throughout the 18th century, the town remained something of a backwater. Battles and disputes with the neighbouring Maratha kingdoms, which controlled most of western India, meant that Britain’s presence on the subcontinent was tentative.
In 1740 the Marathas seized the island of Salsette (now incorprated into Mumbai’s landmass). The British responded by moving native settlements further north in order to expand the port’s defences. Current place names reflect the sites of the (long disappeared) battlements: Apollo Gate, Church Gate and Bazaar Gate, to name a few. Sporadic military conflict and diplomatic manoeuvrings between the British and the Marathas and their allies continued. The British were able to exploit their rivals’ disunity, but they lacked the military advantage. In the Treaty of Salbai of 1782, British control of Bombay (including Salsette and some other islands) was established in return for giving up land Britain had won on the mainland.
In the gradual run-up to British control of India, Bombay continued to grow. Land-use laws and housing laws, designed to segregate the British and Indian populations, were established in 1772. In 1777, the city’s first English newspaper, the Bombay Courier, was published. 1784 saw the completion of the first land reclamation project. The Hornby Vellard (named after William Hornby, the governor), where Breach Candy now stands, joined the main island to Mahim. The first causeway between islands (the Sion Causeway) was completed in 1803. By the turn of the century, the first civil administration outside the control of the East India Company had been founded. Migrants (such as the Kamathis from Andhra Pradesh) fleeing the inter-kingdom wars on the mainland, flowed in, many to find employment in the reclamations.
In 1803, a huge fire devastated much of the settlement, prompting an ordinance in 1812 that stipulated the planning of settlements. With the defeat of the Maratha empire in 1818, the British annexed most of western India and the scene was set for Bombay’s takeoff as the west coast’s trade and communications hub. Under Governor Mountstuart Elphinstone (1819-1827), wealthy residents moved to new neighbourhoods such as Malabar Hill. The completion of the Colaba Causeway between Bombay and Colaba in 1838 established Colaba as a centre of commerce, and the Cotton Exchange opened there in 1844.
Reclamations and causeway building continued apace, and by the time the Mahim Causeway (between Mahim and Sion) was finished in 1845, the city’s present-day landmass had more or less taken shape. Space, however, remains at a premium in Mumbai. The continuing hunger for land was demonstrated in the 1920, when many investors lost fortunes in speculation surrounding plans for reclamation around Back Bay (now ringed by Marine Drive). Today, Mumbai’s real-estate prices rival those of Tokyo and Hong Kong.
End of the line
The advent of steamships and the railways consolidated Bombay’s status as India’s trading hub. In 1849, the British government founded the Great Indian Peninsular Railway project. In 1853, a 21-mile track (India’s first), built by the East India Company, connected Bombay to Thane. But the company’s days were numbered: the first war of Indian independence in 1857 was instigated by discontented sepoys (soldiers, mainly from northern India) in the company’s militia. The British government expressed its displeasure at the company’s mismanagement by cancelling its monopoly over trade, and control of Bombay reverted to the Crown.
With the railways came the cotton trade. The soil on Bombay’s neighbouring mainland was ideal for cultivating the crop, and the first cotton mill opened in 1854. Many more followed, along with an influx of Maharashtrian labourers. Capitalising on the gap in the cotton supply to Britain created by the American Civil War, cotton merchants ramped up prices: but the boom turned to bust as the war ended. By then, Bombay’s status as the main trading port between India and Britain was established, and was boosted further by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.
A booming economy created problems of overcrowding in the fast-growing city, and slums sprang up around the mills. Under the governorship of Sir Bartle Frere (1862-67), the walls of the old fort were removed, clearing the way for the creation of magnificently overwrought Victorian edifices such as Flora Fountain (1869) and the neo-Gothic Victoria Terminus (1887, pictured above). The Bombay Port Trust, founded in 1870, oversaw massive expansion of the waterfront. The Bombay Municipal Corporation was formed to govern infrastructure in 1865, and the city’s first stock exchange (forerunner of the Bombay Stock Exchange) was founded in 1875, with early meetings held under a banyan tree opposite the town hall, still standing in present-day Horniman Circle. Large water-supply projects, including the Vihar Water Works and a series of reservoirs, continued into the 1890s. They have nevertheless proved inadequate to meet the demands of the present-day megalopolis.
Street life
Other elements of the extremes of wealth that still bedevil the city were making themselves felt. The rapid growth of the textile industry accelerated migration to Bombay during the 1890s, and the city’s overworked infrastructure was unable to cope. Epidemics of plague came on top of already high mortality rates, and industrial waste from the mills made life in the old neighbourhoods increasingly unhealthy. In 1906, the population reached the 1m mark. Authorities responded by founding an agency, the City Improvement Trust, charged with developing new suburbs and road and transport networks. By 1925, electric trains ran into the new northern localities.
Grandiose imperial development of Bombay continued downtown, with the Indo-Saracenic architectural style replacing the Gothic-revival epitomised by Victoria Terminus. Icons of the style, such as the Taj Mahal Hotel, the General Post Office and the Prince of Wales Museum were completed, and in 1911, to mark the visit of George V and Queen Mary, the foundation stone of the Gateway of India was laid, with the edifice complete by 1924.
Time for a change
The Mahatma
Despite the grandeur, time was running out for the imperial masters. As the wealthiest city in India, Bombay was home to the cotton-enriched Indian elite, increasingly dissatisfied with its second-class status under the empire. Many of the leading lights and financiers of the first Indian National Congress (hosted in Bombay) in 1885 and the subsequent independence movement were wealthy Bombay-based Parsis, such as Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, who, legend has it, opened the Taj in 1903 after being denied entry to a British-run hotel.
Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi returned to Bombay from South Africa in 1915, and made Mani Bhavan the base for some of the key points in his long campaign to end British rule. He made his “Quit India” call from the Gowalia Tank Maidan at the base of Malabar Hill in August 1942, at the culmination of the All India Congress Committee meeting. He was arrested soon after. India became independent at midnight on August 15th 1947, and the Gateway of India was the scene of the last departure of British troops when the First Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry marched through it on February 28th 1948.
After independence, communal tensions began to surface in Bombay, as job-seeking migrants swelled the population to unprecedented levels. At first, the city was capital of the new state of Bombay. But in 1960, the state was divided on linguistic grounds into Gujarat (Gujarati-speaking) and Maharashtra (Marathi-speaking), with Bombay the capital of the latter. Marathas remain the city’s largest ethnic group. They are, however, not economically dominant, and resentment at their supposed subordination at the hands of Gujaratis and Muslims led to the growth of pro-Maratha parties of varying degrees of extremism, such as the Shiv Sena, founded by Bal Thackeray in 1966.
The Shiv Sena won the state elections of 1985, and introduced policies that discriminated against non-Marathas, and especially against Muslims. Following the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque at Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh in December 1992 (over claims that it had been built on the site of the birthplace of Rama, a Hindu deity), the city was swept up in nationwide Hindu-Muslim strife, with over 800 dying in Bombay in riots that ran into January 1993. On March 12th 1993, a dozen bomb blasts around the city killed more than 300 people, with damaged sites including the Air India building and the Bombay Stock Exchange. Muslim elements in the local underworld, allegedly funded by Pakistan, were blamed. Further blasts in 2003 (one near Gateway of India) were linked to communal riots in Gujarat.
In 1996, Shiv Sena renamed the city “Mumbai”, after Mumba Devi, a Maharashtrian goddess, as part of a campaign of official renaming of public places (largely unsuccessful, as Mumbaikars habitually stick with old street and place names). The party’s influence has been tempered somewhat by the victory of the secular centrist Congress Party in state elections in 2000. Congress subsequently won the national elections of 2004, providing a rare instance of political unity between Maharashtra and the nation.
Looking ahead
Mumbai has had to deal with many challenges after independence. The textile industry has declined—and controversy about how to develop land left vacant by the mills dominates the local political scene. In its place has come a new economy based on finance, services, information technology, business process outsourcing, entertainment (epitomised by the “Bollywood” film-making industry), and construction, which boomed through the 1970s and 1980s. The city continues to attract swathes of immigrants from elsewhere in India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, with corresponding growth in slums and congestion. As the business heart of the nation, Mumbai epitomises India’s hopes of attaining the tiger status of its east Asian neighbours: thus debate about the city’s crumbling infrastructure and lack of space for development has reached frantic levels. These issues are now the city’s most pressing concerns