Mumbai - From Simple Beginnings to Bustling Metropolis

MUMBAI – FROM SIMPLE BEGINNINGS TO BUSTLING METROPOLIS

The seven islands of Bombay were an archipelago of islands that were, over a span of five centuries, connected to form the area of the modern city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) in India. The seven islands were gradually physically united through land reclamation projects. The original archipelago was composed of the following islands.       

Isle of Bombay Colaba Old Woman’s Island (Little Colaba) Mahim Mazagaon Parel Worli

ORIGINAL 7 ISLANDS OF BOMBAY

BOMBAY (1846)

BOMBAY (1893)

BOMBAY (1924)

BOMBAY (1954)

MUMBAI CITY AND SUB-URBS (2009)

Proceeding roughly south to north, the seven islands ceded by the Portuguese to the British were 1. Colaba: whose name is a corruption of the Koli name Kolbhat.

2. Old Woman's Island: (alternatively, Old Man's Island) a small rock between Colaba and Bombay, whose name is a corruption of the Arabic name Al-Omani, after the deep-sea fishermen who ranged up to the Gulf of Oman.

3. Bombay: the main harbour and the nucleus of the British fort from which the modern city grew; it stretched from Dongri on the east to Malabar Hill on the west.

4. Mazagaon: a Koli settlement to the east of Bombay island was seperated from it by Umarkhadi and Pydhonie.

5. Worli: north of Bombay was seperated from it by the Great Breach, which extended westwards almost to Dongri.

6. Parel: North of Mazagaon and called by many other names, including Matunga, Dharavi and Sion. The original population was predominantly Koli.

7. Mahim: to the west of Parel and north of Worli, took its name from the Mahim river and was the capital of a 13th century kingdom founded by Raja Bhimdev.

This list does not exhaust all the islands that have merged into the modern city of Bombay. In particular, Salsette, the large northern island which remained under Portuguese control till 1739, is not counted among these seven. It were the old native deep-sea fishermen called Kolis, whose stone goddess, Mumbadevi, that gave the modern metropolis her name.

The nearby islands of Trombay and Salsette were merged to form Greater Bombay. The remaining islands are:     

Gharapuri Island/Elaphanta Island Butcher Island Middle Ground Coastal Battery Oyster Rock East Ground

In the 1970s, the Supreme Court instituted a series of injunctions protecting the shoreline and access to it for fishermen. These injunctions, along with the creation of Coastal Regulatory Zones in the 1990s and growing environmental concerns, have significantly decreased the number and scale of land reclamation projects pursued in Mumbai.

Reclamations The Great Breach The only record which survives of large-scale engineering before the arrival of the Portuguese is that of the remnants of a massive stone causeway across the Flats on the island of Bombay. These Flats were the lowlying lands between Dongri and Malabar hills, seperated from the island of Worli by the Great Breach, through which the sea poured in at high tide.

Pydhonie and Umarkhadi The Great Breach may have extended almost to Umarkhadi, the creek seperating Bombay from Mazagaon.

Occasionally the two would be linked by a shallow creek at the site of the crowded present-day bazaar area of Pydhonie. Only the name, which means "foot wash", now gives a clue to the fact that it was once a creek, because this was probably the first piece of land to be reclaimed from the sea.

Quite as likely, Umarkhadi was also filled in soon after the arrival of the British and joined Mazagaon irretrievably to Bombay. The last story in which Mazagaon appears as a seperate island relates to its occupation by the Sidi of Janjira in 1690-1. He was repelled by a rag-tag navy of fishermen led by the amateur Parsi admiral Rustomji Dorabji.

The Hornby Vellard Early efforts at land reclamation concentrated on the small creeks crossing the northern Flats of Bombay island. Several of these were dammed or filled in during the eighteenth century. As a result, the areas north and east of Umarkhadi and Mazagaon were slowly settled in this period. However, the next major reclamation was due to the closure of the Great Breach north of Cumballa Hill in 1784 by the building of a sea-wall called the Hornby Vellard. The wall allowed reclamation of the Flats and supplied about 400 acres of land for the extension of the crowded inner city. The precincts of Mahalaxmi, Kamathipura, Tardeo and parts of Bycullah were settled.

Colaba and Old Woman's Island The fort area and the older parts of the Indian town were extremely crowded by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The rich English and Parsi merchants had already moved to the new suburbs of Mazagaon and Bycullah. In 1796, the island of Colaba was declared a cantonment area, and civilians were refused permission to build there. As boat traffic to Colaba increased over the next few decades and many people perished due to overloaded boats capsizing, the need for a Causeway became evident. The Colaba Causeway was completed in 1838, and used Old Woman's island as a stepping stone to Colaba.

The First Backbay Reclamation Scheme The first Backbay Reclamation Company was formed during the boom years of the early 1860's, with the stated purpose of reclaiming the whole of Backbay, from the tip of Malabar Hill to the end of Colaba. When the American Civil War ended in 1865, a depression set in and land prices fell. The company went bankrupt and was liquidated. The government took over the narrow strip of land that had been created and gave it to the BB&CI Railways for the purpose of laying a line from Churchgate to their new terminus in Colaba.

The Dockyards The Backbay reclamation was a major fiasco. The real work took place on the eastern shore of Bombay. All the way from the Sassoon Docks in the south to Sewri in the north, land reclamation proceeded all through the second half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.

The Elphinstone Land and Press Company was formed in 1858 to reclaim 250 acres of land from Apollo Bunder to Mazagaon, and a further 100 acres at Bori Bunder, to be given to the GIP Railways for building a the Victoria Terminus. The company went bankrupt with the 1865 crash, and their equipment, along with the already reclaimed land, was given over to the newly-formed Bombay Port Trust in 1873. By the mid 1880's the reclamations were complete, and wet and dry docks had been built.

Early Twentieth Century The Port Trust continued its work well into the Twentieth century. Between 1914 and 1918 it completed building a dry dock and used the excavated earth to create the 22 acre Ballard Estate. In the meanwhile another ill-advised Backbay reclamation had gone the way of the first. However, this created the land on which one of the city's most well-known landmarks was built-- the Marine Drive. The Art Deco buildings west of the Oval Maidan also stand on land reclaimed by this scheme.

Late Twentieth Century The Independence did not bring reclamation work to an end. The third Backbay reclamation scheme was put into effect and yielded the small acreage on which the high-rises of Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade are planted. The Naval Dockyards were reclaimed on the east, and smaller works were continued further north. A series of Supreme Court injunctions protecting the shoreline and access to it for fishermen have slowed such work since the 1970's. In the late 1990's the Supreme Court has further restricted reclamations by setting up Coastal Regulatory Zones.

The Backbay Reclamations The First Reclamation The first Backbay Reclamation Company was formed during the boom years of the early 1860's, with the stated purpose of reclaiming the whole of Backbay. With the end of the American Civil War, in 1865, a depression set in and land prices fell. The company went into bankruptcy and was liquidated. The government took over the narrow strip of land that had been created and gave to the BB&CI Railways for the purpose of laying a line from Churchgate to their new terminus in Colaba.

Lloyd's Folly About fifty years later, a proposal for the reclamation of 1500 acres of land between Colaba and Backbay was made in 1917 by a syndicate of prominent citizens and a private company. This project was taken over by the Development Directorate, which planned to reclaim 1145 acres.

Work was delayed by the necessity of relocating the terminus of the BB&CI Railways at Colaba. They were directed to shift the terminus to its present location at Bombay Central, but were unable to do so within the given time frame. In the meanwhile the Consulting Town Planner, W. R. Davidge, had proposed a development scheme incorporating wide open spaces with recreational areas and a mixed residential and commercial landuse pattern.

The work was plagued with delays and losses. The depression of the '20s led to a fall in property values. In 1926 it was estimated that the work, at the rate with which it was proceeding, would be completed in 1945 at a cost of Rs 11 crores, 4 times the estimated cost.

The Backbay Enquiry Committee was set up. Spearheaded by K. F. Nariman and Manu Subedar, it uncovered financial irregularities and the fact that the sanction of the Government of India had been obtained through an incomplete presentation. The committee found that the dredging craft was inefficient, and had been bought before the sanctioning of the project. The construction of the sea-wall was inadequate and 900,000 cubic yards of mud had escaped through it. They held the Advisory Engineer, Sir George Buchanan, responsible, and recommended that only 3 blocks be completed. The project came to be known as Lloyd's Folly, after Sir George Lloyd, then Governor of Bombay.

Eventually 4 blocks were completed in 1929, a total of 439.6 acres. Of this 234.8 acres was sold to the military at a cost of Rs. 2.06 crores, and 16.6 acres was incorporated into the Marine Drive and its sea-wall.

The Final Act The final chapter in the Backbay farce started in 1958.

History of Mumbai Fisherwomen and Stone goddesses Although the archipelago which developed into the modern city of Mumbai was inhabited whenever history chanced on it, we are forced to imagine the lives of these early Mumbaikars, because the islands lay outside of the sweep of history and beyond the marches of armies for millennia. Stone age implements have been found at several sites in these islands. Later, around the third century BC, the coastal regions, and presumably the islands, were part of the Magadhan empire ruled by the emperor Ashok. The empire ebbed, leaving behind some Buddhist monks and the deep-sea fishermen called Kolis, whose stone goddess, Mumbadevi, gave her name to the modern metropolis.

Between the 9th and 13th centuries, the Indian ocean, and especially the Arabian Sea, was the world's center of commerce. Deep sea crafts made of wood tied together with ropes transported merchandise between Aden, Calicut, Cambay and cities on the West coast of Africa. Marco Polo, Ibn Batuta and other travelers passed by without ever making a landfall in these islands.

Bombay changed hands many times. The islands belonged to the Silhara dynasty till the middle of the 13th century. The oldest structures in the archipelago--- the caves at Elephanta, and part of the Walkeshwar temple complex probably date from this time. Modern sources identify a 13th century Raja Bhimdev who had his capital in Mahikawati-- present-day Mahim, and Prabhadevi. Presumably the first merchants and agriculturists settled in Mumbai at this time. In 1343 the island of Salsette, and eventually the whole archipelago, passed to the Sultan of Gujarat. The mosque in Mahim dates from this period.

The Slow Turn West In 1508 Francis Almeida sailed into the deep natural harbour of the island his countrymen came to call Bom Bahia (the Good Bay). Bahadur Shah of Gujarat was forced to cede the main islands to the Portuguese in 1534, before he was murdered by the proselytizing invaders. The Portuguese built a fort in Bassein. They were not interested in the islands, although some fortifications and a few chapels were built for the converted fishermen.

The St. Andrew's church in Bandra dates from this period.

For years, the Dutch and the British tried to get information on the sea route to India--- often by spying. Even the reports of such spies never bother to mention Bombay. Eventually, in 1661, Catherine of Braganza brought these islands to Charles II of England as part of her marriage dowry. The British East India Company received it from the crown in 1668, founded the modern city, and shortly thereafter moved their main holdings from Surat to Bombay. George Oxenden was the first governor of a Bombay whose place in history was finally secure.

The web of commerce which had supported the civilisation of the Indian Ocean littoral had died with the coming of the Europeans. The Mughal empire in Delhi was not interested in navies-- despising the Portuguese and the British as ``merchant princes''. The second governor of Bombay, Gerald Aungier, saw the opportunity to develop the islands into a centre of commerce to rival other ports still in the hands of local kingdoms. He offered various inducement to skilled workers and traders to move to this British holding. The opportunities for business attracted many Gujarati communities--- the Parsis, the Bohras, Jews and banias from Surat and Diu. The population of Bombay was estimated to have risen from 10,000 in 1661 to 60,000 in 1675.

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.

With increasing prosperity and growing political power following the 1817 victory over the Marathas, the British embarked upon reclamations 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. In 1853 a 35-km long railway line between Thana and Bombay 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, and the chawls which accommodated them. The city had found its shape.

Dreams of Power Following the first war of Independence in 1857, the Company was accused of mismanagement, and Bombay reverted to the British crown. With the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, exports, specially cotton, from Bombay became a major part of the colonial economy. The Great Indian Peninsular Railway facilitated travel within India. This network of commerce and communication led to an accumulation of wealth. This was channelled into building an Imperial Bombay by a succession of Governors. Many of Bombay's famous landmarks, the Flora Fountain and the Victoria Terminus, date from this time. The water works, including the Hanging Gardens and the lakes were also built at this time. The Bombay Municipal Corporation was founded in 1872. However, this facade of a progressive and well-governed city was belied by the plague epidemics of the 1890s. This dichotomy between the city's symbols of power and prosperity and the living conditions of the people who make it so continues even today.

The construction of Imperial Bombay continued well into the 20th century. Landmarks from this period are the Gateway of India, the General Post Office, the Town Hall (now the Asiatic Library) and the Prince of Wales Museum. Bombay expanded northwards into the first suburbs, before spreading its nightmare tentacles into the the northern suburbs. The nearly 2000 acres reclaimed by the Port Trust depressed the property market for a while, but the Backbay reclamation scandal of the '20s was a testament to the greed for land.

The freedom movement reached a high pitch of activity against this background of developing Indian wealth.

Gandhi returned from South Africa and reached Bombay on January 12, 1915. Following many campaigns in the succeeding years, the end of the British imperial rule in India was clearly presaged by the Quit India declaration by the Indian National Congress on August 8, 1942, in Gowalia Tank Maidan, near Kemp's Corner.

India became a free country on August 15, 1947. In the meanwhile, Greater Bombay had come into existence through an Act of the British parliament in 1945.

Millennial Mumbai Already India's main port and commercial centre, the City of Gold lured the poverty stricken rural population and the expanding middle class equally. The population boom of the '50s and '60s was fuelled by the absence of opportunities in the rest of the country. The language riots, the reorganisation of Indian states and the see-saw politics of the country did not seem to affect the city. The glamour industry's flattering portrayal of Bombay seemed to be the reality. However, by the late '80s the other big Indian cities had choked in their own refuse and Bombay's road ahead seemed to be blighted. How this city, renamed Mumbai in the mid 90's copes with the challenge of controlling its political fragmentation, disastrous health problems and load of pollution by utilising its wealth of talent and manpower is a story to be told by future historians.