Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T01:37:31.625Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Free to move, forced to flee: the formation and dissolution of suburbs in colonial Bombay, 1750–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2012

PREETI CHOPRA
PREETI CHOPRA*
Affiliation:
Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1250 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article shows the centrality of movement – the freedom to move, the inability to move and being forced to flee – to the suburban development of Bombay. The reason as well as the spatio-temporal rhythm of movement differed among population groups inhabiting the city. The early suburbs of colonial Bombay were predicated on the ability of a tiny European elite to move to different parts of the city according to the seasons. By the mid-nineteenth century, their movement would no longer be restricted to the several islands that constituted Bombay. Instead, tracing the governor's footsteps they would move many miles away, from Bombay to Poona during the monsoons, to Mahabaleshwar after the rains and back to Bombay for the cool winter season as the seat of governance shifted according to the season. In late nineteenth-century Bombay, the growth of the mill industry would force Europeans to retreat to other areas of the city from their former suburban homes, which were now transformed into mill districts. In contrast to the freedom of movement that underlay the early foundation of European suburban development in Bombay, Indian suburban development was based on the necessity to flee the crowded and insalubrious native city districts. The bubonic plague that first struck the city in 1896 was most virulent in the native districts of the city, long subject to municipal neglect. After 1896, large numbers of Bombay's native citizenry were forced to flee their homes each year during the plague season. Moving to different locations, often along the railway lines, they formed small communities that became the foundation of Bombay's future suburban development.

Type
Indian suburbs
Information
Urban History , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 83 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 In 1854, C.N. Davar, a Parsi entrepreneur, constructed the first of many textile mills to be built in Bombay on a site east of the ridge of Cumballa Hills. In contrast to Calcutta, Bombay's industrialization was founded and managed mostly by Indians of various communities. See Gordon, A.D.D., Businessmen and Politics: Rising Nationalism and a Modernising Economy in Bombay, 1918–1933 (New Delhi, 1978), 1, 58–68Google Scholar.

2 Jackson, K.T., Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985), 13Google Scholar.

3 These walking cities were highly congested urban agglomerations, which showed a clear distinction between city and country, a mix of urban functions, proximity between residence and work, and at the centre of the city were the most sought-after places of residence. Suburbs were generally slums. As Jackson points out, the main deviation seen in this model of suburbs as slums was in the large homes built in the country by elite families who were associated with cities. These country residences were usually used occasionally – for a weekend or during a particular season. See ibid., 14–19.

4 According to historian Mariam Dossal, ‘the move towards the suburbs’ in Bombay began as early as the late eighteenth century. However, the first time I have seen the use of the term ‘suburbs’ is in Marianne Postans' book of western India in 1838. See Dossal, M., Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of Bombay City 1845–1875 (Delhi, 1991), 19Google Scholar; Mrs Postans [Marianne Young, second name], Western India in 1838, 2 vols. (London, 1839), vol. I, 12.

5 The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, compiled by Edwardes, S.M., 3 vols. (Bombay, 1909–10), vol. II, 110–12 (hereafter cited as City Gazetteer); Handbook of the Bombay Presidency with an Account of Bombay City, 2nd edn (London, 1881), 138Google Scholar.

6 Douglas, J., A Book of Bombay (Bombay, 1883), 178Google Scholar.

7 Kosambi, M., Bombay in Transition: The Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial City, 1880–1980 (Stockholm, 1986), 43Google Scholar.

8 King, A.D., Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London, 1976), 117Google Scholar, quoting Allen, C., Plain Tales from the Raj: Images of British India in the Twentieth Century (London, 1975), 15Google Scholar.

9 Referring to the range of vehicles found in Bombay, she observed, ‘an hour's drive from the port to the suburbs, will exhibit a curious variety of taste’. Postans, Western India in 1838, vol. I, 12.

10 Anon., Life in Bombay, and the Neighbouring Out-Stations (London, 1852), 243, 248.

11 Douglas, A Book, 183; City Gazetteer, vol. II, 111.

12 Maclean, J.M., A Guide to Bombay: Historical, Statistical, and Descriptive, 5th edn (Bombay, 1880), 251Google Scholar.

13 See King, Colonial Urban Development, 263; Abu-Lughod, J.L., Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco, Princeton Studies on the Near East (Princeton, 1980)Google Scholar; S. Chattopadhyay, ‘Blurring boundaries: the limits of “white town” in colonial Calcutta’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 59 (Jun. 2000), 154–79; P. Chopra, ‘The city and its fragments: colonial Bombay, 1854–1918’, unpublished University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. thesis, 2003.

14 For an excellent discussion of European theories of disease and the history and geography of hill stations in colonial India, see Kennedy, D., The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley, 1996)Google Scholar. For the intersection of health, race and environment, see Harrison, M., Climates & Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India 1600–1850 (New Delhi, 1999)Google Scholar.

15 Batley, C., Bombay's Houses and Homes, Bombay Citizenship Series, ed. Bulsara, J.F. Dr (Bombay, 1949), 1–3Google Scholar.

16 Handbook of the Bombay Presidency, 140.

17 Anon., Life in Bombay, 243, 248.

18 Postans, Western India in 1838, vol. I, 48–9.

19 Sir Wacha, D.E., Shells from the Sands of Bombay: Being My Recollections and Reminiscences, 1860–1875 (Bombay, 1920), 47–55Google Scholar.

20 City Gazetteer, II, 188–9.

21 Wacha, Shells, 47–55.

22 Maclean, , A Guide to Bombay. Historical, Statistical, and Descriptive, 31st edn (Bombay, 1906), 214–15Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., 294–5; Dwivedi, S. and Mehrotra, R., Bombay: The Cities Within (Bombay, 1995), 73Google Scholar.

24 Bombay 1921–22: A Review of the Administration of the Presidency (Bombay, 1923), 32–4; Edwardes, S.M., The Bombay City Police: A Historical Sketch, 1672–1916 (London, 1923), 97–106Google Scholar.

25 For an insightful analysis of plague policies and the response of the public, see Arnold, D., ‘Touching the body: perspectives on the Indian plague, 1896–1900’, in Guha, R. (ed.), Subaltern Studies V: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi, 1987), 55–90Google Scholar. For a discussion of public health in colonial India, see Harrison, M., Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine 1859–1914 (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar; and for colonial Bombay, see Ramanna, M., Western Medicine and Public Health in Colonial Bombay 1845–1895 (Hyderabad, 2002)Google Scholar.

26 For an analysis of the plague and the CBIT see Kidambi, P., The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1880–1920 (Aldershot, 2007)Google Scholar.

27 Report on the Development Plan for Greater Bombay 1964 (RDPGB), xxvi.

28 Annual Administration Report of the City of Bombay Improvement Trust (AARCBIT) for the Year Ending 31st March 1902, 4, 7.

29 Report of the Bombay Plague Committee, Appointed by Government Resolution No. 1204/720P, on the Plague in Bombay, for the Period Extending from the 1st July 1897 to the 30th April 1898 (BPCR 1898), under the chairmanship of Sir James MacNabb Campbell, examined by Captain the Hon. R. Mostyn, extra secretary, Bombay Plague Committee (Bombay, 1898), 73–96.

30 Edwardes, Bombay City Police, 97.

31 Edwardes, S.M., Census of India – 1901, vol. XI, Bombay (Town & Island), part 5, Report (Bombay, 1901), 5–9Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., 5–9.

33 See ibid., 5–9, quote from 6.

34 See Sparke, P., As Long As It's Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste (London, 1995), 16–22Google Scholar.

35 Letter from R.E. Enthoven, acting secretary to government, to the chairman, CBIT, no. 7382 of 1907, General Department (GD), 9 Dec. 1907, in Appendix B of AARCBIT for the Year Ending 31 March 1908, xxi–xxiv.

36 RDPGB, xxvii. It appears that the date is not correct as at least one body, the Bombay Native Piece Goods Merchants’ Association, responded before this date.

37 Letter from the chairman, Bombay Native Piece Goods Merchants’ Association, to the secretary to the government of Bombay, GD, regarding expansion of the City of Bombay, no. 126 of 1907–08, 17 Mar. 1908, Maharashtra State Archive, GD, 1909, vol. 218, pt 1, 191–6, is an unsolicited opinion on the issues raised by the government.

38 RDPGB, xxviii.

39 Report of the Bombay Development Committee (Bombay, 1914), i, v, ix.

40 Resolution of Government, GD No. 3022, dated 14 Jun. 1909, on the development of Bombay City and the improvement of communications in the Island, as Appendix A in ibid., 4.

41 Govind Narayan's Mumbai: An Urban Biography from 1863, ed. and trans. M. Ranganathan, foreword by G. Prakash (London, 2008), 130–1. Written in Marathi, under the title of Mumbaiche Varnan, this was the first comprehensive account of Bombay that preceded other urban biographies of the city written in other languages.

42 In 1898–99, for example, there were private camps of the following communities at the Kennedy Sea Face in the City: the Parsi, Daivadnya, Dakshina Brahmin, Somvanshi Kshatriya, Gaud Brahmin, Pathare Prabhu, Kayastha Prabhu, Kshatriya and Palsiker. See Administration Report of the Municipal Commissioner for the City of Bombay for the Year 1898–99 (Bombay, 1899), 515–16.

43 BPCR 1898, 17–18.

44 Report on the Possibilities of the Development of Salsette as a Residential Area, by P.J. Mead, special officer Salsette (on special duty) to the secretary to government, GD, no. 15 of 1909, 26 May 1909, 2–3.

45 Conlon, F.F., A Caste in a Changing World: The Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmans, 1700–1935 (Berkeley, 1977), 187–90Google Scholar.

46 Albuquerque, T., Santa Cruz That Was (Bombay, 1981), 4–5, 17–18Google Scholar.

47 Ibid., 19–28.

48 For more on Murzban, see P. Chopra, A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay (Minneapolis, 2011).

49 Information and quotes from the Indian & Eastern Engineer, n.d., quoted in Murzban, M.M., Leaves from the Life of Khan Bahadur Muncherji Cowasji Murzban, C.I.E.: With an Introduction Containing a Life-Sketch of Fardunji Murbanji (Bombay, 1915), 111Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., 110–12.

51 Ibid., 112, 79, 90, quote from 112.

52 F.R. Harris, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata: A Chronicle of his Life, with a foreword by J.R.D. Tata, 2nd edn (Bombay, 1958; first published 1925), 69, 76–7. On 69, Harris writes of Tata that ‘He bought land on the islands of Mahad, Juhu, and Bandra, on each of which he built bungalows.’ The island of Mahad is probably Madh Island, while Juhu is probably the island Juhu Tara where he had bought land and erected a bungalow. Bandra is on Salsette.

53 From about 1865, building fines had been applied to undeveloped land. In the case of Tata's proposed development in Bandra, the collector of Thana observed that a building fine of Rs 1,500 per acre would be applied not only on the houses but also on the surrounding fenced or walled gardens and compounds. The building fine would have resulted in an annual assessment that equalled approximately 4% of the property's value. As a comparison it was pointed to the collector that the rates and taxes were not even one fourth of this in Bombay where water, electricity and police protection were also given. The government argued ‘that the revenue would be deprived of any benefit from the ground rent, should the periodical survey of the district warrant a further revision of the tax’ (78). See ibid., 77–8, quote from 77.

54 Ibid., 76–80, quote from 80.

55 Ibid., 80–1, quotes from 81.

56 Ibid., 76–84, quotes from 79.

57 Low, S., A Vision of India: As Seen during the Tour of the Prince and Princess of Wales (London, 1907), 33–4Google Scholar.

58 Ibid., 34.