Charting Growth Of Asia’s Vibrant Metropolis: Mumbai Museum’s New Gallery Presents ‘City Of Hopes’ – OpEd
When Superintendent of Police Captain E Baynes conducted Bombay’s first official census in 1848, the island’s population had doubled to 500,000. Diversity was its hallmark. Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Indian Christians, Jews, Indo-Europeans and Europeans were listed.
It is the ordinary juxtaposed with the extraordinary; the mundane with the historic; the simple with the complex which makes the new gallery at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum) in Mumbai a fascinating tribute to one of Asia’s most vibrant metropolis. Located on the first floor of the iconic museum, the gallery recreates the sights and sounds, the skylines and spaces, the artefacts and relics, the colours and textures of Mumbai, a city which grew and expanded from the port-city of Bombay.
Said Dr Sabyasachi Mukherjee, the genteel Director General of the Museum, as he walks through the gallery, “When we talk about our city Mumbai three things appear in our minds – land, people and the sea. A city is a sacred landscape in which we live, learn and communicate with others. It is woven into the fabric of day-to-day life, manifesting languages, performances and traditional and other representations of our existence. Mumbai, the city of hopes, represents creativity, passion, resilience, commitment, flexibility and courage of the inhabitants who have largely come to this land, migrating from different geographic locations, over hundreds of years, and have silently contributed to the growth of this city – we call lovingly ‘Aamchi Mumbai’.” An elegantly-produced, well-researched slim catalogue titled, ‘A brief history of Mumbai’ captures its growth and development, leaving one breathless at the sweep of time and geography.
“We are indeed very happy to create a dedicated space for sharing some well-known and unheard stories about the relationship between the city and its people. The new gallery shall unfold these narratives that actually made the city – a ‘great city’, not because of its live-ability standards but because of its inclusivity,” he said.
Undoubtedly the metropolis of today, or the Bombay port-city of yesteryears has always been globally networked, inculcating in its people a perspective which is global, Asian and reflecting that energy. At the gallery, the first exhibition is titled ‘People of Mumbai’, and it showcases three key themes – Mumbai as a city of opportunity, a city of migrants and a city of cosmopolitanism through the lives and contribution of Mumbaikars (as those who have made Mumbai their home call themselves).
While the inaugural exhibit – called People of Mumbai, curated by Nandini Somaya Sampat – pays homage to hordes of migrants who made Bombay their home, searching for work and a roof over their heads, the catalogue introduces John Fryer, an English traveller of the 1670s. He provided a vivid description of Bombay and its surroundings: “On the backside of the towns of Bombaim and Maijn (Bombay and Mahim) are woods of cocoes (under which inhabit the Banderines – Bhandaris – those that prune and cultivate them), these hortoes (hortas) being the greatest purchase and estates of the island, for some miles together, till the sea breaks in between them, over against which up the bay a mile, lies Massegoung (Mazagon), a great fishing town, peculiarly notable for a fish called bumbelo (Bombay Duck) the sustenance of the poorer sort, who live on them and batty, a coarse sort of rice, and the wine of the cocoe called toddy.”
Bombay, as is commonly mentioned, emerged from the seven islands of an archipelago. In fact back in 150 BCE, almost 2200 years, the Greek scholar Ptolemy referred to Heptanesia on India’s west coast – Colaba, Old Woman’s Island (Little Colaba), Isle of Bombay (from Malabar Hill in the West to Dongri in the East), Mazagaon, Parel, Worli and Mahim, as they would come to be called.
Ptolemy’s rather vague description was refined by historian J Gerson da Cunha in ‘Notes on the History and Antiquities of Chaul and Bassein’, written in 1993; he suggested that the Heptanesia of the Greeks may have been the ‘Bombay Group of Islands’. The group consisted of 25 islands namely, Bassein, Dharavi, Versova, Salsette, the largest of them all; Trombay; Mazagon; Mahim; Varli; Bombay or Mumbai; Old Woman’s Island; Colaba; Elephanta; Butcher’s Island; Gibbet or Cross Island; Caranja; Heneri; Keneri; and other detached and small rocky islets of lesser note.
The British period is equally fascinating and dramatic: the seven small islands were gifted to England as part of the dowry in the marriage of the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza to Charles II in 1661. A few years later on September 23, 1668, Charles II handed them over to the English East India Company, in return for a loan of sterling pounds 50,000, with a rent of ten pounds sterling payable annually. The Company could neither sell nor transfer the lands.
The Company’s first governor George Oxenden died within the year and was succeeded by Governor Gerald Aungier, states the catalogue. The arrival of Aungier in June 1669 constituted a decisive moment in Bombay’s history. He was keen to establish “the City which God intended to be built” and was determined to provide for the “happiness and prosperity” of all Bombay inhabitants.
For the island to prosper it was necessary to increase the number of skilled and manual labourers, craftsmen, tradesmen, merchants, financiers and others. Aungier encouraged these groups to migrate from neighbouring places and promised security, property and religious freedom as incentives to settle in Bombay. In the 18th century, the development of Bombay from a settlement to a small town happened: fuelled by the island’s fine harbour, and increased security provided by the fortified walls, ramparts, a moat, and three gates constructed during the governorship of Charles Boone (1715-1722). The Fort covered a vast area, within it stood the Bombay Castle, quarters for soldiers, warehouses, and various residential and commercial buildings.
The island’s population, estimated at 20,000 by 1720s, continued to grow through the century; by the 1740s it was 70,000. Its mixed ethnic population was evident from the outset. People were encouraged in various ways to immigrate from the mainland, among them being several Bhandaris from Chaul, many weavers from Gujarat, goldsmiths, iron-smiths, several Bhattias and Banias, Shenvi Brahmans and Parsis. The most noteworthy of the Parsis were Rustom Dorabji, later appointed Patel of Bombay, and Lowji Nasarwanji Wadia, the master builder of the Bombay Dockyard.
When Superintendent of Police Captain E Baynes conducted Bombay’s first official census in 1848, the island’s population had doubled to 500,000. Diversity was its hallmark. Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Indian Christians, Jews, Indo-Europeans and Europeans were listed.
Europeans numbered less than one per cent of the population. They identified themselves as butchers, carpenters, cloth traders, coach and palki manufacturers, coppersmiths, dyers, European shop-owners, firewood sellers, goldsmiths, grain traders, ironsmiths, liquor sellers, milkmen, pawnbrokers, shoemakers, tailors, tobacco or ganja sellers, and weavers. Many were engaged in the manufacture and retailing of cotton-piece goods. They were also cotton cleaners, embroiderers, darners, shawl sellers, and cotton cloth retailers. Each had a story and a history, each lived a life that added colour to the social fabric of Bombay, the catalogue stated.
From the 1850s and 60s with the setting up of the first cotton spinning and weaving mills, an industrial working class started emerging. Millworkers and their important counterparts Bombay’s dockworkers would greatly energise it and give a distinctive working-class character to the emerging city.
To meet the commercial and financial needs of the emerging industrial city, a new central business district was planned in the 1860s. It was to be built on the Esplanade and its architectural style was to be Gothic Revival, best suited, it was believed to convey the stability and monumental might of British rule. The Government Secretariat, the Telegraph Office, the High Court, the University of Bombay, the Elphinstone College, the David Sassoon Mechanic’s Institute, the Sailor’s Home and others became the landmarks of the new city. To be followed were the Victoria Terminus, the Bombay Municipal Corporation building, the General Post Office, the Standard Chartered Bank in the later decades of the 19th century. It is this bounty of architectural brilliance which remains Mumbai’s precious heritage.
Giving the new gallery a contemporary touch is the artist Valay Shende’s life-size sculpture Virar Local, made of steel discs, showing a group of men, crammed together with their arms stretched above their heads, holding an imaginary metal bar as seen in local trains. Mumbai, the city of hopes is also the city of constant struggles and a Maya Nagri or the city of illusions. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya has brought these contrasting realities of Mumbai, past and present, to mesmerize its visitors.
