Modern India Project On Rise of Bombay as a colonial city

Reeti Mahobe Roll no. 204 BA History (Hons) III year

Bombay, presently known as Mumbai started taking shape into its modern form since it became a colonial city. Though the history of the city can be traced back to even earlier times. The discussion which follows here basically deals with the emphasis on its emergence as a colonial city and the various features that define its colonial character. In her essay Sujata Patel says that in view of its range of manufacturing, finance and service activities, Bombay has been described as the first Indian town to experience the economic, technological and social changes associated with the growth of capitalism. She further remarks that to a number of writers, the city serves as a paradigm for the achievements of post-independence India. With the growth of trade, industry and modern tertiary occupations, Bombay has developed relatively efficient transport and communication systems. Though a large part of the population still resides in slums, but relatively better provision of basic amenities have made possible a greater degree of urban sophistication. While defining the context of the modernity of Bombay, she says Bombay is a quintessentially a colonial city fashioned into a large degree by external inputs and demands. Foreign conquest set the stage for the establishment of the city. Imperial rule defined the parameters within which it grew. Bombay served as an open gateway for the exploitation of its hinterland and, indeed, the country as a whole. Through the city of Bombay resources were transferred from the colony to the centre of the empire. She further went on to say that from its inception, Bombay has been closely linked with the

world market. In its early years, the requirements of British commerce and British industry dictated the choice of Bombay as the principal point of entry on Indias western coast. These interests determined the selective recruitment to the city of merchants, artisans and labourers, as well as the education of a class of clerks and petty officials. Claude Markovits in his paper, Bombay as a business centre in the colonial period: A comparison with Calcutta explores the paradox that on one hand, Bombay was locked into the world market as the pivot of British colonial exploitation of western India, while on the other, Bombay proved capable of establishing a national industry based on the domestic market. He says until the mid-nineteenth century, Calcutta retained an unquestioned primacy. Only after the defeat of the Peshwas and the imposition of British political control on western India could Bombay embark upon its upward growth curve. At this stage the most important economic activity was the trade in cotton and opium. Railways built from 1857 onwards reinforced Bombays links with its hinterland, facilitating the expansion of commercial networks. Experienced Hindu and Jain banias, parsi merchants and members of the Muslim trading communities had been drawn to the city from Gujarat. The early entrepreneurs who invested in cotton spinning and weaving mills came from these mercantile groups. By the late nineteenth century, the textile industry had taken precedence over trade. The era of dual dominance of Bombay and Calcutta each exploring the resources of its own region, lasted until the first world war. Markovits argues that initially Calcutta had a definite

advantage, yet by the 1920s Bombay forged ahead. To this Markovits further combines economic explanations with political and cultural considerations. He suggests that both British and Indian entrepreneurs in Bombay reacted more rapidly to changing trade conditions. Bombay businessmen faced less racial discrimination. Acceptance in Bombay of ethnic and community groups contrasted sharply with Calcuttas oligopolistic and polarized economic and social structure. So while Markovits analyses the processes that allowed Bombay to emerge as a leader in integration of domestic market as a national project, Nigel Harris in Bombay in the global economy, focuses on the opening of new opprtunities by developments in the international sphere. Before, an intricate examination how Bombay was like as it developed as a colonial city it would helpful to go somewhat back into the citys history. For this one may take a look at the work by Joseph Gerson de Cuha, called as the Origins of Bombay. He basically tries to look at how Portuguese took hold of the islands and how it was like before as well as the naming of it. He argued that, among the various things that have contributed to the making of Bombay materially are the treaty of Bassein which destroyed Maratha confederacy, the annexation of the Deccan and the opening of the suez canal which helped considerably to raise this society to the proud position of gateway of India. He makes a comparison between Paris and Bombay over their rate of growth and says that both had similar patterns of growth, initially it was slow but they developed at much faster pace in the later years.The history of Bombay is basically subsequent

to the time of Krishnaraja, which is one of a dense obscurity. Portuguese named it as ilha do elephante or the island of elephant from the figure of elephant they found on landing there. It has also been called as Pori, the town par excellence as the capital of Mauryas. Garcia da Orta calls it as another Pagoda and says that it has been named Pori by Portuguese. He further said that the place had variety of animal species found there and that he saw it first when Bassein was at war with them, thereby it was handed over by the king of Gujarat to Nuna da Conha. Another Portuguese writer Simao Botelho says that it was rented to Joao Pirez under the same governor(Castro). But, in fact, Bombay is one of a multitude of islands situated on North-Western shore of India, which varying from a few yards to a hundred square miles in area fringe the coast from 19 degree to 20 degree N.L. it belongs to that picturesque group of about twenty five islands, known as the Bombay group, viz. :- Bassien,nearly thirty two miles northward, Daravi, Versova, just off the shore Salsette( the largest islamd of all), Mazagoil, Trombay, Mahim, Varli , Bombay or Mumbae, Old womans island or colaba, Elephanta , Butchers island, Gibbet or cross island, Karanja, Hineri, keneri or khanderi, and other rocky islands. Several of these are united either by bridges causeways or embankments or any such ways. As mentioned the area which is today considered as the city was once under the rule of Mauryas, more specifically Ashoka had it in his territory. Later on Between the second century BCE and ninth century CE, the islands came under the control of successive indigenous dynasties; Satavahanas, Western

Kshatrapas, Abhiras, Vakatakas, Kalachuris, Konkan Mauryas, Chalukyas and Rashtrakutas before being ruled by the Silhara dynasty from 810 to 1260. This is noted by the Joseph gerson de Cuha too. Some other possessions known to us of this region include the rule of King Bhimdev with his capital as Mahikawati(present day Mahim) in the 13th century. The Pathare Prabhus were brought to Mahikawati in 1298 by Bhimdev. Later on the islands came under the rule of Delhi Sultanate. The Muslim governors of Delhi Sultanate took control over them (134748 to 1407) appointed by Delhi Sultanate. The islands were later governed by the independent Gujarat sultanate following the year of 1407 till Portuguese took the possession of it in 1534 after the treaty of Bassein. Before this under Sultans patronage several mosques were built, the most significant one being the Haji Ali Dargah in the year 1431 in the honour of Muslim saint Haji Ali in Worli. The islands were placed in possession of British Empire following the marriage treaty of Charles II of England and Catherine of Braganza, daughter of King John of Portugal. Under this treaty there was a lot of give and take involved. Portugal received a body of nglish troops to protect her from Dutch, England relinquished any claim upon Ceylon, an undertaking faithfully observed. In return Portuguese resigned its claim over tangiers and gave up her holding of Bombay. The value of Harbour of Bombay was already recognized by Directors of East India Company in England. This has been noted by Sir Patrick Cadell who wrote an article with the title acquisition and rise of Bombay. The treaty provided that the port and island of Bombay should

be handed over with all the rights, territories, profits and appurtenances belonging there unto. Humphrey Cooke who was the secretary to Shipman who was acting as the Governor then, could also be given credit for acquisition of Bombay by the British East India Company. But he was later removed on grounds of corruption. Joseph Gerson de Cuha talks about 25 small islands as noticed in the discussion earlier, but most refer to the presence of seven small islands. However, Salsette, Bassein, Mazagaon, Parel, Worli, Sion, Dharavi, and Wadala still remained under Portuguese possession. From 1665 to 1666, the British managed to acquire Mahim, Sion, Dharavi, and Wadala. The population quickly rose from 10,000 in 1661, to 60,000 in 1675. In 1687, the British East India Company transferred its headquarters from Surat to Bombay. The city eventually became the headquarters of the Bombay Presidency. By the middle of the 18th century, Bombay began to grow into a major trading town, and received a huge influx of migrants from across India. From 1782 onwards, the city was reshaped with large-scale civil engineering projects aimed at merging all the seven islands into a single amalgamated mass. . The success of the British campaign in the Deccan against Baji Rao II in 1817 witnessed the freedom of Bombay from all attacks by native powers. By 1845, the seven islands were coalesced into a single landmass by the Hornby Vellard project followed by the laying of railway line to neighbouring town of Thane in 1853 which was another landmark. The outbreak of the

American Civil War in 1861 increased the demand for cotton in the West and several personal fortunes were made during this period from the resulting trade.The opening of Suez canal in the year 1869 was phenomenal in the history of the city. It made Bombay one of the largest seaports in the Arabian Sea. The bubonic plague that followed it led to decimation and migration of lakhs of people. As the capital of the Bombay Presidency, it witnessed the Indian independence movement, with the Quit India Movement in 1942 and The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny in 1946 being its most notable events. In post independent India a lot of developments were witnessed in the city and also involved going through a number of upheavals, but our focus is confined to the colonial period. In her essay, Padma Prakash, titled The Making of Bombay:Social cultural and Political dimensions she talks about the urban identities. She comments that creation of identities is done with rejection of the other. This process she believes is quite problematic. She has given perceptions of several scholars. She provides views of Anthony King, who says that notion of identityas applied to cities, suggested that the defining of the citys identity can take place only against a charting of economic, social and political systems over time. Jim Masselos' paper enlarged upon the theme of how the influx of outsiders changes the identity of a city. His paper contended that the ways in which the city perceived those who came to it in their times of crisis are themselves statements about the nature of the city. They also say a lot about what the city meant to those who administered it and

influenced the directions of its growth. The manner in which the city coped with these crisis migrants defined the urban identity. Assumptions about the nature of governance," The city thus became an expression of a structure of power relation- ships of various kinds with underlying assumptions which informed these exchanges. Illustrating this Masselos described how the famine victims of the I820s who were seen initially as worthy destitute became the worthless poor in the legislation of 1856, and since many of them originated from the princely states as 'foreign' and a source of pollution bringing illness and contagion. By the late 19th century the only migrants who were considered 'appropriate' for the city were those who came seeking work and the famine refugees were seen as worthless thus reinforcing the image of the city as the hardworking productive capital' of the country. Even at the height of the plague Bombay asserted its primacy, its superiority and its purity, partly through the social message of exclusion of destitutes from the countryside and thus defined itself as apart from the rest of India. Bombay was once described as the connecting link between Europe and Asia, where "two civilizations meet and mingle". At one level the city provides a historical document and at another it is also a reflection of the prevailing social and economic forces. Norma Evenson pointed out that Bombay's power structures are reflected in its buildings: colonial rulers built to endure and Bombay was to stand as a monument with wealthy Indian lending patronage to European styles. At the turn of the century with rapid growth came congestion and attempts

to provide low cost housing and the characteristic chawl came into being. Taking up the issue of land usage pattern as a feature of the physical characteristic of a city, Miriam Dossal focused on the changing ecological and land-use history of Bombay. In the late 18th century in an effort to extend state control and stake a claim to all land in Bombay island, a survey was undertaken and attempts were made to convert forest land into freehold property and initiate a land market. Resistance took the form of rioting and petitioning and reflected the anxiety of various Indian communities as the state began to make its presence felt by replacing traditional rights on land by a new dispensation. The survey which mapped out Bombay for the colonial rulers may be seen as the state's attempts to make itself strong in its base so as to establish its control over the hinterland. By the late 19th century Bombay's cotton mill industry was greatly influencing the growth of the city. The industry had grown in an unregulated atmosphere after it began in 1856. Rasheed Wadia pointed out that the setting up of the Factory Commission in 1875 led to legislation which not only regulated labour but also to a change in the relationship between the industry and the colonial state on the one hand and between the government and the workforce on the other. The most influential of course was the Lancashire lobby, whose connection has to be understood in the context of the crisis in the industry in 1877-78 and its increased dependence on the Indian market, occurring at a time when British imports of coarse cloth to India had declined and the Bombay mills were

growing. A series of papers discussed the intellectual and socio-cultural development of Bombay from the colonial period to present times. J V Naik's paper dealt with the period between 1822 and 1857 which saw the introduction of the new education and the emergence of liberal rational ideas and institutions with the newly-founded vernacular press playing an important role. This phase of the Bombay Renaissance was characterised by the following features: an intellectual resistance to British colonial rule and the emergence of a demand for a say in the affairs of the administration; the evolving critique of prevailing obscurantism and the promotion of rationalism; the creation of a demand for science and technical education; and a growing demand for the regional language as a medium of instruction. Subsequently there was a slide-back and there occurred a distortion of the process of modernization, a major reason for this being the adoption of English as medium of instruction. Meera Kosambi's paper looked at British Bombay and Marathi Mumbai. For the British, Bombay was the spearhead of commercial and later imperialistic ambitions and for the indigenous people of Maharashtra, it was a peripheral coastal enclave of a foreign trading community until it collided with the Maratha power and conquered it. But even so, it remained alien until later. Francoise Malisons paper explored Bombay as the intellectual capital of the Gujaratis. The development of Gujarati literature in this period owes its impetus to the introduction of western-style education in Bombay. Young writers educated here created new literary forms not

necessarily to endow the language with new forms but to disseminate the reforms which they thought to be indispensable. Thus were the views presented over the intellectual diversity of Bombay. In the paper by Meera Kosambi and John E. Brush, bearing the title Three Colonial Port Cities in India, a survey of the cities of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta has been made as they existed during colonial times and developed thus. According to this study, the development of these colonial port cities evolved in a three stages of colonial advancements. The first phase dealt with the fortification of the port. At Bombay the wall initially enclosed dual Indo-European town. In each place the European town or the area was to the south of the original factory site and the Indian sector. Such arrangement might have been to provide protected escape to the ships at anchor. The second phase was associated with the expansion beyond the original settlement that was a consequence of increased security and commerce. That phase began in middle and late eighteenth century. In Bombay this phase was delayed to later times. In Bombay, in contrast to the other colonial port cities, there was a constraint of space and possessed dual ethnic character,that made European suburbanization less compact and scattered into localities north and south of the town and later to the west. The final phase of evolution witnessed the coalescence of the incipient elements of the previous stage, which were well advanced by mid-nineteenth century, and the new features that assumed full form in the twentieth century.

Construction of railways and setting up of cotton mills at Bombay are worth mentioning in this regard. In his study, Jim Masselos talks about several aspects of the formation of the city. In one of his essays, he has talked about the various events that took place in 1870s in the history of the city. At first, he mentions that while lot of political developments were taking place at great pace in Bengal, at Bombay presidency, it was only the Sarvajanik Sabha, that was formed during this time(Poona). On the other hand, in the late 1860s and the 1870s, the municipal question that is the problem of how the great metropolis of Bombay was to be run and financed provoked political passions, and acted as catalyst of both ideas and group interests in the city and their expression in political activity. Since the early 1850s, the Bombay association had guided a great deal of the citys and even the presidencys public life in its self-imposed tasks of ameliorating the conditions of people and acting as channel of communication between governor and governed. It comprised two groups, the aristocracies of wealth and intelligence. Much of its early activity was due to the initiative of a young Western educated group collectively known as Young Bombay and increasing in 1860s and 1870s, to the new variant bred by Bombay University. The alliance of education and wealth was an uneasy one. At times internal conflict paradoxically gave the body vitality but the differences of outlook, on occasion, proved sufficiently great for a number of Shetias to secede. The first secession in 1853 had blighted its strength and

although it survived into the 1860s its effectiveness had been minimal until it was again revived in 1867. The municipal question was complex between 1865 and 1873. Economic and social issues jostled alongside ideological considerations and factors of personality to produce a subtle nexus around which opposing groups converged. At the centre stood Arthur T. Crawford, the Municipal Commissioner under a new constitution imposed on the city by an act of 1865 which made the municipal commissioner responsible to a Bench of Justices for the direction of Municipal policy. A man of many parts, Crawford rapidly charmed into existence a following of Europeans and Indian Shetias. Young Bombay led by Nowrozjee and SS Bengallee, Western educated men with experience in teaching and government service and in business respectively, consistently attacked his taxation structure and his pecuniary maladroitness and urged that the principles of representative and responsible government be applied to the city. Rents had decreased in the depression that followed the pricking of the cotton boom in 1865 while, at the same time, the house rate or house tax had steadily increased. The changes began to be felt by 1870, and between November 1871 and June 1872 some 600 people were declared bankrupt. Most affected were the citys owner-occupiers, its petty retailers, and smaller traders and merchants. Meanwhile, the finances of the municipality were worsening. Crawfords extravagance, bad budgeting, and dishonest and inefficient administration had begun to take their toll. After lot of discussions, the municipality was unable to meet its debts and, for the first time since 1865, the bench passed a resolution censuring

Crawford. J. A. Forbes, supported by Nowrozjee Furdoonjee and S.S. Bengallee, gave notice of a motion to reform the municipality through vesting executive control in a Town Council partly nominated by the government and partly elected by the bench and the ratepayers. All such events suggest according to him that while urban political activity was patterned along the lines of closed (orencapsulated) groups, integrative ties of interest and conviction were equally significant and cut across the pattern of closed groupings. This overlay of patterns and the contradictory pulls which they exerted made politics in Bombay particularly complex. In any case, by the end of the decade, organizational activity within the city had come to standstill. The existing associations no longer fulfilled their roles as focal points for the expression of multi-group grievances. Their failure reaffirmed what had been earlier demonstrated during the municipal controversy: only specific issues could engender enthusiasm and mobilize various social groups and hence provide the field in which would be leaders might operate while the nature of the issue and of the interests affected would by and large determine the extent of any consequent movement. Public life in Bombay was by no means moribund: the numerous ad hoc protests were mounted against administrative fiats reflect the dynamism of the citys responses. Both established and rising leaders as well as, increasingly, activist groups within the society engaged in the protest politics of the latter part of the decade although not in the formal structure imposed by the public associations. Bombays rising leaders were neither

educationists, civil servants, nor full time journalists but professional men and particularly lawyers. They lacked both the security of income and tenure to undertake a major commitment to public affairs. For example, Badruddin Tyabjis participation in Muslim and other public affairs in 1876 and 1879 is perhaps reflected in the one-third decrease in his annual income during these years. However, it was in championing issues involving the specific interests of other groups that the graduates forged their position in the wider arena of city politics. Yet in so doing they retained their own distinctive character and gave the issues themselves a broader ideological and even embryo nationalist context. This was evident in the agitation against the Trades License Tax imposed by the Bombay government in 1878 to Trades License Tax to finance Stracheys Insurance fund. Bombay, a city in which commerce permeated most facets of life, produced a storm of protest and, after consultations between prominent Indians and Europeans in the European dominated Bombay Chamber of commerce, a meeting was convened for 19 february 1878. The license tax agitation had highlighted the increasing self-awareness of the traders. It can also be noted that, with the decline in the 1850s and 1860s and even 1870s of the commercial base of many of the princely merchant houses established in the 1830s and 1840s, the industrialists tended to move in, fill the vacuum and, though parvenus, assume their quasi-aristocratic role. The 1870s was a crucial period in this transition; in the second half of the decade it seemed that the basis of industrial wealth was not as firm as the large profits reaped earlier had indicated. The famine had caused a trade depression,

but the resultant decreased demand was reflected not by decreased production but by the establishment of new mills. The diversity that characterized Bombays social structure, a diversity of both open and closed groups, meant that it was particularly difficult to achieve a broad based and unified pattern of public and political activity. The riots that took place in 1893, have a religious profile, they are to be understood in terms of group location. They drew on established practices, on modes of city behaviour developed in festivals and crowd occasions, and they expressed locality social cohesion and identity. Putting it differently, when the riots broke out and people came onto streets in the name of religion they did so in terms of those underlying patterns of group organizations and group activity which already existed in the behavioural discourse of the locality and of the other localities that collectively made the city. Thus it can be said, various crowd/riot aggressions had structurally similar underlays, and reflected the same behavioural discourse even if the determinant issue which defined the addressee differed from occasion to occasion. Other and otherness were different according to the issue in various riots, but the social entities activated were similar in how the aggression was structured if not in the specifics of the attack or its degree of violence. Action was much the same but the other differed. The years immediately after World War I in the city of Bombay were characterized by considerable social ferment and state of anomie. The increasing density of the population in the city combined with acute shortages in

consumer goods, and consequent rises in the cost of living, to create a climate of discontent and uncertainty. This climate was reflected in the disquiet which affected the middle and the lower middle-classes and in a rash of strikes which affected the working classes of Bombay. Yet despite the pervading presence of unrest and of its concrete manifestations in Bombay in late 1918 and early 1919, no movement emerged which gave unified expression to the disparate range of grievances. With the advent of Gandhian resistance and home rule movement, in their act against Rowlatt act, members of all the religious communities actively participated in the activities of the day; Hindus, Muslims and even Parsis and Christians participated in the activities of the day on 6th of April, 1919. This went on in even few days following this. The composition of the crowd reflected its various stages as a corporate entity and its increasing hysteria. Its original nucleus and its major single component throughout comprised the owners, clerks, and other employees in the various cloth and bullion markets and in the shops of the area. In the year 1930, when civil disobedience movement, under the leadership of Gandhiji had begun, Bombay was also an active participant. Under the guidance of persons like, K. f. Nariman and women like Kamladevi Chattopadhyaya and Avantikabai Gokhale, this movement was carried out here, with people walking to the shrine of Haji Ali and making salt thus. Many were arrested. Some major framing occasions like National Week, Tilak Day, and the monthly Gandhi and flag raising days were

observed. As for Bombay in 1930, the crowd-congress relationship produced a mix which emotionally challenged the position of Raj. Apart from the measurable impact of the various boycotts and hartals on the running of the state, psychologically the massive street confrontations of police with actors and audiences affected British self assurance. Thus though not all groups were affected, the Gandhian way of struggle of Swaraj became popular. After the adoption of the resolution to inaugurate Quit India movement on 8 August and the arrest of the key members of the working committee early in the morning of the following day, there was an immediate response of public anger to the arrests. In the next few days in Bombay and in cities elsewhere there were mass demonstrations and spontaneous protests which were temporarily quelled by the government use of the police and army. The author has tried to analyse Quit India movement in an intense manner, he says that, the movement so widespread like this, varied a lot with different cities and places. Involvement of people at different times also needs to be scrutinized better. After talking about various aspects of rise of Bombay as a colonial city, an account over the architecture of Bombay, during colonial times would be presented here. In this discussion, we would begin with arguments by scholar Thomas R. Metcalf. At first he mentions views of T. Roger Smith who said that the British should not carry into India a new style of architecture, but rather should follow the example of those whom they had supplanted as rulers, the Muslims, who seized upon the art indigenous to the countries conquered, adapting to suit their own needs and ideas. He insisted that indeed it was impossible for the

architecture of the west to be suitable to the natives of the east. A debate began over this matter among the British. British builders in the empire sought as well to take into account what they saw as the special demands that the climate, and with it the colonial style of life, imposed on architecture. As a result, all agreed that successful colonial building involved incorporation or adaptation of some elements of indigenous design. Colonial architecture in sum, no matter of what elements particular buildings were constructed, remained always distinct. Neither European nor Indian, it made tangible, and helped define, the uniquely colonial culture of which it was a part. During the first decades of their rule in India, following the victories at Plassey(1757) and Buxar (1763), the British gave little thought to architecture. For the most part, they were engaged in extending and consolidating their hold over the subcontinent, a task not completed until the mid-nineteenth century. Concentration over architecture was basically restricted to Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. Each had at its core a massive fort, the seat of colonial government for the city and its hinterland; arrayed outside its ramparts were mercantile offices, civic buildings, churches, clubs, official residences and other structures required by the colonial elite. Generally in their architectural style, these buildings transplanted contemporary European forms on Indian soil. Cities founded as trading outposts, and subsequently developed as centres of European commerce and government, the presidency capitals, with their substantial white populations and British forms of local selfgovernment, to some degree were regarded as extensions of

Europe in Asia, and their architecture inevitably reflected this conception. By the time western capital of Bombay had spurted to wealth and prosperity-in the middle decades of nineteenth century- Gothic had triumphed in Englands battle of the styles. Hence Bombays major civic structures were clothed in Gothic forms. Thus to a great extent Bombays architecture a product of its mid-Victorian boom that the city retains to this day a distinctively Gothic appearance. As discussed earlier, as Bombays economy grew, from the mid-nineteenth century, there was a need to expand railways and shipping, and develop the administrative structure. Many new buildings were constructed during this time. These buildings reflected the culture and confidence of the rulers. This importation of European styles meant several things. First it expressed the British desire to create a familiar landscape in an alien country. Second, the British felt that European styles would best symbolize their superiority, authority and power. Third, they thought that buildings that looked European would mark out the difference and distance between the colonial masters and their Indian subjects. Initially these buildings were at odds with the traditional Indian buildings. Indians too got used to European architecture and made it their own. As hinted earlier, in turn Europeans too adopted some Indian styles to suit their needs. For public buildings three broad architectural styles were used. Two of these were direct imports from fashions prevalent in England.

The first was called neo-classical or the new classical. Its characteristics included construction of geometrical structures fronted with lofty pillars. It was derived from a style that was originally typical of buildings in ancient Rome, and was subsequently revived, re-adapted and made popular during the European renaissance. The British imagined that a style that embodied the grandeur of imperial Rome could now be made to express the glory of imperial India. The Mediterranean origins of this architecture were also considered to be suitable for tropical weather. The town hall in Bombay was constructed in this style in 1833. Another group of commercial buildings build during the cotton boom of the 1860s, was the Elphinstone Circle. Subsequently named Horniman Circle after an English editor who courageously supported Indian nationalists, this building was inspired from models in Italy. It made innovative use of covered arcades at ground level to shield the shopper and pedestrian the fierce sun and rain of Bombay. Another style that was extensively used was the neoGothic. It was characterized by high-pitched roofs, pointed arches and detailed decoration. The Gothic style had its roots in buildings, especially churches, built in northern Europe during medieval period of Europe. The neo-Gothic or new Gothic style was revived in mid-nineteenth century in England. This was the time when government in Bombay was building its infrastructure and this style was adapted in Bombay. An impressive group of buildings facing the seafront, including Secretariat, University of Bombay and high court all were built in this style. Indians

gave money for some of these buildings. The university hall was made with money donated by Sir Cowasjee Jehangir Readymoney, a rich parsi merchant. The university clock tower was similarly funded by the banker Premchand Roychand and was named after his mother Rajabai tower. Indian merchants were happy to adopt the neo- Gothic style since they believed that building styles, like many ideas brought in by the English, were progressive and would help make Bombay a modern city. However the most spectacular example of neo- Gothic style is the Victoria Terminus, the station and headquarters of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway company. The British invested a lot in design and construction of railway station in cities, since they were proud of having successfully built an all-India railway network. As a group these buildings dominated the central Bombay skyline and their uniform neo- Gothic style gave a distinctive character to the city. Towards the beginning of the twentieth century a new hybrid architectural style developed which combined the Indian with the European. This was called Indo-Saracenic. Indo was shorthand for Hindu and Saracen was a term used by Europeans to designate Muslims. The inspiration for this style was medieval buildings in India with their domes, chhatris, jails, arches. By integrating Indian and European styles in public architecture the British wanted to prove that they were legitimate rulers of India. The Gateway of India, built in the traditional Gujarati style to welcome King George V and Queen Mary to India in 1911, is the most famous example of this style. The industrialist Jamshedji Tata built the Taj Mahal Hotel in a similar style. Besides

being a symbol of Indian enterprise, this building became a challenge to the racially exclusive clubs and hotels maintained by the British. In the more Indian localities of Bombay traditional styles of decoration and building predominated. The lack of space in the city and crowding led to a type of building unique to Bombay, the chawl, the multi-storeyed single room apartments with long open corridors built around a courtyard. Such buildings which housed many families sharing common spaces helped in the growth of neighborhood identity and solidarity. Architecture reveals the aesthetic ideals prevalent at a time and variations within those ideals. Thus in this discussion the attempt has been made to trace how the city now known as Mumbai, then Bombay, developed in the course of time during colonial taking into account views and data provided by some scholars.

Bibliography:
Masselos Jim: The City in Action, Bombay Struggles For Power, Collected Essays (2) Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner edited: Bombay, Metaphor for modern India (3) Jstor: (a)Padma Prakash: The making of Bombay: Social cultural and political dimensions, Economic and Political Weekly Vol 28 No. 40, Oct 1993 (b) Patrick Cadell and John Page: The Acquisition and Rise of Bombay, Source: Journal of the Asiatic society of Great Britain and Ireland.Oct 1958 (c) Meera Kosambi and John E.Brush: Three Colonial Port Cities In India, Source: Geographical Review, American Geographical Society, Jan. 1988 (4) Thomas R. Metcalf: Forging the Raj, Essays on British India in the Heyday of Empire
(1)