Lat: 18.931578000290000, Long: 72.838071999394000

Mumbai [Bombaim/Bombay/Greater Mumbai]

Mumbai Metropolitan Area (Bombay), India

Historical Background and Urbanism

The history of Mumbai (the former Bombay – also Mumbaim or Mombaim in many Portuguese documents and maps) is habitually approached as if it were a fairy tale beginning with Catherine of Braganza and her marriage to King Charles II of England, contracted in 1661 and celebrated a year later. Her dowry included two Portuguese possessions, Tangier and Mumbai. That’s the story told in travel guides, English chronicles and tourist brochures, etc. From the broader perspective it is not false, just a mitigated truth about the island group (nowadays a peninsula due to landfill) which took the name of the island João de Barros named for the goddess worshipped by the native Koli (fishermen) communities, Mumbadevi. But the Portuguese, whose carracks soon began to use it as a safe haven against storms and to take on water and other provisions, also emphatically called it the Good Life Island [Ilha da Boa Vida]. From the urban and building standpoint, the only significant pre-existing cluster on all the islands, besides the fishing villages and a deteriorating complex of Hindu tanks and caves, was the city of Thane at the far end of the bay. By itself, the history of Mumbai Island before English sovereignty may not be especially noteworthy. Perhaps only that is was the residence of Garcia de Orta (1500-1568), the renowned Portuguese medical doctor and scientist who wrote the Colóquio dos simples e drogras he cousas medicinais da India... His mansion served as the seat of British power. According to tradition, at least one sundial from that residence was preserved, which nevertheless bears the inserted coat-of-arms of an English governor... Significantly, almost all presentations use this sundial to portray a time about which people rarely want to know more – the time of BBB – Bombay before the British... the name of a research project mentioned in the bibliography; all the information summarised here is based on its results. But the Mumbai those presentations refer to was from early on more than just the island at the entrance to the bay with the same name, one of seven closing it on the western side. In many of them the surviving evidence of the Portuguese presence is much more influential and significant in contemporary times than the story of Garcia de Orta’s sundial. The initial texts contextualising this sub-region provided some information about the geographic space and the Portuguese historic process – namely concerning the Padroado (Patronage) – in what is today the Mumbai metropolitan area, Greater Mumbai, roughly delimited by Colaba Point to the south and Ghodbandar to the north opposite Vasai, and by Thane and Karanja to the east. It is also important to note that given the current size of Mumbai, which has absorbed areas that under Portuguese sovereignty were separated, the respective buildings and rare urban structures worthy of note are also autonomous. If we only focused here on the original Mumbai Island and its remaining vestiges from the Portuguese sovereignty period, besides reference to the aforementioned sundial we would have nothing more to add, given that entrance into the military area (Mumbai Navy Base) where it is found is forbidden. But photos taken nearly a century ago allow one to suspect that more elements from Garcia de Orta’s mansion may still exist there. Other constructions of Portuguese origin such as churches disappeared long ago or were replaced. A good example is Our Lady of Hope, built by the Franciscans in 1565 and located very close to the current Victoria Terminal (VT), one of the city’s two major rail terminals. Only the cross that once marked its forecourt remains, on Cross Maidan. According to John Fryer (1672-1681), Portuguese and Indians of the most diverse castes lived confusedly in the town of Mumbai. The houses were small and whitewashed, with shuttered windows and thatch roofs, except for the public buildings, which had tile roofs. He also notes that a Church of Our Lady of Glory was located in the town on the neighbouring island of Mazagaon, along with a sanctuary on a hill, and that a Saint Michael’s Church existed on another island, Mahim. Both invocations have persisted in more recent buildings, where, among other elements, inscriptions and gravestones nevertheless clearly indicate the origins of houses of worship and communities. These are mere examples of recurring situations. Following the general criteria used in this project, if we only focused on Mumbai Island or even added the other six original islands, we would be unable to leave a specific note about what is indeed most significant about the former Portuguese sovereignty in Greater Mumbai: the role played by the old clusters of Portuguese origin or influence in the structural framework of the metropolis, which extend well beyond the then island’s perimeter, even beyond the bounds of the original island group. When these places preserve identified architectural vestiges of Portuguese origin,they are covered in this work under various entries according to autonomous place name [e.g., Bandra, Belapur (Belaflor do Saboyo), Dongri, Erangal, Ghodbandar (Gorbandel), Karanja (Caranjá), Mandapeshwar (Manapacer), Manori, Nandakal and Thane (Taná), but also in the generic texts on Religious Architecture and Military Architecture of this sub-region/section, the Província do Norte. The marriage contract between the Portuguese and English crowns included Mumbai in the dowry of the Portuguese princess, without actually specifying in detail what this meant. This led to a conflict with overlapping bounds and history when the English arrived in the place so indicated to take possession. Basically, for the Portuguese the subject of the contract was Mumbai Island, while for the English it was the respective group of seven small islands: Colaba, Old Woman’s Island (Colaba Pequena), Mumbai, Mazagaon, Worli (Varoli), Mahim and Parel, as well as Salsette, Trombay (Turumbá) and Karanja/Uran (Caranjá) – in other words, the whole area around the bay which nowadays roughly comprises Greater Mumbai. Portugal eventually ceded the islands of Mumbai, Mazagaon and Parel in 1665, which in practice and in time meant it ceded the aforesaid seven islands, keeping only Salsette, Trombay and Karanja, the biggest ones, which were separated from the mainland by narrow creeks and channels. Those seven islands nowadays constitute the city of Mumbai properly speaking, though it is hard to distinguish them from the surrounding urban agglomeration that continues into Salsette. The English refused to back down and not only carried out a number of provocative acts but also took as much advantage as possible of the Maratha conquest, which led to the loss of the entire Província do Norte in 1740. And when the latter group’s power was broken in the late 18th century, the English gained sovereignty over the whole territory; this lasted until India’s independence in 1947. The intrinsic security aspects inherent to the island situation, along with the closeness of the mainland and the bay’s excellent port characteristics (deep water and sheltered from dominant winds) would determine the course of its extraordinary and necessarily unitary development. The centre of English power in the region was established in Garcia de Orta’s onetime fortified mansion, which they developed to make it bigger, with more urban and military expression. In 1687 the English East India Company’s centre of operations moved there from Surat; it leased the English islands the following year. In 1718 the urban cluster around the original Portuguese structures was surrounded by a fort. The core of Mumbai’s historic centre is called Fort even today. It served as the hub for the subsequent growth and landfill process that linked the islands, eventually joining the various urban and rural communities with Portuguese features, which had otherwise been growing on their own. Mazagaon (of which some structures remain in the Mathar Packadi district), Parel, Mahim and Sion were the major urban settlements on the seven islands; some focused on fishing activities, others on agriculture. Nowadays they are active neighbourhoods in the city’s morphology and complex lifestyle. Fishing villages such as Worli, Girgaon (of which some structures remain in the Khothachi Wadi district), Kalbadevi, Vadala and Dadar are nowadays city districts. They are mentioned in documents and in the excellent 19th century British cadastral surveys by Thomas Dickinson (1812-1816) and G.A. Layghton (1865-1872), where they were usually designated as Portuguese Church or Portuguese Manor. This unstructured sprawling growth, which specialist jargon likens to an oil slick, absorbed everything in its path but destroyed little or nothing, rather successively transforming, enlarging and adjusting to new realities. In the last few years, India’s extraordinary economic boom has unleashed in Mumbai property and infrastructure- related activities whose nature, scale and dynamics are erasing much what remained of Portuguese influence or origin in the ever complex and thriving metropolis. Natural silting and reclamations have linked, often almost unrecognisably, the seven islands making up the core city of this metropolis and which remain separated from its largest island, Salsette, by Mahim Creek. That island is much bigger than all the others and is separated from the mainland by a river-channel, the Ulhas, which once allowed circumnavigation, i.e., it was possible to take a northern route from the bay to the sea. The narrowest point of that now silted-up channel is where the first regional pole developed: Thane, a former regional capital and prosperous textile production centre which the Portuguese took over per the 1534 agreement granting them sovereignty over the region around the city of Vasai. The latter’s development was based on a factory established on the northern side of the aforementioned river’s bar. In all of Greater Mumbai, Salsette is the area which has most preserved built elements of Portuguese origin. This is due not just to its size and economic importance, but also because the Portuguese retained sovereignty over the island for three-quarters of a century more. It was rich and quite populated, and otherwise endowed with various temple complexes, tanks and sacred caves used for Hindu worship, especially those now found in Kanheri natural park, the only large amenity of its kind in the metropolitan area which neither is nor will be urbanised. Large Catholic communities persist in Salsette. Their main centre is probably Bandra at the southwest end of the island. But they are also present in Amboli, Daravi, Erangal, Gorai, Ghodbandar, Goregaon, Madh, Marol and Versova, where significant constructions still attest to their origin. A substantial number of Hindu sacred spaces were replaced and used as sites to further the Portuguese Padroado’s mission, here led mainly by Franciscans and Jesuits, who also founded churches near farming or fishing villages. The Portuguese chartered landowners (not all from the home country, for many were Goans whose services were thereby recognised by the Estado da Índia) built houses or towers as they were obliged to do by the terms of their concessions; the crown considered a militia one of the best ways to secure the territory. For this reason many residences were fortified, as were some monasteries and churches. The English and Maratha takeover forced the Portuguese to withdraw from the territory, including the clergy. But the measure did not apply to the Indians, so the Padroado was maintained. In the text which provides context for this volume, the issue of the conflict between the Padroado and Propaganda Fide for Catholic spiritual jurisdiction in what is now Greater Mumbai was sufficiently described. However, it remains to be said that many of the Portuguese churches were gradually replaced by others and often changed invocation, making it hard to ascertain their respective locations. There are many such cases, so this is not the place to provide a list. In any case, the accompanying map provides an idea of their quantity and density, which sometimes impacted local place names. Note, for example, that Mumbai’s international airport was until quite recently named after its location in Santacruz. Besides the fortified churches, monasteries and residences, the territory’s security was assured by a network of towers and small forts, of which some notable installations survive, though often thoroughly reworked by the English. Bandra, Madh, Dongri, Versova, Belapur, Colaba, Karanja and Thane are just some of the outstanding sites on the list; the last one is certainly the most impressive, especially with respect to the complex of smaller structures arranged systematically along the river. They are indelible marks on Greater Mumbai’s landscape, just like the two main road axes used to access the city centre, at the tip of the peninsula which is now the forma urbis of Mumbai.They result from splicing together the paths that originally crossed the islands and were almost systematically marked by the implantation of Catholic temples. For example, even nowadays when we follow them in a taxi from the airport to the centre, we successively pass the churches which replaced the ones originally raised by the Padroado’s agents. It is to be hoped that once this text is read (and especially the accompanying map, in which the sixty- odd sites correspond to elements that exist in an adulterated, ruined or renewed state) that perception will no longer be innocent, and that the extent of Portuguese sovereignty’s influence on the landscape and urban layout of one of Asia’s most fascinating cities will be keenly felt. Indeed, it is hoped that besides the matter of Catharine of Braganza’s dowry as presented in accounts of Mumbai’s history, readers will henceforth also understand that is a reason why the future metropolis was also endowed with an indelible number of features of markedly Portuguese origin.

Walter Rossa

Religious Architecture

Military Architecture

Urbanism

Housing