Bombay vs Mumbai

IN 1784, James Forbes discerning friends in the city lamented: I know your partiality for Bombay but in my opinion it is no longer the same place. I allow that the little Presidency has become very gay and lively, and I have passed a few weeks here with much satisfaction, but at all pleasures and entertainment, I could not prevent the thought from obtruding itself, that the high polish had debased the material; and you too plainly see all the m ore valuable ties of friendship and affection sacrificed to an ostentatious vanity which awkwardly endeavours to assume their semblance.

A little less than two centuries later, Nirad Chaudhuri expressed very nearly the same view of the evil city of Bombay. It had, in recent years, become the main source of the low and degraded Westernisation, which is flooding India; the Indian film being its typical product. Though Bombay still has a ballast of hard-headed and business-like Gujaratis and also of very conservative Maharashtrians in its hold, its saloons and upper decks are crowded with an Anglicised set which is counterfeit at most levels and debased at the lowest. The part of Bombay which is active socially and culturally is thus pseudo-cosmopolitan one.

Mumbai today remains a city of glaring contrasts of dire poverty and enormous wealth, of tradition and modernity solid gold and the tinsel which James Forbes friends detected as far back as in 1784. Mariam Dossal, Professor of History in Bombay University, writes on the city with the erudition of a true historian quite unlike the bogus historians who have mushroomed of late to provide instant comment for the newspapers. Her book is a work of solid, painstaking research and is profusely illustrated. She begins with Bombays Magna Carta delivered on August 8, 1672, when British law formally replaced Portuguese law on the island and Governor Gerald Aungier promised its inhabitants equality before the law. What he enjoined the first judge of the Bombay Judicature, Judge Wilcox, has sadly acquired great relevance today. The inhabitants of this Island consist of several Nations and Religions to wit English, Portuguese and other Christians, Moores, and Jentue, but you, when you sit in this seat of Justice and Judgment, must look upon them with one single eye as I do, without distinction of Nation or Religion in particular the Poor, the Orphan, the Widow and the Stranger. And this not only one against the other, but even against myself and those who are in office under me, nay against the Honble (East India) Company themselves.

Several factors have contributed to the citys decline the rancorous, though justified, agitation for its inclusion in Maharashtra, fed by unreasoning opposition to it, the birth of the Shiv Sena and the support it won from some Congressmen, industrialists and even Socialists. Nath Pai had no qualms about sharing the dais with Bal Thackeray. The Backbay Reclamation and the Congress fund-raisers did the rest. Soon the Shiv Sena became an industry. Corruption has spread wildly. Intellectual life declined in quality. Tinsel triumphed over gold. The admen and society belles who preformed on television after 26/11 reflected that as did the anchors who invited them.

With contested space as its central concern this book maps Bombay/Mumbais radical transformation from an agrarian settlement to a world city where expensive private property dominates every aspect of life. It documents the political and economic processes that led to this transformation. The city is associated with dreams and nightmares, Sixty per cent of Mumbais fifteen million people live in slums and there seems little hope of their abysmal living conditions being substantially improved. It is a theatre of greed and conflict, a city of commitment and hope.

The book helps one understand the ways in which the politics of land use have impacted on the lives and living conditions of Bombays inhabitants. Activists who exert themselves are mostly elitists. The poor are hardly organised. It is a depressing situation. Books like this should awaken thinking Mumbaikars to the needs of those who need their help most its downtrodden hapless citizens, prey alike to politicians and builders.