The modern city and the marginalization of original communities

Although the more immediate purpose of the causeways was to prevent and/or mitigate flooding from the rise of the creeks separating the islands, these engineering projects also revealed the long-term plans the British had for the Bombay area. They linked the seven islands into a unified land following the ideals of European civilization, transforming Bombay into a more manageable city, easier to adapt to the British urban system. Many elements of Victorian Britain were rapidly adapted to Bombay, perhaps most notoriously through its urban landscape, with the construction of churches, theaters and cricket clubs, but also larger landmarks such as the Victoria railway terminal, the Prince of Wales museum, the General Post Office, and the Gateway of India. Other elements of the British cultural and political system were also readily imposed in Bombay, including education, legal and medical systems, as well as transportation and land use.

The introduced land use planning laws initially encouraged the settling of newcomers on whichever spot of land they found convenient. Given that this stance resulted in the incursion of the Company’s land, they went on to take more drastic measures. The Company issued a uniform private property based system of land administration, which put an end to the diverse land tenures existing until that point—some of which came from the times of the indigenous dynasties mentioned earlier.

With the loss of their land tenures, the natives were also increasingly marginalized to very poor living conditions as the land of the city ran short for its exponential growth in population. The city’s industrial sector, originally focused on the cotton textile, continued to grow, but the existing infrastructure could not keep up with the ever-growing number of immigrants coming for temporary or longer period work in the mills, docks, and others. Many of them had to reside in streets and verandas, or under other poor living conditions. By 1911, Bombay had reached 1 million residents, 80 percent of whom were born outside the city.

The presence of these original communities in the city has not been attributed much importance. Prevalent conceptions of “urban heritage” in Mumbai are tinted with a European-inspired perspective, focusing on the buildings constructed during the times of the British colonization. The Save Bombay Committee was formed in 1973 by three Bombay intellectuals educated in Oxford and Cambridge as an effort to preserve the historical buildings and landmarks of the city in light of the increasing number of projects that sought to replace them with taller buildings and parking lots. Movements like this led to the creation of urban heritage legislation in 1991. However, this legislation had a heavy focus on the Victorian aspect of Mumbai and its associated neo-Gothic buildings. Rock-cut caves dating from the earliest settlements in the Bombay islands were simply not considered part of Mumbai’s “urban” heritage, alienating these and other indigenous monuments, and their communities, from the city.

According to the 2011 census, Mumbai (as the city was renamed in 1995) has a population of around 12.5 million people, 60% of which is concentrated on just 8% of the city’s land. This 8% includes the slums, and the last few marginalized koliwadas—settlements by the sea were the Koli people live— and gaothans—urban villages housing Mumbai’s original inhabitants, mainly farmers with livestock. Such figures highlight the overpopulation issue that affects so much of the city, with its poorer and marginalized inhabitants getting the worst part.