Mumbai: history and heritage

About Mumbai: history and heritage

By the ULTIMATE Mumbai Editorial Team

Regional Editor, South Asia: Tara de la Motte

Mumbai began as seven islands of Koli fishing villages. Over three centuries they were joined by causeways and land reclaimed from the sea into one peninsula, which became the busiest port and the financial capital of India. Its people came from every corner of the subcontinent and beyond, and its Victorian Gothic and Art Deco buildings are UNESCO World Heritage.

At a glance

Population: 12,442,373 in Greater Mumbai (Census of India, 2011, the most recent census), with more than 20 million in the metropolitan region.

Names through history: from Mumbadevi, the goddess of the Kolis; Bombaim (Portuguese), Bombay (British), Mumbai (official since 1995).

Seven islands of fishing villages, joined by causeways and reclaimed land into India’s greatest city.

Peoples: Marathi-speaking Maharashtrians, with Gujaratis, Parsis, Konkani Christians, Muslims, Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jews, Sindhis, South Indians and people from across India.

UNESCO World Heritage: the Elephanta Caves (1987), Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (2004) and the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai (2018).

The Kolis

The Kolis, fishing people of the Konkan coast, were the first inhabitants of the islands, and their villages, such as Worli and Versova, still land the catch each morning. The city’s name comes from Mumbadevi, their goddess, whose temple stands near Zaveri Bazaar.

Elephanta

Between the fifth and eighth centuries, artists carved great cave temples to Shiva on Elephanta Island in the harbour. Their colossal three-headed Sadashiva is one of the masterpieces of Indian sculpture.

The Portuguese and the dowry

The Gujarat Sultanate ceded the islands to Portugal in 1534. In 1661 they passed to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza on her marriage to Charles II, and in 1668 the crown leased them to the East India Company, which moved its western headquarters here.

Seven islands into one

From the eighteenth century causeways and reclamations, beginning with the Hornby Vellard, joined the islands into one. In the 1860s, when the American Civil War cut cotton supplies, Bombay’s cotton trade boomed, and mills and wealth followed. India’s first passenger train ran from Bombay to Thane in 1853.

A city of many peoples

Parsis, Zoroastrians whose ancestors came from Persia, became great merchants, shipbuilders and philanthropists; Baghdadi Jews built synagogues and libraries; and migrants from across India made the city their own. The Gateway of India, completed in 1924, was where the last British troops left in 1948, after independence.

Gothic, Deco and Bollywood

Victorian Gothic landmarks face the Oval Maidan, among them the High Court and the University, and CSMT (1888) is the masterpiece of the style. Opposite them stands one of the world’s largest groups of Art Deco buildings, along Marine Drive and the Back Bay. Bombay’s film industry, now known as Bollywood, began with India’s first feature film in 1913 and produces films watched across the world.

Our advice: take the morning ferry from the Gateway of India to Elephanta, walk the Oval Maidan at sunset with Gothic on one side and Art Deco on the other, and see a Hindi film in a single-screen cinema.

Sources

Population: Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, Census of India 2011. History: UNESCO World Heritage Centre; Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya; Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum; Central Railway (CSMT heritage); Maharashtra Tourism.

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