Mumbai

Mumbai [mum′bī΄]

seaport in W India, on the Arabian Sea: capital of Maharashtra state: pop. 9,926,000: formerly Bombay

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Mum·bai (mŭmʹbī') Formerly Bom·bay (bŏm-bāʹ).

A city of west-central India on coastal Mumbai Island and adjacent Salsette Island. It is India's main port and commercial center. Population: 9,925,891.

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formerly Bombay

City (pop., 2001 prelim.: city, 11,914,398; metro. area, 16,368,084), capital of Maharashtra state, western India.

Located partly on Mumbai Island, it is flanked by Mumbai Harbour and the Arabian Sea. It is India's principal port on that sea and one of the largest and most densely populated cities in the world. The town was acquired by the Portuguese in 1534. It was ceded to the English as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, who married Charles II in 1661. Granted to the British East India Company in 1668, it became the company's headquarters in 1672, and in 1708 it was made the centre of British authority in India. After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Mumbai grew to be the largest distributing entrepôt in India. It remains India's economic hub and the heart of financial and commercial activity, its cultural and education centre, and headquarters of its film industry.

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▪ India

Introduction

formerly  Bombay 

      city, capital of Maharashtra (Mahārāshtra) state, southwestern India, and the country's financial and commercial centre and principal port on the Arabian Sea. Located on an island just off Maharashtra's coast, Mumbai is one of the largest and most densely populated cities in the world. It was built on a site of ancient settlement, and it took its name from the local goddess Mumba—a form of Parvati (Pārvatī), the consort of Shiva, one of the principal deities of Hinduism—whose temple once stood in what is now the southeastern section of the city.

      Mumbai has long been the centre of India's cotton textile industry, but its manufacturing industries are now well diversified, and its commercial and financial institutions are strong and vigorous. It suffers, however, from some of the perennial problems of many large, expanding industrial cities: air and water pollution, widespread areas of substandard housing, and overcrowding. The last problem is exacerbated by the physical limits of the city's island location. Area about 239 square miles (619 square km). Pop. (2001) city, 11,978,450; urban agglom., 16,434,386.

Landscape

City site

      The city of Mumbai occupies a peninsular site on Bombay Island, a landmass originally composed of seven islets lying off the Konkan coast of western India; since the 17th century the islets have been joined through drainage and reclamation projects, as well as through the construction of causeways and breakwaters to form Bombay Island. East of the island are the sheltered waters of Mumbai Harbour. Bombay Island consists of a low-lying plain, about one-fourth of which lies below sea level; the plain is flanked on the east and west by two parallel ridges of low hills. Colaba Point, the headland formed on the extreme south by the longer of these ridges, protects Mumbai Harbour from the open sea. The western ridge terminates at Malabar Hill, which, rising 180 feet (55 metres) above sea level, is one of the highest points in Mumbai. Between Colaba Point and Malabar Hill lies the shallow expanse of Back Bay. On a slightly raised strip of land between the head of Back Bay and the harbour is an area called the Fort, the site of the 17th-century British fortifications (little of which remains standing) within and around which the city grew; the area is now occupied chiefly by public and commercial offices. From Back Bay the land stretches northward to the central plain. The extreme northern segment of Mumbai is occupied by a large salt marsh.

      The old city covered about 26 square miles (67 square km), stretching from Colaba Point on the southern tip of Bombay Island to the areas known as Mahim and Sion on its northern coast. In 1950 Mumbai expanded northward, embracing the large island of Salsette, which was joined to Bombay Island by a causeway. By 1957 a number of suburban municipal boroughs and some neighbouring villages on Salsette were incorporated into Greater Mumbai—the metropolitan region surrounding Bombay Island and the city itself. Since then Greater Mumbai has continued to expand. During the early 1970s, in an effort to relieve congestion, Salsette Island was linked to the mainland by a bridge across Thana Creek, the headwaters of Mumbai Harbour.

 The natural beauty of Mumbai is unsurpassed by that of most other cities in the region. The entrance into Mumbai Harbour from the sea discloses a magnificent panorama framed by the Western Ghats (mountains) on the mainland. The wide harbour, studded with islands and dotted with the white sails of innumerable small craft, affords secure shelter to ships, particularly when storms lash the coast. The largest of the harbour's islands is Elephanta (Elephanta Island), which is famous for its 8th- and 9th-century cave temples.

      Typical trees in the city include coconut palms, mango trees, and tamarinds, as well as banyan trees. Salsette Island was once the haunt of wild animals such as tigers, leopards, jackals, and deer, but those are no longer found there. Animal life now consists of cows, oxen, sheep, goats, and other domestic species. Birdlife includes vultures, pigeons, cranes, and ducks.

Climate

      The climate of Mumbai is warm and humid. There are four seasons. Cool weather prevails from December to February and hot weather from March to May. The rainy season, brought by monsoon winds from the southwest, lasts from June to September and is followed by the post-monsoon season, lasting through October and November, when the weather is again hot. Mean monthly temperatures vary from 91 °F (33 °C) in May to 67 °F (19 °C) in January. Annual rainfall is about 70 inches (1,800 mm), with an average of 24 inches (600 mm) occurring in July alone.

City layout

      The older part of Mumbai is much built-up and devoid of vegetation, but the more affluent areas, such as Malabar Hill, contain some greenery; there are also a number of open playgrounds and parks. In the course of urbanization, some residential sections of Mumbai have fallen into a state of serious disrepair, while in other areas clusters of makeshift houses (often illegal “squatter” settlements) have arisen to accommodate the city's expanding population. Moreover, an alarming amount of air and water pollution has been generated by Mumbai's many factories, by the growing volume of vehicular traffic, and by the nearby oil refineries.

      The financial district is located in the southern part of the city, in the Fort area. Farther south (around Colaba) and to the west along the Back Bay coast and on Malabar Hill are residential neighbourhoods. To the north of the Fort is the principal business district, which gradually merges into a commercial-residential area. Most of the older factories are located in this part of the city. Still farther north are more residential areas, and beyond them are recently developed industrial zones as well as some squatter districts and other areas of overcrowded and poorly maintained housing.

      Housing is largely privately owned, though there is some public housing built by the government through publicly funded corporations or by private cooperatives with public funds. Mumbai is very crowded, and housing is scarce for anyone who is not wealthy. (For this reason, commercial and industrial enterprises have found it increasingly difficult to attract mid-level professional, technical, or managerial staff.) In an attempt to stem the ongoing immigration of unskilled labour that has increased the city's indigent and homeless population, city planners have encouraged enterprises to locate across Mumbai Harbour and have banned the development and expansion of industrial units inside the city; their efforts, however, have been largely unsuccessful.

      Mumbai's architecture is a mixture of florid Gothic Revival styles—characteristic of the United States and Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries—and contemporary designs. The older administrative and commercial buildings are intermingled with skyscrapers and multistoried concrete-block buildings.

People

      Mumbai's growth since the 1940s has been steady if not phenomenal. At the turn of the 20th century its population was some 850,000; by 1950 it had more than doubled; and over the next 50 years it increased nearly 10-fold to exceed 16 million. The city's birth rate is much lower than that of the country as a whole because of family-planning programs. The high overall growth rate is largely attributable to the influx of people in search of employment. Because of the limited physical expanse of the city, the growth in Mumbai's population has been accompanied by an astounding increase in population density. By the start of the 21st century the city had reached an average of some 68,500 persons per square mile (26,500 per square km). Settlement is especially dense in much of the city's older section; the wealthy areas near Back Bay are less heavily populated.

   The city is truly cosmopolitan, and representatives of almost every religion and region of the world can be found there. Almost half the population is Hindu (Hinduism). Significant religious minorities include Muslims (Islām), Christians (Christianity), Buddhists (Buddhism), Jains (Jainism), Sikhs (Sikhism), Zoroastrians (Zoroastrianism), and Jews (Judaism). Almost every Indian language (Indian languages) and many foreign languages are spoken in Mumbai. Marathi (Marāṭhī language), the state language, is the dominant Indian language, followed by Gujarati (Gujarati language), Hindi (Hindi language), and Bengali (Bengali language) (Bangla). Other languages include Pashto (Pashto language), Arabic (Arabic language), Chinese (Chinese languages), English (English language), and Urdu (Urdu language).

Economy

      Mumbai is the economic hub and commercial and financial centre of India. Its economic composition in some respects mirrors India's unique mosaic of prosperity and technological achievement vis-à-vis impoverishment and underdevelopment. While Mumbai contains the Indian Atomic Energy Commission's establishment, with its nuclear reactors (nuclear reactor) and plutonium separators, many areas of the city continue to rely on traditional biogenic sources of fuel and energy (such as cow dung).

Manufacturing

      Although cotton textile manufacturing, through which Mumbai prospered in the 19th century, remains important, it has lost much ground to newer industries, especially since the late 20th century. Production of metals, chemicals, automobiles, and electronics along with a host of ancillary industries are now among the city's major enterprises. Other manufacturing activities, such as food processing, papermaking, printing, and publishing, also are significant sources of income and employment.

Finance and other services

      The Reserve Bank of India, the country's central bank, is located in Mumbai. A number of other commercial banks, a government-owned life insurance corporation, and various long-term investment financial institutions also are based in the city. All these institutions have attracted major financial and business services to Mumbai.

      The Bombay Stock Exchange is the country's leading stock and share market. Although a number of economic hubs sprang up around the country since independence and reduced the exchange's pre-independence stature, it remains the preeminent centre in volume of financial and other business transacted and serves as a barometer of the country's economy.

Transportation

  Mumbai is connected by a network of roads to the rest of India. It is the railhead for the Western and Central railways, and trains from the city carry goods and passengers to all parts of the country. Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport is an important point of entry for many international flights, and nearby Santa Cruz Airport accommodates domestic traffic. Mumbai handles some three-fifths of India's international flights and nearly two-fifths of its domestic flights. The facilities provided by the city's harbour make Mumbai India's principal western port. Although other major ports have sprung up on the west coast— Kandla, in the state of Gujarat (Gujarāt), to the north; Marmagao, in the state of Goa, to the south; and Kochi (Cochin), in the state of Kerala, farther south—Mumbai still handles a significant portion of India's maritime trade. Suburban electric train systems provide the main public transportation, conveying hundreds of thousands of commuters within the metropolitan region daily. There also is a municipally owned bus fleet.

Administration and society

Government

      As the capital of Maharashtra (Mahārāshtra) state, the city is an integral political division of the state government, the headquarters of which are called the Mantralaya. The state administers Mumbai's police force and has administrative control over certain city departments. The central Indian government controls communication and transportation infrastructure, including the postal service, the railways, the port, and the airport. Mumbai is the headquarters of India's western naval fleet and the base for the Indian flagship, INS Mumbai.

      The government of the city is vested in the fully autonomous Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM). Its legislative body is elected on adult franchise every four years and functions through its various standing committees. The chief executive, who is appointed every three years by the state government, is the municipal commissioner. The mayor is annually elected by the MCGM; the mayor presides over corporation meetings and enjoys the highest honour in the city but has no real administrative authority.

Municipal services

      The manifold functions of the city government include the provision or maintenance of medical services, education, water supply, fire services, garbage disposal, markets, gardens, and engineering projects such as drainage development and the improvement of roads and street lighting. The MCGM operates the transport system inside the city and the supply of electricity as public utilities. After obtaining electric energy from a grid system supplied by publicly and privately owned agencies, the MCGM ensures that it is distributed throughout the city. The water supply, also maintained by the municipality, comes largely from Tansa Lake, in the adjoining Thane district of Maharashtra, and secondarily from Vaitarna, Tulsi, and Vehar lakes in Mumbai.

Health

      Mumbai has more than 100 hospitals, including those run by federal, state, or city authorities and a number of specialized institutions treating tuberculosis, cancer, and heart disease. In addition, there are a number of prominent private hospitals. Also located in Mumbai is the Haffkine Institute, a leading bacteriologic research centre specializing in tropical diseases.

Education

      Mumbai's literacy rate is much higher than that of the country as a whole. Primary education is free and compulsory; it is the responsibility of the MCGM. Secondary education is provided by public and private schools supervised by the state government. There also are public and private polytechnic institutes and institutions offering students a variety of degree and diploma courses in mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering. The Indian Institute of Technology, operated by the central government, is located in the city. The University of Mumbai (Mumbai, University of), established in 1857, has more than 100 constituent colleges and more than two dozen teaching departments. Several colleges in the state of Goa are affiliated with the university.

Cultural life

      Mumbai's cultural life reflects its ethnically diverse population. The city has a number of museums, libraries, literary organizations, art galleries, theatres, and other cultural institutions. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India), housed in a building that is a British architectural mixture of Hindu and Muslim styles, contains three main sections: art, archaeology, and natural history. Nearby is the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai's first permanent art gallery and a centre for cultural and educational activities. Western and Indian music concerts, festivals, and dance productions are held throughout the year in the city's many cultural and entertainment facilities. Mumbai also is the centre of the enormous Indian film industry, known as Bollywood.

      Krishnagiri Forest, a national park in the north of metropolitan Mumbai, is a pleasant vacation resort located near the Kanheri Caves, site of an ancient Buddhist (Buddhism) university; the more than 100 caves contain gigantic Buddhist sculptures dating from the 2nd to the 9th century BCE. There are several public gardens, including the Jijamata Udyan, which houses Mumbai's zoo in the city proper; the Baptista Garden, located on a water reservoir, also in the centre of the city; and the Pherozshah Mehta Gardens and the Kamala Nehru Park, both on Malabar Hill.

      Sports enjoy a broad following in Mumbai. Cricket matches, which are popular throughout India, are played at the Cricket Club of India. Athletic and cycling track events attract many enthusiasts. Juhu Beach is a popular area for bathing and swimming.

      Mumbai is an important centre for the Indian printing industry and has a vigorous press. Daily newspapers are printed in English (English language), Marathi (Marāṭhī language), Hindi (Hindi language), Gujarati (Gujarati language), Urdu (Urdu language), and other languages. Several monthlies, biweeklies, and weeklies also are published in the city. The regional station of All-India Radio is centred in Mumbai. Television services for the city began in 1972.

History

      The Koli, an aboriginal tribe of fishermen, were the earliest known inhabitants of present-day Mumbai, though Paleolithic (Paleolithic Period) stone implements found at Kandivli, in Greater Mumbai, indicate that the area has been inhabited by humans for hundreds of thousands of years. The city was a centre of maritime trade with Persia and Egypt in 1000 BCE. It was part of Ashoka's (Ashoka) empire in the 3rd century BCE, and in the 2nd century CE it was known as Heptanesia to Ptolemy, the ancient Egyptian astronomer and geographer of Greek descent. The city was ruled in the 6th to 8th centuries by the Chalukyas (Chalukya dynasty), who left their mark on Elephanta Island (Gharapuri). The Walkeswar Temple at Malabar Point was probably built during the rule of Shilahara chiefs from the Konkan coast (9th–13th century). Under the Yadavas (Yādava Dynasty) of Devagiri (later Daulatabad; 1187–1318) the settlement of Mahikavati (Mahim) on Bombay Island was founded in response to raids from the north by the Khalji dynasty (Khaljī dynasty) of Hindustan in 1294. Descendants of these settlers are found in contemporary Mumbai, and most of the place-names on the island date from this era. In 1348 the island was conquered by invading Muslim forces and became part of the kingdom of Gujarat (Gujarāt).

      A Portuguese attempt to conquer Mahim failed in 1507, but in 1534 Sultan Bahādur Shah, the ruler of Gujarat, ceded the island to the Portuguese. In 1661 it came under British (British Empire) control as part of the marriage settlement between King Charles II and Catherine Of Braganza, sister of the king of Portugal. The crown ceded it to the East India Company in 1668.

      In the beginning, compared with Calcutta (Kolkata (Calcutta)) and Madras ( Chennai), Bombay—as it was called by the British—was not a great asset to the company but merely helped it keep a toehold on the west coast. On the mainland the Mughals (Mughal Dynasty) in the north, the Marathas (Marāṭhā) (under the venerated leader Chhatrapati Shivaji (Śivājī)) in the area surrounding and stretching eastward from Bombay, and the territorial princes in Gujarat to the northwest were more powerful. Even British naval power was no match for the Mughals, Marathas, Portuguese, and Dutch, all of whom had interests in the region. By the turn of the 19th century, however, external events helped stimulate the growth of the city. The decay of Mughal power in Delhi, the Mughal-Maratha rivalries, and the instability in Gujarat drove artisans and merchants to the islands for refuge, and Bombay began to grow. With the destruction of Maratha power, trade and communications to the mainland were established and those to Europe were extended, and Bombay began to prosper.

      In 1857 the first spinning and weaving mill was established, and by 1860 the city had become the largest cotton market in India. The American Civil War (1861–65) and the resulting cutoff of cotton supplies to Britain caused a great trade boom in Bombay. But, with the end of the Civil War, cotton prices crashed and the bubble burst. By that time, though, the hinterland had been opened, and Bombay had become a strong centre of import trade. The opening in 1869 of the Suez Canal, which greatly facilitated trade with Britain and continental Europe, also contributed to Bombay's prosperity.

      Yet as the population increased, unkempt, overcrowded, and unsanitary conditions became more widespread. plague, for example, broke out in 1896. In response to these problems, the City Improvement Trust was established to open new localities for settlement and to erect dwellings for the artisan classes. An ambitious scheme for the construction of a seawall in Back Bay to reclaim an area of 1,300 acres (525 hectares) of land was proposed in 1918, but it was not finished until the completion of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Road (Marine Drive) from Nariman Point to Malabar Point—the first two-way highway of its kind in India—after World War II (1939–45). In the postwar years the development of residential quarters in suburban areas was begun, and the administration of Bombay city through a municipal corporation was extended to the suburbs of Greater Bombay.

 Under the British, the city had served as the capital of Bombay Presidency (province), and during the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was a centre of both Indian national and South Asian regional political activity. In 1885 the first session of the Indian National Congress (a focus of both pro-Indian and anti-British sentiment until independence) was held in the city, where subsequently, at its 1942 session, the Congress passed the “Quit India” resolution, which demanded complete independence for India—finally achieved in 1947. From 1956 until 1960 Bombay was the scene of intense Maratha protests against the two-language (Marathi-Gujarati) makeup of Bombay state (of which Bombay remained the capital), a legacy of British imperialism. These protests led to the state's partition into the modern states of Gujarat and Maharashtra (Mahārāshtra) in 1960. The city of Bombay was made the capital of Maharashtra that year, and in the mid-1990s it changed its name to Mumbai, the Marathi name for the city. In the early 21st century Mumbai experienced a number of terrorist attacks. Among the most notable of these were the bombing of a train in July 2006 and the simultaneous siege of several sites in the city in late November 2008; nearly 200 lives were lost in each of the two incidents.

Chakravarthi Raghavan

Additional Reading

Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. 8 (1908); and S.M. Edwardes, The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island, 3 vol. (1909–10, reprinted 1977–78), provide a wealth of detail on Bombay's history up to British times. S.S. Jha, Structure of Urban Poverty: The Case of Bombay Slums (1986); Meera Kosambi, Bombay in Transition: The Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial City, 1880-1980 (1986); United Nations Dept. Of International Economic And Social Affairs, Population Growth and Policies in Mega-Cities: Bombay (1986); Nigel Harris, Economic Development, Cities, and Planning: The Case of Bombay (1978); Jal F. Bulsara, Patterns of Social Life in Metropolitan Areas, with Particular Reference to Greater Bombay (1970); B.K. Boman-Behram and A.N. Confectioner, The Decline of Bombay (1969); and D.T. Lakdawala et al., Work, Wages, and Well-Being in an Indian Metropolis: Economic Survey of Bombay City (1963), include discussions of urban problems.Chakravarthi Raghavan

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