topics: |  british-india | history | mumbai

    ... the Portuguese church on the main island; its first site was just
    beyond the Fort where Victoria Terminus now stands and which place was
    already occupied by the temple to Mumba Devi ...

    ... Mumba or Mombai is a goddess without a mouth -- ironically, she is
    the Mother Goddess of Bombay, the city with no one common language but
    many ...

    ... Though an obscure local deity, an aboriginal personification of the
    Earth Mother, Maha Amba Aiee or `Mumba Devi' has turned out durable. The
    very name `Bombay' almost certainly comes from hers, for the city is
    called `Mumbai' in the vernacular. The British settlers assumed the name
    to come from `Buan Bahia', the Good Bay in Portuguese, and this theory
    was reiterated in most nineteenth-century books about the place, but it
    is now discredited: it cannot be right, since the earliest Portuguese
    settlers already called the place Bombain.

review by anoop

Bombay has a history unique among the major Indian cities: borne out of
colonial wrangling, it has grown to become one of the most cosmopolitan
cities in the world. This book illuminates at least part of the story that
has lead to what is now home to around 20 million people.

However, this history, while a slim and readable introduction to Bombay's
British period does not tell the whole story. The emphasis is not on the
varied populations of Bombay over the years, but mostly on the architecture,
the buildings, and the people (usually British) who built them. A few temples
are mentioned here and there, but nowhere is there an explanation as to why
all the names of places are in Marathi or Konkani (in the `vernacular' as
Tindall calls it, not bothering to even find out what languages the native
populations spoke and still speak).

The lack of detail outside of British history is blamed by Tindall in her
preface on the lack of historical research done by Indians. Perhaps a history
of Bombay will be written someday which includes original research. The rest
is certainly here in this book.

    By the early nineteenth century this community [of Baghdadi Jews] were
    coming under pressure from the Turks, the current overlords, and were
    turning their eyes eastwards, attracted by accounts of the religious
    tolerance and trading opportunities available in British India. (This
    fact should not be forgotten, wherever imperialism is discussed today in
    contemptuous terms) [emphasis added]

Gillian Tindall's prose reeks of Raj nostalgia despite several protestations
to the contrary (I was under the impression that the term `heathen worship'
was an anachronism; not so for Ms. Tindall). Like Peter Hopkirk, the view of
history is presented as unbiased but with biases that are buried so deep that
they are invisible to the author.