Segregation and the Social Relations of Place, Bombay, 1890–1910

Abstract

For many, a defining feature of the colonial Indian city is the high rate of segregation of its European and Indians residents. Building on recent work that explores the messy realities of social and spatial relations, this paper argues that the social geographies of the colonial city were built on the social relations of place—the network of social relations that are bound up with a particular material setting. The result was that social spaces were centred on overlapping geographic patterns, intense negotiations over space, and heterogeneous lived-in spaces. In this paper, these points are examined through the case of Bombay's Modern Town at the turn of the twentieth century. Modern Town was supposedly the home of the city's European population and it stood in sharp contrast to the city's Native Town. However, Modern Town did not conform to the spatial topographies described by most writers. While formal residential segregation existed, social and economic articulation and interaction ensured that the district's social spaces were meshed in differentiated and complex ways.

Keywords:

• segregation
• Bombay
• social relations of place
• Modern Town
• Native Town
• social distance
• class
• race

Notes

¹ Mrs. Guthrie, ‘Modern Town and Native Town’, in R. Karkaria (ed.), The Charm of Bombay: An Anthology of Writings in Praise of the First City of India (Bombay: Taraporvala, 1915), p.314; and George W. Steevens, In India (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1899), p.9. Modern Town and European Town were common names given to the city central core, while Native Town is frequently used for the area immediately north of the central district.

² Anthony King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London: Routledge, 1976), p.39; and Robert Home, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities (London: E. & F.N. Spon, 1997), pp.117–40.

³ John Cell, ‘Anglo-Indian Medical Theory and the Origins of Segregation in West Africa’, in American Historical Review, Vol.91 (April 1986), pp.307–35; A.J. Christopher, ‘Urban Segregation Levels in the British Overseas Empire and Its Successors, in the Twentieth Century’, in Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, Vol.17 (1992), pp.95–107; Philip Curtin, ‘Medical Knowledge and Urban Planning in Tropical Africa’, in American Historical Review, Vol.90 (June 1985), pp.594–613; Bill Freund, ‘Contrasts in Urban Segregation: A Tale of Two African Cities, Durban (South Africa) and Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire)’, in Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol.27 (Sept. 2001), pp. 527–46; Garth Myers, African Cities. Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice (London: Zed, 2011), pp.53–4; Sarah Smiley, ‘The City of Three Colours. Segregation in Colonial Dar es Salaam, 1891–1961’, in Historical Geography, Vol.37 (2009), pp. 178–96; and Maynard Swanson, ‘“The Asiatic Menace”: Creating Segregation in Durban, 1870–1900’, in International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol.16 (1983), pp.401–21.

⁴ Carl Nightingale, ‘The Transnational Contexts of Early Twentieth-Century American Urban Segregation’, in Journal of Social History, Vol.39, no.3 (Spring 2006), p.668.

⁵ Robin Butlin, Geographies of Empire: European Empires and Colonies, c. 1880–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp.515–8.

⁶ Norma Evenson, The Indian Metropolis: A View Toward the West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p.2.

⁷ Markus Daechsel, ‘Between Suburb and World Politics: Middle-Class Identities and the Refashioning of Space in Late Imperial Lahore, c. 1920–1950’, in Crispin Bates (ed.), Beyond Representation: Colonial and Postcolonial Constructions of Indian Identity (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), p.272.

⁸ Christopher, ‘Urban Segregation Levels’, p.97; and Satish Kumar, ‘The Evolution of Spatial Ordering in Colonial Madras’, in Alison Blunt and Cheryl McEwan (eds), Postcolonial Geographies (New York: Continuum, 2002), p.85.

⁹ Alain Jacquemin, Urban Development and New Towns in the Third World. Lessons from the New Bombay Experience (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), p.72. Even though he suggests the possibility that Europeans and Indians could share the same space, Jim Masselos reverts to what he calls the spatial template of Raj-Indian towns. See Jim Masselos, ‘Appropriating Urban Space: Social Constructs of Bombay in the Time of the Raj’, in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Special Issue, Vol.XIV (1991), pp.33–63.

¹⁰ William Bissell, Urban Design, Chaos and Colonial Power in Zanzibar (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010); Swati Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny (London: Routledge, 2005); Preeti Chopra, A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); William Glover, Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); and Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).

¹¹ Bissell, Urban Design, Chaos and Colonial Power, p.121.

¹² Swati Chattopadhyay, ‘Blurring Boundaries: The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta’, in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol.59 (2000), p.157.

¹³ Sara Mills, ‘Gender and Colonial Space’, in Gender, Place and Culture, Vol.3 (1996), p.137; see also Bissell, Urban Design, Chaos and Colonial Power; and Chopra, A Joint Enterprise.

¹⁴ Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis, p.32, n.83.

¹⁵ Sidney Low, A Vision of India (London: John Murray, 1911), p.10.

¹⁶ Count Von Koenigsmarck, ‘The Fascination of Bombay for a German’, in R. Karkaria (ed.), The Charm of Bombay: An Anthology of Writings in Praise of the First City of India (Bombay: Taraporvala, 1915), p.86.

¹⁷ Doreen Massey, ‘Power-Geometry and Progressive Sense of Place,’ in Jon Bird et al., Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change (London: Routledge, 1993), pp.59–69. There are other ways of viewing the links between space and social relations. Jim Masselos’ ideas of mental maps and accustomed space, for example, could also be used to explore the social dynamics, identities and behaviours within a neighbourhood. See Masselos, ‘Appropriating Urban Space’, pp.33–63.

¹⁸ Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002); and Thomas Metcalf, Imperial Connections. India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

¹⁹ Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis; and Masselos, ‘Appropriating Urban Space’, pp.33–63.

²⁰ Stephen M. Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay: A Retrospect (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1902); Mariam Dossal, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of Bombay City, 1845–1875 (Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp.16–20; Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis; and Jacquemin, Urban Development.

²¹ Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay, p.229.

²² Ibid., p.230. Also see Masselos, ‘Appropriating Urban Space’, p.35; Dossal, Imperial Designs, pp.192–4; and Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp.40–1.

²³ Karkaria, The Charm of Bombay, p.31; Rekha Ranade, Sir Bartle Frere and His Times. A Study of His Bombay Years (New Delhi: Mittal, 1990), pp.181–3; and Dinshaw Edulji Wacha, Shells for the Sands of Bombay being My Recollections and Reminiscences (Bombay: Anklesaria, 1920), pp.97–106, 425–8.

²⁴ As many scholars have noted, the census is problematic because of issues related to definitions, categories, accuracy, representation and power. See Bernard Cohn, ‘The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia’, in Bernard Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp.224–54. Nevertheless, it can provide information that few other sources can. See Richard Harris and Robert Lewis, ‘Colonial Anxiety Counted: Plague and Census in Bombay and Calcutta, 1901’, in Robert Peckham and David Pomfret (eds), Imperial Contagions: Medicine and Cultures of Planning in Asia, 1880–1949 (Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2012), pp.94–126.

²⁵ Low, A Vision of India, p.10. Other visitors’ descriptions can be found in Karkaria, The Charm of Bombay, pp.76–7, 137–40, 314, 332. The census count of 1,493 shops is not close to the reality of the city's commercial structure. Obviously missing are the multitude of small Indian shops and stalls in the city. According to Dossal, Bombay had 8,700 shops and stalls in 1849–50. By 1901 the number must have been much greater. See Dossal, Imperial Designs, p.29; and Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay, pp.204–306.

²⁶ Times of India, Calendar and Directory for 1900 (Bombay: Times of India Steam Press, 1900).

²⁷ Census of India, 1901, Vol. XIA, Bombay (Town and Island), Part VI, Tables, Imperial Table XV (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1901).

²⁸ Census of India, 1901, Bombay Tables, Special Table I: Classification of Buildings, pp.190–203.

²⁹ Massey, ‘Power-Geometry’.

³⁰ Carl Nightingale, ‘Segregation is Everywhere. A World History of Urban Color Lines’, unpublished MS., 2009, pp.82–174.

³¹ Glover, Making Lahore Modern.

³² Chattopadhyay, ‘Blurring Boundaries’; and Preeti Chopra, ‘Refiguring the Colonial City: Recovering the Role of Local Inhabitants in the Construction of Colonial Bombay, 1854–1918’, in Buildings and Landscape, Vol.14 (2007), pp.109–25.

³³ Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, pp.55–71.

³⁴ For a discussion of the importance of the cotton industry to other local sectors see Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, pp.76–81. Also see A.R. Burnett-Hurst, Labour and Housing in Bombay (London: P.S. King, 1925); and S.M. Rutangur, Bombay Industries: The Cotton Mills (Bombay: Indian Textile Journal, 1927).

³⁵ Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, pp.33–5, 124–67.

³⁶ Census of India, 1901, Bombay Tables, Imperial Table XI: Birth-Place, pp.88–119. It goes without saying that Modern Town underwent various colonial development plans before the 1850s, including the construction of the Apollo Bunder, the creation of the Colaba Causeway which welded the seven islands together (1838), and the opening of various educational and municipal institutions such as the high school, Elphinstone College and the town hall (1833). It was from the 1860s, however, that the modern form of Modern Town was put into place.

³⁷ Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, pp.35–44; Dossal, Imperial Designs, pp.15–33, 192–224; Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay, pp.248–50, 265–71, 279–92; Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis, pp.17–48; and Thomas Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (London: Faber, 1989).

³⁸ This re-building did not take place without criticism. For a short discussion of the disagreements over the imposition of an imperial landscape see Dossal, Imperial Designs, pp.195–6.

³⁹ Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay, p.292.

⁴⁰ Walter Crane, India Impressions with Some Notes of Ceylon during a Winter Tour, 1906–1907 (London: Methuen, 1907), pp.24–6.

⁴¹ A cotton green is an open space where cotton was stored before it was shipped out of the city to the mills.

⁴² Masselos, ‘Appropriating Urban Space’, pp.39–40.

⁴³ Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class, Resistance and the State in India, c. 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp.241, 242.

⁴⁴ Also see Frank Conlon, ‘Industrialization and the Housing Problem in Bombay, 1850–1940’, in Kenneth Ballhatchet and David Taylor (eds), Changing South Asia: Economy and Society, Vol. 4 (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1984), pp.153–68; and J.C. Masselos, ‘Changing Definitions of Bombay: City State to Capital City’, in Indu Banga (ed.), Ports and Their Hinterlands in India, 1700–1950 (New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 1992), pp.300–5.

⁴⁵ Dossal, Imperial Designs, pp.202–3. According to Frank Conlon, the attempt by the authorities to control the impact of industrial and railway expansion after 1860 ended in failure. See Conlon, ‘Industrialization and the Housing Problem’, p.158. The desire to plan the city changed with the advent of the plague in the late 1890s and the creation of the Bombay Improvement Trust in 1898. But even then, the Trust acted more as an urban renewal agency than as an institution with an overall planning vision for the city. See Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis; and Conlon, ‘Industrialization and the Housing Problem’, pp.161–3.

⁴⁶ Conlon, ‘Industrialization and the Housing Problem’, pp.153–4; and Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay, pp.323–4.

⁴⁷ Census of India, 1901, Volume XI. Bombay (Town and Island), Part V, Report (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1901), p.76.

⁴⁸ Steevens, In India, p.7. The thatched hut or cadjen was a common type of housing for sojourners employed as casual labour on reclamation and building sites. See Conlon, ‘Industrialization and the Housing Problem’, p.156. This was also the case for the casual dock workers employed on the city's docks in Modern Town.

⁴⁹ Steevens, In India, p.14. On the city's housing market and housing costs see Dossal, Imperial Designs, pp.196–200; and Conlon, ‘Industrialization and the Housing Problem’.

⁵⁰ Sir Stanley Reed, The India I Knew, 1897–1947 (London: Odhams Press Ltd., 1952), pp.23, 21.

⁵¹ Steevens, In India, p.14.

⁵² Census of India, 1901, Volume XI. Bombay (Town and Island), Part V, Report, p.74.

⁵³ Ibid., p.76.

⁵⁴ A circle is a census area, bigger than a block but smaller than a ward. The 200 circles in 1901 Bombay contained about 3,000 people on average. It is equivalent to a modern census tract.

⁵⁵ Census of India, 1901, Volume XI. Bombay (Town and Island), Part V, Report, pp.70–1.

⁵⁶ ‘Development of Bombay. Cosmopolitan Spirit’, Times of India (15 June 1911), p.8, in Karkaria, The Charm of Bombay, p.169. For the structure of the labour market see Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism, pp.72–123.

⁵⁷ Most of this secondary labour market work involved casual labor. Walter Crane has a short but interesting description of the large number of Indian bearers and servants seeking work outside Modern Town's Thomas Cook tourist office. See Crane, India Impressions, pp.30–3.

⁵⁸ Quoted in Chandavarkar, Imperial Power, p.242. Also see Reed, The India I Knew, pp.21–7. While covering a different period and a different time, Graham Greene's African and Asian novels are suggestive of the range of interactions between the Indian population, Europeans and Americans. Both Henry Scobie in The Heart of the Matter and Thomas Fowler in The Quiet American are outsiders. They are forced by necessity and desire to seek social and geographic relations outside European and American society.

⁵⁹ Count Von Koenigsmarck, ‘A Night Scene’, in Karkaria, The Charm of Bombay, pp.283–5.

⁶⁰ Masselos, ‘Appropriating Urban Space’, p.36.