![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
Long known as innovative in modernist architecture, mid century Ahmedabad was also pioneering in another area of built form: housing. Starting in the 1920s when Indians seized control of urban politics, Ahmedabadis launched a number of bold new initiatives to improve housing in the city, involving a striking range of actors—labour activists, middle-class reformers, mill owners, and municipal leaders. Largely ignored under earlier British leadership, housing became a key way for Ahmedabadis to lay claim to a new, more inclusive vision of the city. Although housing continued to play a prominent role in politics after Independence, the 1950s actually marked a retreat from that earlier inclusive vision, ultimately enshrining the class and community segregation that marks Ahmedabad today.
Notes
1 Jon Lang, Madhavi Desai and Miki Desai, Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity―India 1880 to 1980 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
2 C.B. Suthar, ‘Housing Shortage in Ahmedabad’, in Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects, Vol.18, no.3 (September 1952), pp.34–6.
3 S.C. Aggarwal, Industrial Housing in India (New Delhi: Roxy Press, 1952), p.42.
4 Government of India, Census of India 1961: Vol.V, Part X-A (i) Special Report on Ahmedabad City (Manager of Publications: New Delhi, 1967), pp.89, 101, 103.
5 C.D. Kavi, ‘Co-Operative Housing Societies’, in Studies in Co-Operation in Bombay State (Bombay: The Bombay Provincial Co-Operative Institute, 1951), p.212.
6 Both V.S. Bhide, the Registrar of Co-operatives for Bombay, and representatives of the Social Service League of Bombay, agreed on this point in their evidence given to the Royal Commission on Labour in 1930. See Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol.I Part 1–Bombay Presidency (including Sind) Written Evidence (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1931), pp.211, 434.
7 Pritamrai V. Desai, ‘Pritampur’, in The Bombay Co-Operative Quarterly, Vol.18, no.2 (September 1934), pp.86–7; J.N.S. Iengar, ‘Harijan Housing’, in The Bombay Co-Operative Quarterly, Vol.22, no.4 (March 1939), pp.233–6; and Textile Labour Association, Annual Report for the Year 1949–50 (Ahmedabad: Textile Labour Association, 1950), p.63.
8 Samuel Paul, ‘Housing Policy: A Case of Subsidising the Rich?’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol.7, no.39 (23 September 1972), p.1986.
9 Howard Spodek, Ahmedabad: Shock City of Twentieth-Century India (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), p.7.
10 A Plea for Municipal Housing for the Working Classes in the City of Ahmedabad (Ahmedabad: Labour Union Press, 1929), p.3.
11 See, for example, Kenneth L. Gillion, Ahmedabad: A Study in Indian Urban History (Ahmedabad: New Order Book Company, 1968); and Spodek, Ahmedabad.
12 For two examples from Bombay, see Mariam Dossal, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of Bombay City, 1845–1875 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991); and Gyan Prakash, Mumbai Fables (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
13 Preeti Chopra, A Joint Enterprise: Indian Elites and the Making of British Bombay (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011); Thomas Metcalf, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); and G.H.R Tillotson, The Tradition of Indian Architecture: Continuity, Controversy and Change Since 1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
14 Neera Adarkar (ed.), The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life (Gurgaon: ImprintOne, 2011); Madhavi Desai, Miki Desai, and Jon Lang, The Bungalow in Twentieth-Century India: The Cultural Expression of Changing Ways of Life and Aspirations in the Domestic Architecture of Colonial and Post-Colonial Society (Burlington: Ashgate, 2012); William J. Glover, Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Jyoti Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (New York: Routledge, 2005); Prashant Kidambi, ‘Housing the Poor in a Colonial City: The Bombay Improvement Trust, 1898–1918’, in Studies in History (New Series), Vol.17, no.1 (2001), pp.57–79; and Stephen Legg, Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2007).
15 Nikhil Rao, House, But No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay's Suburbs, 1898–1964 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), p.2.
16 Apartments played a much smaller role in the story of Ahmedabad, where bungalows for elites and single-storey side-by-side tenements for the poor remained the norm down to the 1960s.
17 A Plea for Municipal Housing, p.13.
18 For concerns about the politics of the poor see Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For ambivalence about urban life, see Gyan Prakash, ‘The Urban Turn’, in Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Geert Lovink and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (eds), Sarai Reader 02: The Cities of Everyday Life (Delhi: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, 2002), p.3.
19 Achyut Yagnik and Suchitra Sheth, Ahmedabad: From Royal City to Megacity (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2011), pp.170–1.
20 Chawls are one-room, usually back-to-back tenements occupied by the working classes. Gillion, Ahmedabad, p.146.
21 For Bombay, see Frank F. 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: Centre of South Asian Studies, SOAS, 1984), pp.153–68; and Prashant Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). For Allahabad, Kanpur and Lucknow, see Nandini Gooptu, ‘The “Problem” of the Urban Poor Policy and Discourse of Local Administration: A Study in Uttar Pradesh in the Interwar Period’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol.31, no.50 (14 December 1996), pp.3245–54. For Delhi, see Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities.
22 For a discussion of two interruptions to this control from 1910 to 1915 and then from 1922 to 1924, when the British tried—unsuccessfully—to exert control over city management, see Siddhartha Raychaudhuri, ‘Indian Elites, Urban Space, and the Restructuring of Ahmedabad City, 1890–1947’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1997, pp.78–9, 83.
23 Spodek, Ahmedabad, pp.28–9; and Raychaudhuri, ‘Indian Elites, Urban Space’, pp.247–9.
24 Ahmedabad was hardly alone in facing housing problems: according to one 1959 estimate, in 1951 India had had an overall shortage of 3.2 million homes across all urban areas, a number that was projected to grow to 10.7 million by 1961. See L.R. Vagale, ‘Trends in Housing Needs of India’, in Urban and Rural Planning Thought, Vol.2, no.2 (April 1959), pp.52–4.
25 Government of India, Census of India 1961: Special Report on Ahmedabad City, pp.9, 47.
26 Raychaudhuri, ‘Indian Elites, Urban Space’, p.49.
27 Government of India, Census of India 1961: Special Report on Ahmedabad City, p.53.
28 Report on an Enquiry into Working Class Family Budgets in Ahmedabad (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1937), p.37.
29 A Plea for Municipal Housing, pp.20–21.
30 Ibid., pp.6–10.
31 G.V. Mavlankar quoted in Spodek, Ahmedabad, pp.56–7.
32 Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol I Part 1, p.253.
33 Ibid., p.279.
34 See, for instance, U. Rama Rao, ‘The Inside and Outside of an Indian Home’, in The Local Self-Government Gazette, Vol.2, no.2 (February 1916), p.119.
35 Quoted in Spodek, Ahmedabad, p.71.
38 Aggarwal, Industrial Housing in India, p.iii.
36 Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol I Part 1, p.272.
37 A Plea for Municipal Housing, pp.22–4.
39 For Bombay State, see The Five Year Plan for Bombay State (1951–52 to 1955–56) (Bombay: Directorate of Publicity, Government of Bombay, 1953); and Second Five Year Plan for Bombay State (1956–57 to 1960–61) (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1958).
40 For north India, see Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India; and Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities.
41 A Plea for Municipal Housing, p.33, emphasis added.
42 For Geddes's work in India, see Indra Munshi, ‘Patrick Geddes: Sociologist, Environmentalist and Town Planner’, in Economic & Political Weekly, Vol.35, no.6 (5 February 2000), pp.485–91; and Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, Patrick Geddes in India (London: Lund Humphries, 1947).
43 Munshi, ‘Patrick Geddes’, pp.487–8.
44 Sandip Hazareesingh, The Colonial City and the Challenge of Modernity: Urban Hegemonies and Civic Contestations in Bombay (1900–1925) (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007), p.176; and Aggarwal, Industrial Housing in India, p.65.
45 William J. Glover, ‘The Troubled Passage from “Village Communities” to Planned New Town Developments in Mid-Twentieth-Century South Asia’, in Urban History, Vol.39, no.1 (2012), p.117.
46 Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventative Medicine, 1859–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
47 Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘Filth and the Public Sphere: Concepts and Practices about Space in Calcutta’, in Public Culture, Vol.1, no.1 (1997), pp.83–113.
48 For activities of the ASA see Kapilray Mehta (ed.), Ahmedabad Directory (Ahmedabad: Gujarat Publishers, 1950), p.152. For public protests about municipal sanitation efforts, see Raychaudhuri, ‘Indian Elites, Urban Space’, p.85. For efforts by the TLA to improve workers neighbourhoods, see Spodek, Ahmedabad, pp.72–6; and Textile Labour Association, Annual Report, 1952–53 (Ahmedabad: Textile Labour Association, 1953), pp.33–4.
49 Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India (Calcutta: Government of India Central Publication Branch, 1931), p.337, emphasis added; and Jan Breman, The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class: Sliding Down the Labour Hierarchy in Ahmedabad, India (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004), p.44.
50 Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis, pp.211, 204–5; and Sandip Hazareesingh, ‘The Quest for Urban Citizenship: Civic Rights, Public Opinion, and Colonial Resistance in Early Twentieth-Century Bombay’, in Modern Asian Studies, Vol.34, no.4 (October 2000), p.811.
51 Raychaudhuri, ‘Indian Elites, Urban Space’, pp.46–7.
52 Rao, House, But No Garden, Chapter 5.
53 For a useful discussion of the functions and activities of voluntary associations in Bombay, see Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropolis, pp.157–201.
54 For concerns about new urban politics elsewhere, see Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India.
55 Breman, The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class, p.51.
56 Kenneth L. Gillion, ‘Gujarat in 1919’, in Ravinder Kumar (ed.), Essays on Gandhian Politics: The Rowlatt Satyagrahah of 1919 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp.126–44; and Spodek, Ahmedabad, Chapter 2.
57 Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol.XIV (Delhi: Delhi Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1958), p.143. See also pp.56–7.
58 A Plea for Municipal Housing, p.26.
59 Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol.I Part 2–Bombay Presidency (including Sind) Oral Evidence (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1931), p.149.
60 Ibid., p.99.
61 Subba Rao, ‘Social Service and Sanitation’, in The Social Service Quarterly, Vol.1, no.3 (January 1916), p.28.
62 Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol.XIV, p.224.
63 ‘Editorial Notes’, in The Social Service Quarterly, Vol.6, no.2 (October 1920), p.93; and Textile Labour Association, Annual Report for the Year 1949–50, p.65.
64 Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol.I Part 2, p.68.
65 Mehta, Ahmedabad Directory, p.252; and Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol I. Part 2, p.69.
66 Mrs. Vidya Ramanbhai Nilkanth, ‘Health Week in Ahmedabad’, in The Social Service Quarterly, Vol.9, no.4 (April 1924), pp.174–6.
67 Ibid., p.174.
68 Yagnik and Sheth, Ahmedabad, p.232.
69 Ibid., pp.221–6.
70 Breman, The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class, p.52.
71 Mehta, Ahmedabad Directory, p.252.
72 Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol.I Part 2, p.75.
73 ‘Mill Chawls in Ahmedabad’, in Labour Gazette, Vol.11, no.1 (September 1931), p.58.
74 Report of the Millowners’ Association, Ahmedabad for the Year 1935 (Ahmedabad: Ahmedabad Millowners’ Association, 1935), p.9.
75 M.V. Kamath and Vishwas B. Kher, The Story of Militant but Non-Violent Trade Unionism: A Biographical and Historical Study (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Press, 1993), p.341.
76 Aggarwal, Industrial Housing in India, p.195.
77 Report of the Rent Enquiry Committee, Vol.III, Part IV: Oral Evidence (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1939), pp.27–8.
78 This focus on co-ownership rather than co-tenancy differentiates co-operative housing development in Ahmedabad from that of Bombay. For Bombay, see Nikhil Rao, ‘Uncertain Ground: The “Ownership Flat” and Urban Property in Twentieth Century Bombay’, in South Asian History and Culture, Vol.3, no.1 (January 2012), pp.4–6.
79 For an overview of Pritamrai's life and work, see Makrand Mehta, ‘Pritamrai Desai’, Gujarat Samachar (Ahmedabad) (6 January 2008), Ravipurti section; and Makrand Mehta, ‘Shishak—Pritamrai Desai’ (‘The Teacher—Pritamrai Desai’), Gujarat Samachar (Ahmedabad) (13 January 2008), Ravipurti section.
80 ‘Editorial Notes’, in The Bombay Co-Operative Quarterly, Vol.18, no.3 (December 1934), p.159.
81 Kavi, ‘Co-Operative Housing Societies’, p.222. See also Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol.I Part 1, p.280.
82 Desai, ‘Pritampur’, pp.86–7.
83 Iengar, ‘Harijan Housing’, p.234.
84 Mehta, Ahmedabad Directory, p.117.
85 Spodek, Ahmedabad, p.134.
86 D.D. Naik, ‘Government Policy for Development of Housing and Co-Operative Housing in India: Land Allotment, Finance, Legal Framework and Services of Government Personnel’, in Readings in Co-Operative Housing (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1973), p.57.
87 Government of India, Census of India 1961: Special Report on Ahmedabad City, pp.108–9.
88 Report of the Rent Enquiry Committee (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1939), pp.60–61.
89 Mahesh P. Bhatt and V.K. Chawda, The Anatomy of Urban Poverty: The Study of Slums in Ahmedabad City (Ahmedabad: Gujarat University Press, 1979), p.13.
90 Report of the Rent Enquiry Committee (1939), pp.114, 116; and Government of India, Census of India 1961: Special Report on Ahmedabad City, p.101.
91 Aggarwal, Industrial Housing in India, p.62.
92 Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol.I Part 1, pp.253, 206.
93 Sujata Patel, The Making of Industrial Relations: The Ahmedabad Textile Industry, 1918–1939 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp.94, 98, 113.
96 Quoted in Kamath and Kher, The Story of Militant but Non-Violent Trade Unionism, p.200. See also p.209.
94 Breman, The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class, pp.35, 50.
95 See for example Report of the Indian Factory Labour Commission (Simla: Government Monotype Press, 1908), p.23; Kamath and Kher, The Story of Militant but Non-Violent Trade Unionism, p.243; and Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol.I Part 1, p.423.
97 Breman, The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class, pp.65–9.
98 Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol.I Part 2, p.61.
99 Spodek, Ahmedabad, pp.124–5.
100 Purshotamdas Thakurdas et al., A Brief Memorandum Outlining a Plan of Economic Development for India (Bombay: Commercial Printing Press, 1944).
101 Ravi Kalia, Gandhinagar: Building National Identity in Postcolonial India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), p.48.
102 Report of the Rent Enquiry Committee, 1939, III, Part IV: Oral Evidence, p.38.
103 Royal Commission on Labour in India: Vol.I Part 2, p.99.
104 Report of the Rent Enquiry Committee, 1939, III, Part IV: Oral Evidence, pp.27–8.
105 Second Five Year Plan, Bombay State: Ahmedabad District (Bombay: Directorate of Publicity, Government of Bombay, 1959), p.72.
106 Ibid.; and Government of India, Census of India 1961: Special Report on Ahmedabad City, pp.109, 110.
107 Mehta, Ahmedabad Directory, p.12. For a similar boom in the construction of middle-class co-operative housing in Bombay at the same time, see Rao, House, But No Garden, Chapter 4.
108 Bimal Patel, ‘The Space of Property Capital: Property Development and Architecture in Ahmedabad’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1995, p.80. See also Paul, ‘Housing Policy: A Case of Subsidising the Rich?’.
109 For the class-specific benefits of town planning elsewhere in India in this period, see Hazareesingh, The Colonial City and the Challenge of Modernity, pp.54–59; and Gooptu, ‘The “Problem” of the Urban Poor’, p.3248.
110 Raychaudhuri, ‘Indian Elites, Urban Space’, pp.114–5.
111 Ibid., p.125.