Mumbai - Britannica Online Encyclopedia

6/29/2021 Mumbai -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
Mumbai
Mumbai, formerly Bombay, city, capital of
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Maharashtra state, southwestern India. It is the
country’s financial and commercial centre and its Introduction
principal port on the Arabian Sea. Landscape

People
Located on Economy
Maharashtra’s Administration and society
coast, Mumbai is Cultural life
India’s most- History
populous city, and

zoom_in
Entrance to Mumbai Harbour, marked it is one of the
by the Gateway of India (foreground),
largest and most densely populated urban areas in the
Mumbai, India.
© Smarta/Shutterstock.com world. It was built on a site of ancient settlement, and
it took its name from the local goddess Mumba—a
form of Parvati, 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. It became known as
Bombay during the British colonial period, the name possibly an Anglicized corruption of
Mumbai or perhaps of Bom Baim (“Good Harbour”), supposedly a Portuguese name for
the locale. The name Mumbai was restored officially in 1995, although Bombay remained
in common usage.
Mumbai, long the centre of India’s cotton textile industry, subsequently developed a highly
diversified manufacturing sector that included an increasingly important information
technology (IT) component. In addition, the city’s commercial and financial institutions are
strong and vigorous, and Mumbai serves as the country’s financial hub. 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) 11,978,450; urban agglom., 16,434,386; (2011)
12,478,447; urban agglom., 18,414,288.
Landscape
https://www.britannica.com/print/article/72526 1/14
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
zoom_in India. Since the 17th century the islets have been
Mumbai, India: Dhobi Ghat joined through drainage and reclamation projects, as
Dhobi Ghat, an outdoor laundromat in
Mumbai (Bombay), India. well as through the construction of causeways and
Dennis Jarvis (CC-BY-2.0) (A Britannica
Publishing Partner  )
breakwaters, to form Bombay Island. East of the
island are the sheltered waters of Mumbai (Bombay)
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 those 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
zoom_in
Mumbai: metropolitan area head of Back Bay and the harbour is an area called
Metropolitan area of Mumbai, the Fort, the site of the 17th-century British
Maharashtra, India.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 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,
zoom_in
Mumbai: Girgaum Chowpatty which was joined to Bombay Island by a causeway.
Portion of southern Mumbai,

By 1957 a number of suburban municipal boroughs
Maharashtra, India, view from
Girgaum Chowpatty along Back Bay, and some neighbouring villages on Salsette were
which opens into the Arabian Sea.
© Stephane Benito/Fotolia
incorporated into Greater Mumbai—the metropolitan
region surrounding Bombay Island and the city itself.
Since then Greater Mumbai has continued to expand.
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
mountain range on the mainland. The wide harbour,
zoom_in
Mumbai Harbour studded with islands and dotted with the white sails of
Gateway of India (right) and Taj Mahal innumerable small craft, affords secure shelter to
Hotel (centre) on Mumbai Harbour,
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. ships, particularly when storms lash the coast. The
© Vladislav Lebedinski/Fotolia
largest of the harbour’s islands is Elephanta, which is
famous for its 8th- and 9th-century Hindu cave temples.
Typical trees in the city include coconut palms,

mango trees, tamarinds, and 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,
zoom_in
Elephanta Island: temple oxen, sheep, goats, and other domestic species, as
entrance well as monkeys. Birdlife includes vultures, pigeons,
Entrance to cave temples on
Elephanta Island in Mumbai Harbour, peacocks, cranes, and ducks.
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
mathess—iStock/Thinkstock
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 a number of open
playgrounds and parks. In the course of urban expansion, 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 nearby oil refineries.
The financial district is located in the southern part of

zoom_in the city, in the Fort area. Farther south (around
Mumbai: city centre
City centre of Mumbai, Maharashtra, Colaba) and to the west along the Back Bay coast and
India.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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 that part of the city. Still farther north are more residential areas, and beyond
them are newer 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

zoom_in some public housing built by the government through
Mumbai: street scene
Street scene in southern Mumbai, publicly funded corporations or by private
Maharashtra, India.
Dasprevailz
cooperatives with public funds. Mumbai is extremely
crowded, and housing is scarce for anyone who is not
wealthy. (For that 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—notably in Navi (“New”) Mumbai—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

zoom_in Revival styles—characteristic of the United States
Mumbai, India: housing
Densely packed housing in Mumbai, and Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries—and
Maharashtra, India.
© tiero/Fotolia
contemporary designs. Many residential and
commercial buildings constructed in the Gothic
Victorian style during the period of British rule still stand today—most notably the
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria Terminus), the city’s main train station
and headquarters of India’s Central Railway company. The older administrative and
commercial buildings are intermingled with skyscrapers and multistoried concrete-block
buildings.
People
zoom_in
Mumbai: Chhatrapati Shivaji Mumbai’s growth since the 1940s has been steady if
Terminus
Traffic passing in front of Chhatrapati
not phenomenal. At the turn of the 20th century its
Shivaji (formerly Victoria) Terminus, population was some 850,000, by 1950 it had more
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Photodisc/Thinkstock than doubled, and over the next 50 years it increased
nearly 10-fold to exceed 16 million. Population
growth continued into the 21st century. 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 early 21st century the city had reached
an average of some 77,000 persons per square mile (29,500 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. Significant religious
minorities include Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, and Jews.
Almost every Indian language and many foreign languages are spoken in Mumbai.
Marathi, the state language, is the dominant Indian language, followed by Gujarati, Hindi,
and Bengali (Bangla). Other languages include Pashto, Arabic, Chinese, English, and Urdu.
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 and plutonium separators, many areas on the outskirts of the city continue to rely
on traditional biogenic sources of fuel and energy (such as cow dung).
Manufacturing and technology
Although cotton textile manufacturing, through which Mumbai prospered in the 19th
century, remains important to the city’s economy, 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.
After years of lagging behind cities such as Bengaluru (Bangalore) and Hyderabad,
Mumbai began developing its own information technology (IT) sector in the late 20th
century. Technology companies were encouraged to move especially to the northern and
eastern suburbs, drawn there by improvements in infrastructure and low rents. Of note are a
special economic zone set up in the northern part of the city in 2000 and facilities for IT
companies in Navi Mumbai.
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 of those institutions
have attracted major financial and business services to Mumbai.
The Bombay Stock Exchange is the country’s leading

zoom_in stock and share market. Although a number of
Bombay Stock Exchange, Mumbai,
India. economic hubs sprang up around the country since
Nichalp
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.
During the early 1970s, in an effort to relieve road congestion, Salsette Island was linked to
the mainland by a bridge across Thana Creek, the headwaters of Mumbai Harbour. More
express highways and more bridges have been built since then. Notable additions to the
road network are the Banda-Worli Sea Link (opened 2009), which bridges Mahim Bay on
the west side of the city, and a new expressway between eastern Mumbai and Navi Mumbai
(opened 2014) that supersedes the earlier Thana Creek bridge.
Air traffic is handled by Chhatrapati Shivaji

zoom_in International Airport in the northern part of the city. It
Mumbai: bridge
Banda-Worli Sea Link bridge, Mumbai, consists of two terminals—domestic and international
Maharashtra, India.
© Ameya Charankar
—which are about 3 miles (5 km) apart on either side
of the runway system. A new international terminal
opened in 2014, replacing an older facility. Mumbai is one of two principal air hubs in
India—the other being Delhi—and handles most of the country’s international flights and a
large proportion of its domestic service.
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, 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. The original port on the east side of Bombay Island was supplemented in
1989 by the opening of a large facility in Navi Bombay that handles containers and bulk
liquid cargoes.
Suburban electric train systems provide the main public transportation, conveying hundreds
of thousands of commuters within the metropolitan region daily. There are also thousands
of taxis and auto-rickshaws fueled by liquid petroleum gas, which are identifiable by their
iconic black-and-yellow painted bodies. In addition, a municipally owned bus fleet
operates throughout the inner city and in parts of Navi Mumbai and Thane. Those services
have been supplemented by a rapid-transit train system, the first line of which opened in
2014. The first portion of a monorail line in the city also began operating in 2014.
Administration and society

Government
As the capital of Maharashtra 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

zoom_in autonomous Municipal Corporation of Greater
Mumbai, India: High Court
building Mumbai (MCGM). Its legislative body is elected on
High Court building, Mumbai,
adult franchise every four years and functions through
Maharashtra, India.
© rraheb/Fotolia 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 the Vaitarna
River and from 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 largely by public schools that are supervised by the state government,
as well as by several independently run private schools for students whose families can
afford them. 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, 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
zoom_in
Mumbai, University of Mumbai’s cultural life reflects its ethnically diverse
Rajabai Clock Tower at the University
population. The city has a number of museums,
of Mumbai, Mumbai, Maharashtra,
India.
Photos.com/Thinkstock
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, the
name derived from an amalgamation of Bombay (the city’s former name) and Hollywood.
The Fort area is home to two of Mumbai’s most-

zoom_in renowned landmarks. The first, Chhatrapati Shivaji
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj
Vastu Sangrahalaya: Buddha Terminus, opened in the late 1880s after a decade of
statue
construction. It was designed by the British
Statue of the Buddha at the entrance
of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj architectural engineer F.W. Stevens and built in the
Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly Prince
of Wales Museum of Western India) in Victorian Gothic Revival style in a manner that
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. recalled a traditional Indian palace. The terminal was
Elroy Serrao
designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004.
The second structure, the Gateway of India, was dedicated in 1924, built to commemorate
the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to the city. It overlooks Mumbai Harbour and
consists of a large arch with a central dome, which is supported by four intricately
decorated turrets. Both buildings are popular attractions for local and foreign tourists.
Krishnagiri Forest, a national park in the northern part

zoom_in of metropolitan Mumbai, is a pleasant vacation resort
Gateway of India, on Mumbai Harbour,
southern Mumbai, India. located near the Kanheri Caves; the caves, numbering
Rhaessner
more than 100, were the site of an ancient Buddhist
university and 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 Pherozeshah Mehta Gardens (popularly called “Hanging
Gardens”) and the Kamala Nehru Park, both on Malabar Hill. The cave temples on
Elephanta Island were designated a World Heritage site in 1987.
Sports enjoy a broad following in Mumbai. Cricket

zoom_in matches, which are popular throughout India, are
Elephanta Island: carvings
Stone carvings, depicting the marriage played at Wankhede Stadium and Brabourne Stadium,
of Shiva and Parvati, in a cave temple
on Elephanta Island in Mumbai
the latter of which is the headquarters and main pitch
Harbour, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. of the Cricket Club of India. Football (soccer) is also
naveen0301—iStock/Thinkstock
highly popular in Mumbai, and matches are played at
Cooperage Football Ground in the Fort area. Athletic and cycling track events attract many
enthusiasts. Juhu and Chowpatty beaches are popular areas 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, Marathi, Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, 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.
Chakravarthi Raghavan
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
History
The Koli, an aboriginal tribe of fishermen, were the earliest known inhabitants of present-
day Mumbai, though Paleolithic 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 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–8th century by the Chalukyas, 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 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 of
Hindustan in 1294. Descendants of the Yadavas are found in contemporary Mumbai, and
most of the place-names on the island date from that era.
In 1348 the island was conquered by invading Muslim forces and became part of the
kingdom of Gujarat. 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 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.
At first, compared with Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Madras (now 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 in the north, the Marathas (under
the venerated leader Chhatrapati Shivaji) 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, existing connections to
Europe were extended, and Bombay began to prosper.
In 1857 the first spinning and weaving mill was

zoom_in established, and by 1860 the city had become the
Port of Bombay, 18th-century
engraving. largest cotton market in India. The American Civil
Photos.com/Thinkstock
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 those 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

zoom_in Bombay Presidency (administrative province), and
Map of Bombay (Mumbai), c. 1900,
from the 10th edition of Encyclopædia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was a
Britannica.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. centre of both Indian nationalist and South Asian
regional political activity. In 1885 the first session of
the Indian National Congress (Congress Party; 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 Party passed the “Quit India” resolution, which demanded complete
independence for India. Although that initiative was crushed by the British, India did
achieve independence 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. Those protests led to the state’s partition into the
modern states of Gujarat and Maharashtra in 1960, and Bombay was made the capital of
Maharashtra that year.
Chakravarthi Raghavan
The destruction of the Babri Masjid (“Mosque of Bābur”) in Ayodhya in December 1992
sparked sectarian rioting in Bombay and throughout India that lasted into early 1993 and
caused the deaths of hundreds of people. A few years later the city 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 those 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.
Mumbai continued to grow and prosper in the 21st

zoom_in century, in large part because of advances in the
Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008
Targets of the November 2008 terrorist technology sector. By the second decade of the
attack in Mumbai, India.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
century the population of Greater Mumbai was
approaching 20 million. The city’s infrastructure was
improved considerably with the construction of new highways and bridges, expansion of
port facilities, and the inauguration of new public-transit systems. Overcrowding, traffic
congestion, environmental pollution, and widespread poverty, however, remained major
ongoing problems.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Citation Information
Article Title:
Mumbai
Website Name:
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher:
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published:
17 March 2020
URL:
https://www.britannica.com/place/Mumbai
Access Date:
June 29, 2021

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6/29/2021 Mumbai -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

principal port on the Arabian Sea. Landscape

populous city, and

The city of Mumbai occupies a peninsular site on

The western ridge terminates at Malabar Hill, which,

The old city covered about 26 square miles (67 square

Portion of southern Mumbai,

The natural beauty of Mumbai is unsurpassed by that

Typical trees in the city include coconut palms,

The financial district is located in the southern part of

Housing is largely privately owned, though there is

Mumbai’s architecture is a mixture of florid Gothic

Manufacturing and technology

Finance and other services

The Bombay Stock Exchange is the country’s leading

Air traffic is handled by Chhatrapati Shivaji

Administration and society

The government of the city is vested in the fully

The Fort area is home to two of Mumbai’s most-

Krishnagiri Forest, a national park in the northern part

Sports enjoy a broad following in Mumbai. Cricket

In 1857 the first spinning and weaving mill was

Under the British, the city had served as the capital of

Mumbai continued to grow and prosper in the 21st

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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