1

Bombay and Mumbai: Identities, Politics and Populism

Sujata Patel

In both popular and academic literature Bombay is typically characterized as India’s most modern city.

In view of its range of manufacturing, finance and service activities, Bombay is considered to be the first

Indian town to experience economic, technological and social changes associated with the growth of

capitalism in India. Located on the western coast of the Arabian Sea, it is the capital of the state of

Maharashtra whose population speaks the Marathi language. But by the early twentieth century, Bombay

had established an identity as a city of many tongues and many cultural expressions. Bombay’s

economic expansion in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century attracted to it a range of

ethnic groups from north, east and southern parts of India. Though colonial capitalism fostered

dependent economic development and unevenness in urban growth, for many commentators, Bombay

represented what is possible despite these odds. It symbolized the paradigm associated with

achievements of colonial and post-colonial India both in its economic and cultural sphere.1

In 1995 when the Shiv Sena, which emerged as a chauvinist ethnic party, came to power over

Maharashtra, they officially changed the name of Bombay to Mumbai. One can argue that this change

was needed, for Bombay was a colonial name and the term Mumbai had been in use both in the Marathi

and Gujarati languages while Hindi speakers employed Bambai. In this sense the official change of the

name symbolizes the transition from a colonial to an indigenous orientation. Contrarily, this move was

perceived, and is still being perceived, as a chauvinist act by the Shiv Sena government that obliterated

historical expressions, experiences, and processes which were part of the received colonial epoch, but
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were not necessarily stamped by colonialism. The name change was in fact erasing a multi-ethnic and

multi-lingual cosmopolitanism being nurtured in the city, that of a bourgeois class-based modernity,

substituting it with a populist oriented ethnic and religious identity.2 In order to understand how these

changes occurred, this essay makes a journey through the last seven decades of the city’s history

travelling through the changing contours of the city as it transited from colonialism to post independence

dynamics and now through globalization.

An interpretation of available evidence suggests that by the 1930s, two forms of class based modernity

had developed in Mumbai from the time the British named the seven islands ceded to them in the dowry

of Princess Catherine, as Bombay. The first was politically encoded in the experiences of the nationalist

movement as it represented the interface of the indigenous elites of migrants from various parts of the

country, mainly non-Marathi speaking, with the English-speaking colonial elite. The many expressions

in literature and culture that were articulated then, speak of their experiences of modernity in Mumbai.3

On the other hand, for the Marathi-speaking middle and lower strata of the city, the clerks and workers,

their creative expression of modernity was articulated politically in the working class movement but

remained muted in the context of the overwhelming presence of the upper class variant.

This essay attempts to understand the processes that led to the decline of the first form of modernity, that

of indigenous elite cosmopolitanism, the reasons for the lack of political support for the second form of

modernity and examines the nature of processes that have led to the growth, lately of the elite oriented

agenda of globalization. The social and economic character of the city changed over the decades from

the 30s to 90s: from a labour intensive orientation it moved to that of capital intensive production and

most recently on to financial services, a move paralleled by the transition from nationalist and trade

unionist politics, to a mobilizing of citizens from the local to nation state, and then from a regional to the
 3

global context. The city became firmly integrated within the State of Maharashtra and its ethnic and

cultural heritage after the State’s formation in May 1960. Henceforth the regional political elite, speaking

the Marathi language, set the agenda for the city. These developments initiated a process of

fragmentation of the existing class, community and language identities among the elites. From the

sixties, Mumbai started being re-defined, both politically (with the Marathi-speaking groups asserting

their domination of the elite block) and in imagination. At this juncture, there was challenge from three

movements, that of the Shiv Sena which refashioned a new alliance of interests based on language

identity, that from the dalits, which captured the imagination of the populace that from a militant

working class, working outside the frames of communist ideology, the latter two being neutralized by the

former, now resurrecting itself in a new mould.

The changing economic activities and political processes of the seventies fashioned in the late eighties, a

new coalition of interests. Simultaneously, the effects of globalization4 consolidated these interests by

putting into place, the extensity of networks of social relations and connections and the intensity of the

flows and links within these networks. Thus links between two sections of the elite, the Marathi-speaking

and non Marathi-speaking ones on one hand and between them and the populace, on the other, were

forged, such that together they started reframing the urban culture of and for the city. The story of this

process has still to be analyzed and articulated-for as we apprehend, express and write on it, it takes

shape in and through our presence. Yet it is possible to state with some confidence that, once again,

class, community and language has become connected through a new agenda and a new project-now

labelled Hindutva.5 The latter is radically different from earlier versions of elite agendas for the city, that

of cosmopolitanism or of the language based identity movement, both in form and content. In this

project, contemporary urban forms of culture appear as a large mosaic of post-modernist ethnic products
 4

and spectacles: fashion shows and theme restaurants, Michael Jackson shows and Ganapati festivals,

disco dandiya raas programs and the constant consumption of Hindi films from Bollywood. Culture and

identities are no longer expressions but forms of consumption.

Bombay in History

Even in the late eighteenth century Bombay was primarily a marine supply point that unlike Calcutta and

Madras, had few linkages with the hinterland. Bombay’s early growth was dependent on imperialist

interests and specific economic factors spurred its growth. Till the early nineteenth century Britain used

Calcutta as its main port but Bombay became increasingly significant with the development of foreign

shipping which exploited the closer location to Europe. An initial boom and an increase of wealth

followed the extension of the railway line to cotton-growing areas in the hinterland of Bombay; the

boosting of world cotton prices as a result of shortages caused by the American Civil War; and the

opening of Suez Canal in 1869.

The expansion of trade and the lure of the wealth attracted migrant groups to the city. When the British

established their base in the city their indigenous partners and collaborators had migrated with them.

These were the Parsees and Gujarati traders. Soon Bombay became the home of migrants from the

North, mainly from Gujarat, members of the various trading castes of that state. In addition Bombay

attracted distress migration that occurred as a result of famines and floods. Displaced peasants and

agricultural workers as well as artisans migrated to the city to become workers in the port and other

transport facilities being developed in the city.

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Colonial economic expansion made possible the transition of Bombay from an entrepot to a

manufacturing city. Earlier Bombay had become the center for the export of cotton brought in from the

hinterland. Soon it started its own spinning and weaving mills with its products being exported to China

as part of the multilateral trade agreements that British imperialism was fashioning. Indians established

these mills with capital from trading profits. The setting up of the mills encouraged another wave of

migration, that of mill workers. By the end of nineteenth century Bombay had grown to a population of

little less than 800,000.

The development of manufacturing did not completely reverse the service orientation of the city, which

primarily remained a port city with extensive networks into the hinterland from which it imported raw

resources such as cotton and opium and later sent back spun yarn and much later cloth. Thus while the

city became the headquarters of financial and corporate houses as well as the stock market, their

orientation remained linked to imperialist interests.

Ethnic and caste divisions thus became organically linked with the economic structure of the city. The

junior partners of the colonial elite in addition to Parsees came from the trading and business castes of

Gujarat, Hindu, Jain and Muslim, as well as some Baghdadi Jews and Marathi and Konkani speakers.

Most labourers also came from the south, from the coastal areas of the Konkan. In addition Bombay was

host to other ethnic communities from other parts of the country.

As a result Bombay developed a culture of manifold practices, languages and expressions organized

along class caste and ethnic lines. On the one hand the colonial authorities stamped the official public

space with their representations and encouraged the use and spread of English language, Gothic and later
 6

other styles of architecture, Western music and theater. On the other, the native migrant communities

developed their own community cultures, their languages through their community associations. Given

their relationship with the colonial authorities, these communities developed inter linkages with the

cultural practices of the colonial masters as also between themselves. At the third level, was the

underclass living at the margins of these two groups both spatially and culturally and who through their

struggles affirmed a culture against class and colonial domination. Thus by the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries, a distinct form of upper class cosmopolitan culture had developed in Bombay as

much as its opposite.

The inter-war period was an important moment in the city’s growth when colonial ties loosened and the

textile industry developed a domestic market. In this period this labour intensive industry attracted its

highest work participant rate. Profits doubled and then trebled. While a part of these were reinvested in

the textile industry a significant amount went into the new emerging capital-intensive industries of food

processing, pharmaceuticals and drugs, and small and medium engineering. Some of the surplus was also

invested in promoting the various arts, whether the theater, dance, painting or cinema.6

In spite of attempts by the colonial state to control the formations of collective interventions of the

middle class and the workers, the inter-war period saw the growth of the nationalist movement that

forged political and cultural links between the indigenous multi-lingual elites. This was also the time that

various social welfare agencies had started making links with the underclass in the city, in order to build

alliances with the underclass of the city. Yet by the end of the thirties, separately from these initiatives

and despite a concentrated effort by the European and Indian textile owners, a radical working class

movement having a communist ideology, emerged against all odds. 7

 7

From the 1940s Bombay saw a significant change in its economy. This was also the time that the city

experienced enormously high migration. Between 1941 and 1971 two thirds of the city’s residents had

been born outside the city. This spurt made Bombay a haven for migrants of all kinds, upper castes and

deprived castes from Maharshtra, now from the backward regions, as well as from other regional groups,

from the Punjab as well as the other northern, eastern and southern states. When the partition occurred

migrants from Sindh and what is now Pakistan flooded the city.

In the two decades from the forties onwards, the economy of the city had changed radically; a city which

combined industrial and commercial activities in its physical heartland, had been reshaped into a

commercial and service center8 surrounded by restructured industrial production dispersed to ever more

remote locations. In the process, the city’s labour market was transformed, reducing the bargaining

power of organized and unorganized labour. On the other hand, the multicultural orientation of the elite

had expanded, incorporating new cultural expressions. It is in this historical moment that Bombay re-

asserted its self-perception as a cosmopolitan city.

Though by now the Municipal government had created a measure of services, migrant groups of all

kinds, had to depend on their own resources in order to manage not only their housing but to promote the

mobility of their own community. We see therefore city growth as it expanded in various settlements, on

one hand in deprived housing colonies, later called slums, and on the other, in colonies mainly consisting

of regional groups such as Sindhis, and Punjabis who settled in Khar or the eastern suburbs, of the South

Indian settlements in the north east suburbs such as Chembur and Mulund, and of new Gujarati migrant

colonies in Vile Parle (West) and Ghatkopar. 9 Within these colonies, they expressed their own cultural

worlds while they developed their linkages with the rest of the communities through economic and
 8

nationalist linkages. If linkages across communities were built, that between classes was also

institutionalized. From these linkages developed the representation of Bombay as a cosmopolitan capital,

a representation whose memories refuse to go away. Some communities hold on to these memories more

than others. What is significant to note is that an upper class variant of modernity found an expression

during these times.

The Decline of the Textile Industry and the Restructurating of the Economy

In the early twentieth century Bombay’s economy was organically connected to the fate of the textile

industry. But soon this relationship started disintegrating. The profits accruing through the boom in the

textile industry in the inter-war period, were reinvested in capital intensive industries like engineering,

pharmaceuticals and fertilizers. A small but important capital-intsensive sector developed to slowly cut

the city’s umblical links with the textile industry.

The post-independence autarky policies promoted a new range of import-substitution manufacturing

units in the city. In this phase, the Indian government embarked on a massive industrialization

programme and began investing in the emerging capital-intensive industries of food processing,

petrochemical and engineering industry, to the relative neglect of the consumer goods industry, including

the textile industry. These changes were then reflected in the statistics on employment; until the

seventies manufacturing represented 40% employed with textiles still accounting for almost half, but

slowly declining. The wave of sustained economic growth in the post-independence period came to an

end in the mid-sixties. Industrial growth on an all-India basis averaged 7.7% per annum from 1951 to

1965, but slumped to an average of 3.6%per annum from 1965 to 1975.

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These changes were reflected in the subsequent history of the textile industry, which, until the 1950’s

was largely homogenous, dominated by a number of mills producing goods of similar quality. A

generalized crisis that forced a period of restructuring for Mumbai’s textile industry, as part of the wider

economic and spatial remaking of Mumbai after independence.10 The impact of increased mechanization

and the growth of a modern Indian sector led to the division of the Indian textile industry into three

sectors-handlooms, power looms and mills, each catering to a particular segment of the market and

distinguished by its technology, products and labour conditions. From the late 1950’s however,

technological backwardness and poor capacity utilization made many mills unviable, with an increasing

proportion of production accounted for handlooms and power looms.11

As a large number of mills closed, what changed was where cloth and yarn was produced, by whom and

on what terms. On one hand because of the profitability of the business, five of the top ten business

houses of India, Tatas, Birlas, Reliance, Singhania and Mafatlal, retained significant interests in

textiles.12 On the other hand, given the symbolic value of the textile industry, a non-viable sector was

kept in existence by state policy. As a result the industry became divided and differentiated in terms of a

backward, a modern profitable sector with expanding investment and production and a growing small-

scale sector, often producing under subcontract to larger units. The latter became characteristic of the

entire spectrum of Mumbai industry.

The process of differentiation in the textile industry was heightened in and through the textile strike of

1982-3 that occurred in the context both of the slowing of industrial production, the decentralization of

the textile industry and the shift of interest of the capital and the state to capital-intensive industry. The

power loom sector began to grow particularly rapidly during and after the Bombay textile strike of 1982,
 10

when mill owners sent yarn to places like Bhiwandi and Malegaon for weaving.13 The strike saw the

mass retrenchment of workers-more than 100,000 workers were displaced and the closure of several

mills. There was a simultaneous transfer of mill functions into the unorganized sector. The unorganized

workforce began to expand as retrenched mill workers also began to sink into the unemployed or under-

employed categories. 14

This segmentation was reinforced through spatial relocation of various decentralized units of industries.

Much of the shift from formal sector production to informal and small-scale sector was part of a process

of specialization. At one end, there was relocation of those industries from Bombay, where the particular

demands of their process of production made improvements in labour productivity difficult to achieve.

Industries like footwear, and garment manufacturing required large amounts of semi-skilled labour and

thus lent themselves to deskilled, fragmented and dispersed operations in order to maximize profits by

reducing the overall costs of production, including the costs of paying and controlling labour, cheaper

real estate, government subsidies, less congested services and infrastructure and so on. Expansion into

new labour markets also brought down the price of labour. 15

At the other end however, it has been a long-standing feature of capital-intensive consumer-goods based

Multi National Companies’ subsidiaries in India like Hindustan Lever Limited and Bata to establish a

manufacturing base for domestic consumption in Mumbai. But even here, the production of high-volume

low-value goods was moved out of the city, much of it carried out by subcontractors, while at the same

time retaining high-value production in the city because of the superior resources of skilled labour. This

process is not one of de-industrialisation but a spatial reorganization, combined with an ever-increasing

territorial expansion of the effective economic boundaries of the city. The central (southern) areas of the
 11

city became less important as manufacturing centers, and production moved out into the suburbs and to

satellite centers such as Thane, Kalyan, and Navi Mumbai-areas which are outside Greater Bombay but

within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. Other production moved still further to nearby cities such as

Pune and Nasik. With this shift, the older precincts, in and around the island city, with the exception of

sick textile mills, have instead become increasingly devoted to Mumbai’s burgeoning service industries,

including finance, tourism, retailing and entertainment.16 Mumbai is becoming like most cities in the

developing world, one based on services and the flow of information with dispersed manufacturing

located in specialized areas.17

The restructuring of production in Mumbai had profound effects on the labour market and on the

bargaining power of workers in the city. For labour, the important element of these changes was the

breaking down of large workplaces such as textile mills, and the growth of small-scale units in both the

service and manufacturing sectors and a rapid growth of employment in casual positions and the

informal sector. This has lowered the ability of most workers to improve their living and working

conditions or even to defend their existing standard of living. On the other hand, smaller numbers of

workers have benefited from the growth of specialized services and manufacturing. The reality for most

workers however, has become insecure employment in small, often unregulated and informal units in

spatially dispersed locations. 18

The consequence of this segmentation has been the increasing political fragmentation of the working

class of the city. Earlier, at the turn of independence, the workers were divided into the organized textile

workers mainly supporting the communist movement and those who were not organized who were

dispersedly placed into activities ranging from home based production centers to trade, commerce and
 12

other services as well as in the small capital-intensive sector. Now, the economy created many groups of

workers as these became differentially placed in the economy, which combined on one hand

decentralization, downsizing, and outsourcing with an increase in incorporation of workers catering to

specialized urban services of the city’s burgeoning population. Within the organized working class, this

fragmentation was reinforced through differential application of legislations on industrial relations; while

the Bombay Industrial Relations Act (BIR) governed the textile workers, those in other industries came

under the Industrial Disputes Act. 19

For the textile mill working class there was a single recognized union, the Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor

Sangathan, whose position was secured by the BIR Act. Protests by the Bombay textile workers against

this structure had not been taken into account and as a result had affected the relationship between the

recognized union and the workers. Over the years, it had begun to lose its representative role and had

become a centre for personal gain, fraud and corruption. Even worse was its willingness to sign

agreements with managements consenting to the closure of mills and sale of machinery; action which

meant that thousands of workers would be laid off. Added to the dissatisfaction were the service

conditions of the workers and the declining working conditions. All these developments led to the

political fragmentation of the working class in the city, already placed in hierarchies through the

economic and spatial reorganization of the city. 20

Thus despite its capitalist modernity, Bombay did not replicate the classic stratification system, that of

pyramidal form, associated with other cities, in the first world, where the continued growth of labour

intensive manufacturing together with the establishment of working class movements led to the increase

in real wages and other benefits for the workers.21 Rather, increasing migration of various groups from
 13

the region around Bombay from the forties onwards, and the simultaneous growth of a movement for

reorganization of states into linguistic provinces, reframed the city’s politics into a new node. Henceforth

the politics of the region defined the city’s politics rather than its own localized interests. Additionally,

there was a shift of focus of the city’s business elite from the city to the country, as they reset their vision

in the post independence period, reinforced this trend. Concurrently, the municipal government started

enfranchising the citizens by opening up the democratic process in the city, in a context when the

inherited state structures were weak not only due to the colonialism but also due to the post-colonial

emphasizes on centralization and the use of the Congress party system to reinforce this institutional

structure in the guise of federalism. These differing and contradictory trends led to new political

alliances in which language substituted locality based class interests to become a key issue for identity

formation in the city thereby displacing issues of local governance with that of politics of populism.

The Critical Years: the Sixties and the Seventies

After independence, various parts of the country were gripped by movements, which demanded the

reorganization of the States through language identities. These movements emerged to redress the

wrongs of regional unevenness and skewed distribution of resources among the various areas of the

nation-state. Bombay was the capital of Bombay State that comprised of two major language regions,

among others, Gujarati and Marathi. Movements for separate States for the Gujarati and Marathi-

speaking population grew from the late forties onwards in both parts of the Bombay State and set the

terms of language based conflict, specially in Bombay city where a large element of business groups

were Gujarati-speaking while the working class was Marathi-speaking. It is no surprise to note that the

workers and their organizations supported the movement for the separate state of Maharshtra led by the
 14

Samyukta .Maharashtra Movement strongly as did the other Marathi-speaking classes in the city.22

On May 1, 1960 Bombay State was bifurcated into Maharashtra and Gujarat. The creation of Maharshtra

with Bombay as its capital institutionalized structural changes already in place in the city, that of

burgeoning population, of increasing migration from interior regions of Maharashtra and of the resetting

of the vision of the non Marathi-speaking elite towards the country. As a result, the city fitted into the

folds of Maharshtra State politics without any hiccups. (Rajendra Vora and Suhas Palshikar discuss some

aspects of locality and regional politics of Bombay in their paper in this volume) Immediately after the

formation of the separate State, three separate movements came to structure the city's emotional space.

The first was represented through the growth of the Shiva Sena, established in 1966, which attempted to

realize further the goals of the Samyukta Maharshtra Movement, and put forward the slogan, Maharshtra

for Marathi-speaking population. The second was the growth of the dalit literature movement together

with its political manifestation, the Dalit Panther movement. Lastly the consequences of the anti-

communist interventions by the Shiv Sena led a section of working class to reorganize themselves in the

late seventies under the aegis of a militant economistic trade union movement led by Datta Samant. 23

What characterized all these three movements was anger against the system. And yet there were

differences between the three movements. While the first reframed localized interests within the political

language of the region, and primarily represented these interests as a regional and nativist one, the last

two articulated the issues concerning groups in the city within the political language developed in the

city. The former represented the anger by questioning the discrimination against Marathi speaking

groups by the non-Marathi speakers who controlled the economy and thus the opportunities of

employment. The dalit’s anger was directed against the control of the city and the State by the
 15

privileged upper caste. (Eddie Rodrigues and Mahesh Gavaskar explore this movement in detail in this

volume) The organized working class, in engineering units and later those from the textile mills, was

angry about the declining real wages and their lack of freedom to choose their unions.24

The Shiv Sena was more comprehensive and adaptable to changing circumstances as a movement. It was

a child of the powerful Samyukta Maharashtra movement that had wanted Bombay to be part of the

Maharashtra State. Afterwards, the Sena was established to fight for the rights of the Marathi-speaking

citizens of the city who were discriminated in terms of jobs and access to opportunities. Secondary

sources25 do suggest that there were fewer Marathi-speakers in government and in the middle and upper

echelons of jobs in the private and public sector, though the organized workforce specially in the textile

industry was Marathi speaking.

The Sena' s popularity and presence was felt, in the initial period of its growth and expansion on the new

industries of the city and in the lower bureaucracy. Though the organized working class, especially in the

textile industry, was facing problems regarding displacement, the Sena’s initial attempt to take control of

the working class organization of textile workers, was not completely successful.26 It is at this moment,

it started introducing vigilant methods and entering the politics at the street level. Such methods helped it

to confront and slowly decimate the communist base in the working class movement that then was

significant.27 Also because these methods yielded results, it was able to increase its popular base. This

popularity was not restricted only to some sections of the organized working class. The Marathi speaking

educated upper castes that perceived a discrimination against them in the city also supported the Sena.

This wide base and constituency helped it to secure an immediate presence in Municipal politics. During

this phase in its growth the movement had a definite ideology, that of righting the balance of the Marathi
 16

speaking population. To a large extent it was successful in realizing this objective; minimally it was able

to remove the communist influence on the workers.28 Because of the support it received from the upper

castes and new migrants, mainly backward castes from Marathwada,29 it was able to achieve political

successes. But more importantly the Sena’s presence and its use of these strategies created a division

between politics and its ideological moorings. This de-ideologisation of politics was critical in defining

the nature of future collective intervention in the city, which henceforth became fragmented both

spatially and politically.

Once it had begun to right the balance in jobs for the Marathi speaking population, the Sena’s popularity

in the formal structures of power waned. It was also not able to obtain the complete support of the entire

population speaking Marathi language. Because of the perception of it being a upper caste organization it

did not get affiliation from the lower castes, the dalits of the city. The same was the response of the

organized working class who started seeing it as a pro-management movement.30 The late seventies were

years of political fragmentation in the city with various groups aligning and realigning themselves to

obtain power both in the formal structures of power and those in the informal ones.

On the other hand, by the early seventies, Datta Samant had already gained a reputation as a workers’

leader with a track record of militancy and dynamism. He confronted managements and established

unions using a personal approach rather than ideological and political perspective. After successes in

small strikes, he was asked by the textile mill workers to lead what turned out to be the longest strike in

the textile industry in records anywhere. The strike began on 18 January 1982 31 and failed to achieve a

favorable settlement. Some mill owners used the strike to shut down sick mills, retrench workers and

stock up on supplies, increasing cloth prices. The strike did not create stock scarcity because the informal
 17

power loom sector grew to meet the extended demand. The fizzling out of the strike represented a defeat

for labour as a whole and changed in a radical way the form and content of working class organization.32

In the early eighties, when the textile workers were on strike, the city was slowly opening up itself to the

new global economy. (From 1991onwards, the nation-state would legitimize this new economic regime

through the enunciated of structural adjustment policies) Also, simultaneously, the politics in the country

was shifting rightwards, with the ascendancy of the rightist parties to power, under the ideology of

religious chauvinism calling itself, Hindutva. At this juncture, the Shiv Sena resurrected itself in a new

garb, as a party of Hindutva and mobilized both the elite and populace in the city in different ways. The

following section examines contemporary history and politics of the city.

Globalising Mumbai

The new global economy reorganized Bombay’s economy facing a generalized crisis and gave it new

direction having both positive and negative impact. In the early 1990s, Bombay saw an increase in jobs

associated with producer services related to globalization. By 1994, Bombay accounted for 61% jobs in

India’s oil sector, 41% in domestic air traffic. Its airport handled 75% of the country’s imports and 64%

of exports. Employment in financial and business services had increased by 43% between 1970s and

1980s. Bombay collected 25% income tax revenues and 60% of custom revenues of the country. Its

banks controlled 12% of national deposits and a quarter of the country’s outstanding credits. The number

of new issues listed on the Bombay stock exchange grew from 203 in 1991-92 to 694 in 1993-94, and the
 18

amount of fresh capital in old and new companies increased from Rs. 54 billion to 213 billion between

these years.33

The growth of the financial sector and of trade in stocks and bonds, the entrance of international

financial groups in Bombay’s Stock Exchange led to ancillary developments, such as the increase in

investments in communication industry, real estate and expansion of other services including those that

provide for life style maintenance. This trend became significant by mid nineties, after Bombay became

the hub of the telecommunication industry. The total employed in the financial sector increased at 2.66%

per annum between 1992 and 1997.34 This led to a marked growth in businesses that produce goods

related to information technology, banking, insurance and other financial services as well as in travel,

tourism and in hotel trade and an expansion of the related service industries, specifically the film and

music industry.

In July 1994, the runaway success of the film, ‘Hum Aapke Hain Kaun’ (Who am I of Yours?)

established the importance of the overseas market for Indian movies.35 A quarter of the revenues of this

film came from overseas market. Given the synergistic relationship between the film and audio

industry36, globalization of the film industry led to a boom in the audiocassette industry. As a result,

today many audio companies are increasingly producing films.37 With an average of 140 Bollywood

releases and exports per year, the economics of film and audio industry radically changed. These changes

in turn gave a further fillip to those service industries already experiencing an upward economic swing-

such as the travel, tourism, and hotel trade as well as advertising, cable and television.38 (Amrit Gangar

examines the institutional structure of Bollywood in his contribution in this volume)

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The increase of the service sector together with the expansion of these economic activities has led to the

growth of a new class, which is linked to the world of international finance and producer services. On the

other hand, the decline in the manufacturing sector, now supported through the globalising process, has

led to an increase in unemployment-between 1981-96 the total number of unemployed increased by more

than two times39-and an has intensified inequities, escalating economic and social distance between the

new upper class and the workers, most of whom now survive in the non-organized sector of the city. As

mentioned above, this decline in manufacturing has run parallel with the drop in the numbers of the

organized working class in the city as also the weakening of the influence of the trade unions associated

with the workers movement since the twenties and thirties.

Critical to this process have been the decay of the textile industry and the failure of the strike of 1982-3,

as mentioned above. In 1976, 27 % of the city’s organized force found employment in the textile

industry. By 1991 the figure had gone down to 12.5%. In absolute terms, employment in textile industry

has fallen from 600,000 in 1981 to 400,000 in 1991.40 Statistics show that over the same period there was

a growth of unregistered units with down graded technology. A substantial part of the manufacturing was

also contracted out to increase the so-called "informalised" processes of manufacturing. Thus it is no

surprise to note that the tertiary sector increased from 39% in 1951 to 60% in 1991 while formal

employment in private sector declined41 (Sudha and Lait Deshpande explore these trends in their paper in

this volume)

With little possibility of finding other factory jobs the retrenched textile workers found themselves

forced to survive by associating with informalised modes of manufacturing and service occupations. The

nature or size of employment as calculated from census figures, Sudha and Lalit Deshpande (1991),
 20

suggests, in 1981, the informal sector or non-wage employment would not have exceeded more than a

quarter of the workforce. They also make a second estimate using data culled from the Establishment

Census. The total employed in the informal sector increased to 27% in 1970 and 33% in 1980. If own

self-employed without premises is added the percentage further increases to 35%. On the basis of a third

estimate, calculated from Employment Market Information Programme, they assert that those employed

in the informal sector constituted 49% in 1971 to 55% in 1981. Current figures confirm this trend. One

estimate, that computed from Employment Market Information, states that there was an increase in the

workers of the informal sector from 49% in 1961 to 65.6% 1991. Another estimate suggests an increase

from 27.4% in 1970 to 46.3% in 1991 of units employing less than ten workers.42

In their paper in this volume, the Deshpandes have argued that there is a very slight increase in income

of workers and a slight reduction of poverty. On the basis of computation that they did of data regarding

expenditure survey conducted in 1958-59 and later in 1981-82, they argue that average family income

increased by 0.88 % per annum though income per member decreased by 0.78% in the 23 years. They

also show that the real wages of the factory worker increased only by 2.68 % during the period 75-77 to

85-87.

Even when income and earnings have risen, basic conditions of work and living environment have not

changed for many of Bombay’s citizens. Most commentators now suggest, including Swaminathan, in

this volume, that the issue of deprivation and poverty have to be evaluated not only in context of income

and earnings but in terms of access to land and housing, health and education, environment and

population density and occupations of the dwellers. In Bombay today, whether in manufacturing or in

services, employment of a lerge majority of workers is unregulated in respect of wages, working

 21

conditions, security of tenure or rights to health care and retirement pay. (On the nature of public health

system available to Bombay’s citizens see Neha Madhiwala in this volume) Most of the workers in this

mode of activity not only use their own labour but also their residence and infrastructure, e.g., electricity

and water for the manufacture of goods and services. Critical to gaining employment is a need for the

labourer to have access to housing.43

Bombay is now a city of extreme contrasts. More than half of the city’ s population of ten million

inhabitants lives in slums and on pavements or under the bridges and near railway tracks. A large

number of them do not have legal tenure over the land that they occupy. In 1971 the slum population was

about one and a quarter million. Data collected in 1985 suggested that they constituted more than half of

the city' s population while they occupied only 2000 of its 43,000 hectares of land. Today, more than a

decade later, 6% of Bombay's land houses more than 50% of its population. Another 12,000 hectares of

43,000 is used for private residential housing. The 1985 data indicate that there was 10,000 hectares of

vacant land in possession of private builders and about ninety landlords owned fifty five per cent of this

vacant land. (Two papers in this volume, that of Harini Narayan and P.K.Das explore the politics of land

and space in the city)

Two factors, concentration of ownership and property price reinforces inequities in land and housing.

These also make for fictitious scarcity, speculation and capital accumulation through rent. Prices in

south Bombay, on and around Marine Drive, were 27 times higher than in the northern Bombay suburb

of Bhayander and in 1993-4 real estate prices in south Bombay were higher than in downtown Tokyo

and Manhattan, New York. The provision of services have gone hand in hand with class determinants;

thus adequate to better services are made available to residents of housing colonies and upper class
 22

apartment blocks. Spatial concentration of commercial areas and upper class residential areas has led to

the concentration of transport networks leading to the rich being subsidized by the poor even in this

matter.

In 1971 the population of Bombay was 6 million. A decade later it had increased to 8 million and in 1991

it was 9.9 million. Though the rate of growth of the population is slowing down and so is migration-

between 1971 and 1981, migration constituted 47% of the population increase, while between 1981-1991

it was 17%- the infrastructure and resources as for the underclass have not increased. Nor are the existing

services for them being upgraded. As a result a large number of people live in housing which provide

little to no facilities.44

Living quarters in the slums are over crowded and without proper ventilation. Given the extreme skewed

distribution of space, it is possible to find many different strata of income groups living in the slums and

utilizing various building materials locally available including saris and other clothe. In some slums, as

Swaminathan shows in her contribution in this volume, the space available is 4 feet by 5 feet just enough

to seat four to five members of the household. Even access to sanitation is remains unequal. Again,

Swaminathan draws our attention to a survey that noted that in 174 of the 619 notified slums, there were

no public toilets. The city also produces large amount of wastes including 5000 tons of garbage. There is

no adequate provision to biodegrade this garbage. Additionally many slums have reported high

morbidity rates. Additionally, a number of surveys indicate that half or less than half of Bombay' s slum

dwellers fall below the generally accepted criterion titled, poverty line. This fact together with the ones

mentioned above exemplifies the deprivation suffered by the city' s inhabitants, who live in these slums.
 23

The lack of legal tenure on the space where the populace have to live and work have made the issue of

right to land and physical space a critical one in the city and in recent years changed the politics of the

populace radically.45 A large part of the population struggle to obtain and then maintain a space to live

and have a modicum of amenities. It would not be an exaggeration to state that a majority of the workers

and laborers live a life on the margins both figuratively and metaphorically. This situation has evoked a

culture of deprivation. Being part of the informalised modes of manufacturing and or services means

having an unsteady unprotected and unregulated work life. Neither work nor access to housing integrates

them into a rhythm of organized discipline. Instability together with cultural and economic deprivation

rules their lives.46

Data from the 1991 census suggests that more than 50% of migrants have been settled in the city within

the last twenty years. Though they have broken bonds of the community life defined by villages they

have also not become part of the urban industrial culture. Their life becomes restricted both culturally

and geographically to overcrowded dense areas where there is constant struggle to live and reproduce

themselves physically and culturally. In this context the need for an affirmation for the “village

community” gets translated into an affiliation for the members of the small slum community, the slums

being organized in terms of clusters of regional, ethnic and religious groups. Identification with the

microscopic local dominates their consciousness. The Shiv Sena, in a context in which there is a

weakened trade union movement and a decline and fragmentation of the radical political parties is now

mobilizing this underclass and incorporating them into a new elite oriented agenda of globalization.

Contemporary Mumbai and the Shiv Sena47

 24

Though the Shiva Sena's influence had waned in the late seventies, it revived in the early eighties during

the years when the mobilization of the populace through the politics of rightist religious chauvinism was

in its ascendancy. At this moment, the Sena resurrected itself as a Hindutva party.

If the Sena' s resurrection in the eighties had a lot to do with its association with rightist Hindutva

politics, its campaign of maha aartis, and its vigilanti interventions against the minorities, specially the

Muslims, (Jyoti Punwani, in this volume, explores the way the Hindutva politics played itself out during

the riots of 1992-93) its appeal was related to its strategy of organizing the populace at their point of

residence. As a result its linguistic constituency changed, for the slums house in addition to the majority

Marathi-speaking population many other linguistic communities, including a significant number of Hindi

and Urdu-speaking population. 48 It was also able to utilize, to its advantage, its received representation,

as a movement of and for the deprived populace. Additionally, its organizational structure was oriented

to provide emotional support specially the male migrant-in 1991, Bombay had a sex ratio of 817 females

to a 1000 males. Reviving this tradition, the Sena was able to mobilize the populace initially for

obtaining space to live and housing. Such strategies led to others, such as schemes to provide

employment until it saw itself as a party articulating a policy of providing employment to the teeming

lakhs of formally unemployed in the city.

The Sena used its influence and its strategies now to encourage the growth of low-value consumption

economies in the informal sector, in food, in leisure and in housing. It started by financing economic

activities such as provision of food services to the migrants and the slum dwellers. Small petty

businesses were encouraged, such as the selling of fruits and vegetables stalls around railways stations.

These small businesses needed very little finance and the Sena branch leader generally sponsored these
 25

activities. As most of these stalls needed licensing, the Sena encouraged its members and specially its

local leaders to establish networks with Municipal officials through kin and caste linkages. Rent in form

of commission was encouraged for such activities: such was the start of the extortion and protection

rackets in the city.

The Shiv Sena's entrance into the slums occurred in the early seventies when the issue of obtaining land

to build slums became critical. Simultaneously, there was a boom in the housing industry with an

expansion of middle class and upper class housing. The Sena was able to organize dadas,49 to encroach

on the land and organize settlements both for constructing slums in private and government land and

obtaining land for selling it to builders. Violence or threat to violence was very important for the

continuity of this business. With the increasing reach and spread of the extortion and protection business

it needed help of gangs. By late seventies there is clear indication that Mafia gangs that were earlier part

of the smuggling trade had entered into the land and housing market and had forged an alliance with

sections of the Sena. (On the nature of extortion and protection rackets in Bombay and the control of the

“illegal” economy by the Mafia, see Sandeep Pendse in this volume)

Within the slum there grew a culture around the dada, a culture of brotherhood; for the young male

underemployed slum dweller, the Shiv Sena represented the family and its local chief the father or the

elder brother, the dada. It gave him a sense of identity as it organized various cultural activities as they

hung around paan shops. It tapped the restlessness of these youth and articulated their anger for not

being recognized as an important section of the city.

Also, the Sena thrives by creating spectacles, in which the “mass” participate as also the elite, leading to
 26

the fudging of perceptions of divisions and exclusions. Initially these activities were restricted to the

Ganesh festivals. But in the last few years, there has been the growth of small festivals, such as Durga

puja and Navratri in Bengalee and Gujarati dominated slum localities. These festivals have two

functions: they mobilize the local slum based community giving them a sense of being part of the pan

Hindu community, an identity and thereby attempt to lessen the feelings of deprivation. Simultaneously

these activities have helped the Sena to organize its extortion and protection rackets.

The Sena adopts, interprets, mediates, transforms and negotiates the symbols which arouse responses in a

city, now largely populated by alienated individuals packed densely in slums and subjected to the

feelings of cultural angst and dislocation.50 It recognizes the need to promote dreams, fantasies and the

aspirations of the youth. Through such sponsorship, the Sena has been able to integrate the culture of the

deprived with the fantasies that extol religious ideological positions. As in the case of the festivals, the

Sena, as Amrit Gangar shows in his paper in this volume, has invested social and economic capital in

films and the cable industry, cultural products of which are consumed as fantasies by one and all. These

new economies of consumption link the populace with the elite agenda and refract a perception of

deprivations and exclusions in place in the city.

Today the Shiv Sena is not in control of the formal institutions of power. Yet it commands the informal

processes of power. It remains the critical node of the new urban landscape wherein culture is now

organized in terms of kitsch rather than creativity and by consumption rather than experience. But the

memories of earlier experiences of modernities have not been erased. As a result there is a constant

uneasiness both among the elites and the underclass of the trends taking place in the city wherein market

has taken over the role played by politics till recently and wherein values have disassociated themselves
 27

from instrumentalities. Will Bombay and Mumbai accept these new challenges? This will be the story of

Mumbai in the twentieth first century.

1
See Dalmia,, Gangar and Gokhale, 1995 for details on painting, films and theatre
2
The emphasis of this essay is not on the Shiv Sena on whose growth there are two books, Kazenstein 1979 and Gupta,
(1982). It is also not an analysis of its contemporary avataar, on whom both Lele, 1995 and Heuze, 1995 as well as
Kazanstein et al 1997 have written. The emphasis is this essay is on the economic and cultural trends that encapsulate the last
seven decades in the city.
3
Mallison in Thorner and Patel, ibid, argues that Bombay was possibly the most important centre for the growth of modern
Gujarati literature.
4
Whilst economists have taken the formal inauguration of the structural adjustment policy in India in 1991 as a cut-off point
for assessing the impact of globalization, there is enough evidence that the economic forces associated with globalization had
started impacting upon the Indian economy and specially Bombay’s economy much earlier.
5
It is now increasingly accepted that the project of Hindutva is connected to the new consumption oriented economy put into
place by globalization.
6
See Dalmia op.cit on the ways in which the business patronized the art world.
7
For a contemporary interpretation on the working class movement in Bombay and its discourse in the early twentieth century
see Chandavarkar (1994 and 1998)
8
On the basis of a survey done in 1955-56, Lakdawala et al suggests that if the number of workers in manufacturing and
processing continued to increase, the number in the service sector other than in commerce remained steady at about one-third
of the total working force.. If employment in commerce is taken into account, the number employed in service industries
shoots up to 56% of the city’s employed. After the decline of employment in textile industry, once again, the number in
service industry shoots up. Sudha and Lalit Deshpande in this volume compare Lakdawala et al statistics with later statistics.
9
Data processed by Heinz Nissel from the 1961 census indicate that in the original Greater Bombay area, communities had
tended to settle in terms of religious affiliation. However the vagaries of spatial development especially from the forties
onwards, made it difficult for this spatial development to be reproduced later. Ward B had a 55% Muslim population of the
city. Within it, Chakala and Umerkhadi were dominated by Muslims:75% and Khara Talao 80%. Mandvi, Dongri, Fanaswadi,
Chaupaty and Khetwadi all held Hindu majorities, Kumbharwada had 80% Hindus while Girgaum has the distinction of being
the “purest” Hindu section in Bombay with 95% Hindus. Christians were most dominant in Dhobi Talao:20%, followed by
Fort South:19%, Colaba North and South:17%, and then Byculla:15%. The Jain Community was most prominent in the
Market area: 23%, followed by Mandvi: 13% and Bhuleshwar: 12%. Parsees were mostly found in Central Bombay;
Mahalaxmi:12.5% and Tardeo:10.8%, then in Lower Colaba:7.4% and Fort North:7.3%,Walkeshwar:7.2% and Khetwadi:7%.
Personal Communication
10
The overall trends in the Indian industry were initially reflected in Bombay’s textile mills.
11
The mill sector production of all fabrics has been declining over the years mainly because of the intense competition
offered by the decentralized sector which is further regulated by the government by means of differential wages and excise
duties and restrictions in technological change in weaving by mills. Thus, spinning became more profitable than weaving
even for composite mills. Also, revenue duties came to be imposed on all mill-produced cloth in 1949 which progressively
increased with the price of cloth, from 1977 onwards. See H. Van Wersch, 1992, Ch.1
12
Lokshahi Sangathana’s, Murder of the Mills:An Enquiry into Bombay’s Cotton Textile Industry and its Workers’, 1996
13
This can be seen from the fact that the production of cloth did not decline during the strike. See Chhachhi and Kurien,1982
14
The New Textile Policy (NTP) of June 1985, announced partly in response to the strike, provided a complete break with the
past in several ways. In chiefly promoting the interests of the mills, it was the power loom sector that was the most seriously
affected. By removing the differential advantages that the unorganized sector enjoyed, the power loom units were forced to
function only as the underpinnings of the organized sector, and of course without the advantages that labour in the organized
sector enjoyed; chiefly security of tenure, better bargaining power due to the presence of trade unions, safe and hygienic
 28

working conditions and so on. Though the policy benefited the mill sector as a whole, it was pro-mill owners, because it
paved the way for full-scale modernization with its accompanying loss of employment. It also ensured the flow of adequate
soft loans for the modernization of potentially viable units which claimed “sickness”(Lokshahi Hakk Sanghatana Report,
op.cit, p. 37; Van Wersch, op.cit, p.51)
15 See Sherlock, 1996 on the changing structure of the organised working class
16
In 1961, the Island city (that is south Bombay) housed 66.7% of the city’s population. In 1991 this was reduced to 32%.
17
On MNCs and spatial reorganization of Bombay see Banerjee-Guha, 1996
18
Between 1961 and 1980, 32,000 labourers employed in the textile industry had been displaced, due to modernisation.
Tulpule, 1982, and Sherlock,1996.
19
On the contemporary history of the working class in Bombay, see Sherlock, 19
20
A significant section of the workers had continued to support the left unions despite the BIR Act. However the changing
political affiliations of the union, Mill Mazdoor Sangh, as it fragmented due to political reasons, made for estrangement and
alienation On the history of left trade union in Bombay after mid-thirties, see Factsheet. On the RMMS and the workers
grievances see Bakshi, 1986
21
Bombay’s experience runs parallel to other cities in case of displacement of women workers from manufacturing. This
displacement started in 1891 and by mid-twentieth century there were hardly any women workers left in the industry.
22
On the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement, see Stern, 1970.
23
See Pendse, 1981 on Datta Samant and the growth of militant economist trade union movement in Bombay
24
Tulpule, 1982 argues that the real earnings of the textile workers in 1982 were lower than that were prevalent thirty five
years ago. Simultaneously those in other industries had increased. See also van Wersch, op.cit
25
See Kazenstein, 1979, Gupta, 1982
26
They were more successful with other workers. Pendse, 1981:698, suggests that at one time between 1967-72 they
controlled unions in nearly 400 factories.
27
Evidence suggests that the Sena was supported by the mill-owners and the Congress party, then in power. Pendse, ibid
28
Henceforth the infleunce of the communist unions would be marginal in the city.
29
Marathwada is a backward region of the state of Maharashtra with a high proportion of population from the deprived castes
from where there has been continuous migration into Bombay.
30
While the communist influence had declined, the militancy of the workers had not. The Sena’s hold in the Lalbaug-Parel
slowly declined to be substituted later by the influence of Datta Samant, see Factsheet Collective 1.
31 Starting on a bonus issue, the movement rapidly turned into a massive expression of a whole series of long
standing grievances, the most critical of which was refusal of legitimacy to the trade union recognized by
government as the sole accredited representative for textile labour in industrial negotiations in the city See Bakshi,
ibid
32
The strike was the last protest of the organized working class of the city. It affected about 1.65 lakh workers. See Bakshi
ibid for details of the strike
33
See Harris, 1995:54, Deshpande, 1996
34
See Table 28, Fact-Book on Mumbai, 2000 p 22
35
Last year the film ‘Taal’ (Rhythm) changed the economics completely when its overseas market grossed Rs.2 million of
revenues. This amounted to 50% more than the Indian market.
36
The overseas market in this area has also expanded in conjunction to that of films as most films in India have at least five to
six songs.
37
Personal communication from Taran Adarsh, Editor, Trade Guide
38
Bombay’s share in international passenger traffic was 38% of India and it had 26% share of passenger air traffic and 26% if
the domestic air cargo traffic and 39% share on international air cargo in 1998-99. Table 67-70 in Fact-Book on Mumbai
op.cit pp 46-47
39
See Fact Book on Mumbai, Table 29, op. cit. p. 22.
40
See Bakshi, 1986 for more details.
41
The work participation rate of males has decreased substantially from 57.7% in 1971 to 54.3% in 1991. Consequently there
has been a feminisation of the economy with an increase of the work participation rates from 7.7.% in 1971 to 10.5% in 1991.
Also private employment dominated public employment in 1961 and 1971. It lagged behind in 1981 but fell drastically
declined by 2.4%-and thus employed fewer people than the public sector employment in 1991 and 1996. See Table 26, Fact-
Book on Mumbai, p 21
 29

42 Table 27 in ibid. p.20

43
For instance, in the Dharavi slum of central Bombay where there are 400 leather processing units. The air and water
pollution that these units generate determines the conditions of living of the people there. See Sharma, 2000
44
In 1991, 72,9 % of households lived in one room.Table 133 Fact-Book on Mumbai. pp 85
45
The workers of textile mills were provided with housing and have not experienced unless displaced this form of
deprivation.
46
This is portrayed very effectively in the film, Satya on which there is a paper in this volume by Sandeep Pendse.
47
The following is based on my on-going research titled, Culture, Consumption Economies and the Shiv Sena in
Bombay/Mumbai.
48
In recent times migrants have been mainly from Maharshtra–about 43.51%in 1981 and 42.10% in 1991 and the second
largest group is from Uttar Pradesh-16.38% in 1981 and 19.7% in 1991 while the third largest group was from Gujarat-
13.86% in 1981 and 12.13% in 1991, Table 11 Fact Book on Mumbai, p 7
49
Literally, elder brother
50
Bombay joined for the first time, in 1980, the list of the 15 largest turban agglomerations, by size of population, in the
world. Though its rank was 15th in 1980 by 1995 it was the fifth. It is projected to rank 3rd by 2010.

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