DADAR PARSI COLONY

• Dadar Parsi Colony (officially Mancherji Joshi Parsi Colony) is an upper class
Parsi colony in midtown south Mumbai.
• It is situated in the locality of Dadar-Matunga.
• Unlike the other Parsi Colonies (also known as 'baugs', literally gardens) it is not
surrounded by a wall or fence and is not isolated from its surroundings.
• The colony houses the famous Five Gardens created by Mancherji Joshi, a
renowned Parsi.
 • It is the largest Zoroastrian enclave in the world, and in 2009, out of the
45,000 Zoroastrians living in Mumbai, 10,000 lived in Dadar Parsi Colony.
• The area was built by the British under the Dadar-Matunga-Wadala-
Sion scheme of 1899-1900, the first planned scheme in Bombay.

• The Bombay City Improvement Trust formulated this plan in order to

relieve congestion in the centre of the town, following the Mumbai
plague epidemics of the 1890s.
• According to the survey plan, 60,000 people were to be housed at
Dadar-Matunga and an equal number in Sion-Matunga. 85,000 people
were to be accommodated in the developments in Sewri-Wadala.
 COMMUNITY ORIENTED PRECINCT
• Much abides in the sunlit, tree-shaded, broad-
avenued life of what’s often called Bombay’s
only un-walled Parsi enclave.
• The community habitat engulfs itself around the
lush green public spaces which are the so called
lungs of the centre of Mumbai.
• The precinct has an orientation that tends to the
central open agyari which is the worship place
for the members of the community. This fire
temple is the central space which is a symbol of
the community spirit and this in turn holds the
community in a spirit of unity.
• As this precinct is dominated by the parsi
community, we find major such communities
sprawling over the city. How this is unique
amongst its sisters is that this is the only unwalled
community and this makes it having a special
relation with its public spaces unlike its
counterparts.
• Engineer tells us how, by bringing together several
industrialist stakeholders, Joshi crowd-sourced the funding
to begin a construction of over 200 buildings, on what
used to be barren land
 BUILDING TYPOLOGY

• Different typologies of buildings exist in this precinct as well as around it. These
serve towards making this an ecosystem where people co exist and have a
smooth functioning daily life.
• Educational Institutions – The VJTI College, DPYA school, J. B. Vacchha School,
Don Bosco School, ICT, Khalsa College, SIWS College, Auxilium Convent, St.
Joseph Wadala, etc. This very area is dominated by the presence of
educational institutions in terms of roads and planning and orientation.
• Typical Deco Buildings – Khorshed Villa, Meher Villa, Ready Money, Meher
Mansion, Rtan Manor, Gold Finch, etc.
• Other typologies in this area include the hospitals and the temples including
the very iconic agyari of the parsis aka the fire temple.
• These buildings are intermingling with the wide pedestrian walkways and they
roads. As a result the amount of public spaces and the ratio of the built to the
unbuilt is almost the same.
 CHARACTER OF THE BUILDINGS
• In an interview, Engineer explains how many
buildings were planned and modeled after
European homes, and take on neo-classical
elements. Many have fireplaces and dining
rooms, often with dramatic plaster mouldings to
decorate the ceilings, painted in gold and silver
leaf.
• "These buildings are like extended joint families
and we will fight for them in every way that we
can", says a resident of this colony.
 PUBLIC SPACES
• One major attraction of this precinct is the public circles, garden and other
spaces that engulf it. It includes the famous five gardens with different
functions.
• All these five gardens include functions like the open gym, public and kids
park, a garden for worker union meetings, and a garden with fountains.

• Other public spaces can be counted as the open spaces within the
compound walls of the buildings. Buildings here usually have a huge spillover
which residents use as house gardens.
• People associate a lot with their public spaces. Gardens and circles also
include a garden for the pet animals, a ground for sports and other grounds
inside college campuses for students.
 PUBLIC SPACES
(Functionality and user)
• The public spaces and the users of these
respective public spaces see a changing
pattern daily based on the days of the
week. These also govern the daily lifestyle
and the traffic around these.
• Monday to Thursday usually college
students dominate the use of these
gardens. Evenings are dominated by the
residents all over the week.
• Recently due to stalls springing up the
density has been increasing.
• Also union meetings only happen during
Sunday.
• Socially and culturally all these gardens
serve as a platform for social gravitation.
• It provides people a medium for
interaction and also encourages a
cosmopolitan nature even though being
in the midst of a community.
 PLANNING
• Mancherji Joshi was largely responsible
for planning and developing Parsi
Colony. He got for his community a
covenant that reserved several plot s for
exclusive use by Parsis.
• Parsi Colony is a dimension that allows
three-storey buildings to get adequate
light and air while retaining a connection
to activity on the street.
• The land-use was planned to be a mix of
residential, commercial and institutional
constructions. Parks and gardens were planned,
and the streets were well laid out.
• Dadar was 6 mi (10 km) away from Crawford
Market by the newly constructed Mohammedali
Road. The tramways were extended here. The
GIP constructed a bridge, now the Tilak Bridge,
connecting the two railways. Soon, in February
1925, the GIP Railways opened their line, and
started the work of electrifying the railways.
Among the institutions which moved here
according to the BCIP plan were the VJTI, the
Sydenham College of Commerce and Wadia
Vachha now known as J.B.Vachha high school
for parsi girls.
FIVE GARDENS:
• Between the northern and southern
parts of the precinct is the seven-acre
park called five gardens.
• Joshi wanted to convince his
community to move out of small
tenements in overcrowded South
Bombay for bigger flats here.
• Hence he planted tress and developed
gardens to get the plots sold.
PROOF OF STRONG COMMUNITY UNITY AND SPIRIT

• The Street Vendors Act 2014, passed on the double-edged premise of "livelihood". Some 1,800
hawkers have been "allotted" space across Dadar Parsi Colony, Hindu Colony and Matunga.
Signature campaigns have been launched, the media co-opted, authorities appealed to.
Today, residents and "well-wishers" will march in protest from the police chowky to the statue of
the Dadar Parsi Colony's founder, Muncherji Joshi.
• Since the 1970s, the community has battled to stop builders from breaking the covenant. In that
decade, extra floors were added to existing buildings and builders began trying to sell the new
top-floor flats to outsiders. The difference in the price of a covenant flat and one sold on the open
market is considerable — Rs 10,000-15,000 per sqft today.
• Residents of the landmark Dadar Parsi Colony, the largest Zoroastrian enclave in the world, have
won a six-year-long legal battle to allow only members of this tiny community to live in this
'reserved area‘ in December 2009.
The city civil court has granted a permanent injunction restraining the builder from selling flats to
anyone who is not a Parsi-Irani Zoroastrian.
• Residents of Dadar Parsi Colony Oppose BMC's Plan to Widen Roads
• Apartments were planned for a western style of living.
• Flats are larger that ones in Hindu colony.
• An individual resident covers an area of 15 square meters.
• Toilets are located between rooms instead of being at one end of the flat like in
other RCC buildings.
DESIGN RULES BY THE IMPROVEMENT
TRUST:
• Buildings could not occupy more than
a third of the site.
• Buildings could not be more than three
storeys high.
• It was compulsory to maintain front
setback equal in all buildings and
buildings had to be kept in line on the
front.
• Compound walls, like the arcade,
unified buildings on a street. They were
designed to have grilles on the upper
third of their height.

• Dadar Parsi Colony was, in a sense, a gated community. Most buildings could be
owned or rented only by Parsis.
• The house and the space outside it merge inseparably into the city’s fabric unlike
other gated communities that stand like lone objects in the city’s landscape.
 future
• One is Parsi builder Jimmy Mistry's Della Tower, a Persian behemoth that
replaced the three-storey Dosal Mansion several years ago. Adorned with
Avestan prayers and massive reliefs of Prophet Zarathustra, this luxury
residence is often mistaken for a fire temple.
• Another tower is coming up across the lane, on the plot behind the
marble bust of colony founder, Mancherji Edulji Joshi. The 19-storey
Nirvan Tower replaced the two-storey Daruvala House which in the 1930s
housed the Yezdiar Industrial Institute — it sold pastries, patties and Parsi
sweets from glass "bannis"— and later Sherevar Restaurant.
• The rise of the two towers — and a handful of other projects in the past
few years — reflects the changing attitude to redevelopment in this
enclave. Efforts to notify the area as a heritage precinct have not taken off
and in the meantime, some buildings are being redeveloped. "People are
reconciled to the reality of redevelopment and the fact there is no real
way of stopping it," says Rohinton Mehta, who grew up in Daruvala House
and will move back when the new tower is finished. "For every non-Parsi
builder who buys a Parsi plot, there's a Parsi man who sold it."