A Brief History of the Heritage Movement in Bombay
Bombay was born established in roughly established in the 16th century and named by Portugese settlers. The area was originally an archipeligo of 7 islands and was a key fishing village that became a crucial trade route because of it’s deep natural bay. The islands would later be joined into one larger island,and the city would come to consist in contemporary times of two regions: the Mumbai city district, and the Mumbai suburban district.
To give you a sense of the massive development that took place, in 1936 the city celebrated a census report of 1million people living in Mumbai: it seemed like a sort of victory. By 1991 however, the census reported 10 million people living in the same space and the novelty of a growing population was long gone.
The activist movement in urban planning in Mumbai started in the 1970’s and was lead by three groups:
- The Save Bombay Committee
- The Bombay Environmental Action Group
- Bombay Civic Trust
It was clear by the mid 70s that Bombay had increasingly serious urban planning issues. A disproportionate amount of commercial development in the South and a flush of residential development in the north meant long hours of communiting for workers in the city, a strain of public transportation, and health impacts all around as residents of Mumbai commuted long hours in heat and pollution from traffic. The surge in development in the south was also contributing to a deterioration in civic services and a visible deterioration of the architectural unification of the city.
For these reasons, the concerned groups focused not only on urban planning but began to develop a urban heritage plan.
The first progress towards a heritage plan began when petitions from the group Save Bombay were heard by a municipal commissioner of Bombay named Mr. B.G. Deshmukh. Relying on a section of the Maharashtra Region and Town planning Act (1966), Deshmukh encouraged citizen groups to prepare a list of buildings worthy of preservation as heritage sites and made avalible a grant of 10lakh for the purpose. Dushmukh’s predicessor, Mr. Jamshed Kanga carried on intereste in creating a heritage plan and saw that a with the help of the Save Bombay organization a drafted plan prepared by Foy Nissena plan was approved that contained 75 buildings, most of which were renowned monumental buildings in the Fort Area.
By the late 70s a group called The Indian Heritage Society, chiefly concerned with heritage preservation and founded out of Delhi, was established in Mumbai. By the Mid 80s a group called INTACH ( Indian Naational Trust for Culture and Heritage) was formed and an even more detailed document profiling about 200 buildings for heritage was established.
In 1988 the gov’t of India created the national Commision on Urbanisation (NCU) under the chairmanship of Charles Correa. This group stated that while the city’s structure must continue to grow attention must be given to heritage buildings.
The NCU stated that while preservation of particular monuments and buildings could be preserved by protecting the immedtiate area form development a regional and town development plan would be necessary to preserve districts which were historical.
By 1991 a list was published with help from numerous government and citizen groups groups that listed 624 buildings and pricincts as areas worthy of preservation.
Another document was published by the governement of Maharashtra in 1991 that set out guideleines for development permissions that classified the city into three different grades of historic buildings. These listings distinguished the buildings and set out material guidelines for persons or organisations planning any alterations to their buildings.
By 1992 the “Kanga Committee” under Municipal Commisioner of Bombay Jamshed Kanga, published a final report that forms the basis of the government policy on heritage and conservation as executed by the government of Maharashtra and Bombay Municipal Corporation today.
This writing draws heavily from the book
The Fort Precinct in Bombay: Conserving and Image Center
Edited by Rahul Mehrotra and Gunter Nest, ISBN 81-900511-0-5 1994. Max Mueller Bhavan Bombay. Prince of Wales Museum Annexe. Bombay 400001, India
