History of Bombay in Independent India - Background

Background

The seven islands that came to constitute Bombay were home to communities of the Kolis. For centuries, the islands came under the control of successive indigenous empires before being ceded to the Portuguese and subsequently to the British East India Company. During the mid-18th century, Bombay was reshaped by the British with large-scale civil engineering projects, and emerged as a significant trading town.

Bombay grew into a leading commercial center of British India during the 19th century on the basis of textile mills and overseas trade. The city was, first and foremost, built and developed by an indigenous industrial and commercial bourgeoisie consisting of Parsis, Gujarati Hindus, Muslims communities earning their wealth on the extensive Arabian trade. The expanding labour force in Bombay was initially drawn from the coastal belt of Konkan, south of the city. After the famine in the Deccan during 1876–78, large numbers of Maratha-Kunbis and other peasant castes from the Deccan arrived in the city. Until the 1940s, Marathi speakers from these areas accounted for nearly half of the city's population, and held mostly manual and unskilled jobs. The business community was dominated by Parsi, Marwari, Muslim, and Gujarati merchants and industrialists, who owned most of the capital, and dominated the public and political life of Bombay in the 19th and first half of the 20th century.