Mill, Market, Mandir, Masjid: The Geographies of Communal Conflict in Colonial Bombay, c. 1929–39

Abstract

This article reframes a crucial period in the history of popular politics in colonial Bombay. Focusing on Hindu-Muslim antagonism between 1929 and 1939, it highlights the centrality of everyday urban spaces and places in shaping the context, dynamics and nature of communal conflict in a putatively cosmopolitan city. The first section shows how recurrent communal discord in Bombay was the outcome of two spatially contingent political developments that occurred concurrently in the years between 1929 and 1933. On the one hand, intra-class tensions engendered by industrial strife in tandem with the rapid ascendancy of the communist-led Girni Kamgar Union in the mill districts resulted in a communal backlash. On the other hand, the launch of the Congress’ Civil Disobedience movement deepened Hindu-Muslim differences in the market areas of the Indian town. The second section focuses on clashes over religious places and processions, which became a chronic feature of urban life in the 1930s. Through a range of examples, it underscores how local disputes over sacred sites and religious rites became integral to the political construction of communal identities in late colonial Bombay.

Keywords:

• Communal conflict and nationalism
• communal geographies in colonial Bombay
• communalism and labour
• municipal policies
• processions
• religious places
• secular spaces
• suburbs

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Charu Gupta, Stephen Legg, Dinyar Patel, Madhavan Palat, Robert Rahman Raman, Samira Sheikh and the anonymous reviewers of South Asia for their comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Police Report on the Bombay Riots of February 1929 [Police Report 1929] (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1929); Report of the Bombay Riots Inquiry Committee [BRIC Report] (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1929).

2. B.R. Ambedkar, Thoughts on Pakistan (Bombay: Thacker & Co., 1941): 180.

3. See, however, M. Menon, Riots and after in Mumbai: Chronicles of Truth and Reconciliation (Delhi: Sage, 2012). Menon’s chronological account of communal riots in Bombay from 1893 to 1993 takes a descriptive approach and uncritically reproduces colonial sources.

4. S. Bhattacharya, ‘Capital and Labour in Bombay City’, Economic & Political Weekly 16, nos. 42–43 (1981): PE36–PE44; R. Chandavarkar, Origins of Industrial Capitalism: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); R.R. Raman, ‘Decentering the History of Girangaon: Popular Politics and Muslim Workers in Late Colonial Bombay, 1919–47’ (unpublished PhD thesis, George-August-University of Gottingen, 2023).

5. As Colin McFarlane has noted, ‘Bombay has long been coupled with notions of cosmopolitanism’: C. McFarlane, ‘Postcolonial Bombay: Decline of a Cosmopolitan City?’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26, no. 3 (2008): 480–99; 480. The rise of ‘communal populism’ in postcolonial Bombay is widely attributed to the Shiv Sena’s calculated embrace of Hindutva from the late 1980s: see T.B. Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

6. The Mahomedan Riots of Bombay in the Year 1851, Compiled by a Parsi (Bombay: Bombay Summachar Press, 1856); The Bombay Riots of 1874 (Bombay: Bombay Gazette Steam Press, 1874).

7. J.C. Masselos, ‘Power in the Bombay “Moholla”, 1904–15: An Initial Exploration into the World of the Indian Urban Muslim’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 6 (1976): 75–95; P. Kidambi, Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (London: Routledge, 2016): 115–56.

8. D. Patel, ‘Beyond Hindu-Muslim Unity: Gandhi, the Parsis and the Prince of Wales Riots of 1921’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 55, no. 2 (2018): 221–47.

9. The Bombay Riots of 1893: Reprinted from The Times of India (Bombay: Office of the Times of India, 1893); The Mahomedan and Hindu Riots in Bombay, August 1893: From the Bombay Gazette (Bombay: Bombay Gazette Steam Press, 1893); J.C. Masselos, ‘The City as Represented in Crowd Action: Bombay 1893’, Economic & Political Weekly 28, no. 5 (1993): 182–90; Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay, ‘Communalism and Working Class Riot of 1893 in Bombay City’, Economic & Political Weekly 25, no. 30 (1990): 87–99.

10. Commissioner of Police [CPB], Special Branch [SB], Bombay, File 318/A/V, 1937, Chandavarkar Papers [CP], Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge; BRIC Report, 18.

11. Chandavarkar, Origins, 168–238.

12. R. Chandavarkar, ‘Questions of Class: The General Strikes in Bombay, 1928–29’, Contributions to Indian Sociology NS 33, nos. 1–2 (1999): 205–37.

13. CPB, SB, Bombay, File 318/A/V, 1937, CP.

14. Police Report 1929, 6–9; BRIC Report, 5.

15. Police Report 1929, 6–7; BRIC Report, 10.

16. Police Report 1929, 10–12.

17. BRIC Report, 17.

18. Police Report 1929, 16–38.

19. BRIC Report, 19; The Bombay Chronicle, April 30, 1929: 1; The Bombay Chronicle, May 4, 1929: 1.

20. Raman, ‘Decentering’, chap. 4; see also Patrick Hesse, ‘Communism and Communalism in the 1920s: Notes on a Neglected Nexus’, Sudasien Chronik 5 (2015): 258–86.

21. CPB, SB, Bombay, File 318/A/V, 1937, CP; The Times of India, May 4, 1929: 1; G.K. Lieten, ‘Strike and Strike Breakers: Bombay Textile Mills Strike, 1929’, Economic & Political Weekly 17, nos. 14–16 (1982): 697–704; Chandavarkar, ‘Questions’; Raman, ‘Decentering’, chap. 4.

22. J.C. Masselos, The City in Action: Bombay Struggles for Power (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008).

23. BRIC Report, 6–8; Government of Bombay [GOB], Home Department [Home] (Special), 793 (15), 1932, Maharashtra State Archives [MSA], Mumbai; GOB, Home (Special), File 870 (2), 1936, MSA.

24. Chandavarkar, Origins, 260–396.

25. Chandavarkar, ‘Questions’, 217.

26. N. Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 314–15.

27. CPB, SB, Bombay, File A/297/II, 1936 CP.

28. According to a report compiled by the Bombay police in July 1929, there were 152 akhadas in the city (141 Hindu; seven Muslim; two Parsi; one Christian; one Jewish): CPB, SB, Bombay, File 318/A/V, 1937, CP.

29. The close links between Congress activists and Hindu organisations also produced communal tensions across North India: see N.G. Barrier, ed., Roots of Communal Politics (Columbia: South Asia Books, 1976); Gooptu, Politics, 278–364.

30. Masselos, City; P. Kidambi, ‘Nationalism and the City in Colonial Bombay, c. 1890–1940’, Journal of Urban History 38, no. 5 (2012): 950–67; Raman, ‘Decentering’, chap. 5.

31. J.C. Masselos, ‘Appropriating Urban Space: Social Constructs of Bombay in the Time of the Raj’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 14, no. 1 (1991): 33–63.

32. Congress Bulletin, October 12, 1930, in K.K. Chaudhuri, ed., Source Material for a History of Freedom Movement [SMHFM], Vol. XII: Civil Disobedience Movement [CDM], October 1930–December 1941 (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1995): 47.

33. The Congress mostly deployed Muslim volunteers in its picketing campaign against liquor shops in the mill districts: Raman, ‘Decentering’, chap. 5.

34. Secretary, GOB, Home (Special), Bombay, to Secretary, Government of India [GOI], Home (Political), Delhi, March 1–15, 1932, File no. 18/4, 1932, Home (Political), National Archives of India [NAI], New Delhi.

35. Chaudhuri, ed., SMHFM, Vol. XII: CDM, 36; ibid., 49.

36. The Times of India, May 6, 1930: 11.

37. M. Hasan, ‘“Congress Muslims” and Indian Nationalism: Dilemma and Decline, 1928–1934’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 15, nos. 1–2 (1985): 102–20; Raman, ‘Decentering’, chap. 5.

38. Bombay Chronicle, June 4, 1930: 1; Hasan, ‘Congress Muslims’.

39. G.F.S. Collins, Secretary, GOB, Home (Special), H.W. Emerson, Secretary, GOI, Home (Political), May 15, 1930, in K.K. Chaudhuri, ed., SMHFM, Vol. XI: CDM, April–September 1930 (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1990), p. 97.

40. R.M. Maxwell, Secretary, GOB, Home (Special), Bombay, to H.W. Emerson, Secretary, GOI, Home (Political), February 12, 1931, File no. 18/31, 1931, Home (Political), NAI.

41. The Times of India, November 24, 1930: 5; The Times of India, February 2, 1931: 11; The Times of India, February 3, 1931: 9; The Times of India, February 5, 1931: 4; The Times of India, February 13, 1931: 13.

42. R.M. Maxwell, Secretary, GOB, Home (Special), Bombay, to H.W. Emerson, Secretary, GOI, Home (Political), April 1–14, 1932, File no. 18/5, 1932, Home (Political), NAI.

43. The Times of India, April 5, 1932: 7.

44. Sir Patrick Kelly, CPB, to Secretary, GOB, Home, September 29, 1932, Public and Judicial Department, India Office Records [IOR], L/PJ/7/371, British Library [BL], London.

45. Bombay Chronicle, May 18, 1932: 1.

46. Patrick Kelly, CPB, to Secretary, GOB, Home, September 29, 1932, Public and Judicial Department, IOR, L/PJ/7/371, BL.

47. Police Report 1929, 52.

48. Patrick Kelly, CPB, to Secretary, GOB, Home, September 29, 1932, Public and Judicial Department, IOR, L/PJ/7/371, BL.

49. Masselos, ‘Appropriating’; see also S. Legg, ‘A Pre-Partitioned City? Anti-Colonial and Communal Mohallas in Inter-War Delhi’,  South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 42, no. 11 (2019): 170–87.

50. Patrick Kelly, CPB, to Secretary, GOB, Home, September 29, 1932, Public and Judicial Department, IOR, L/PJ/7/371, BL.

51. GOB, Home (Special), File 793-B, 1933, MSA; see also Charu Gupta, ‘Hindu Women, Muslim Men: Cleavages in Shared Spaces of Everyday Life, United Provinces, c. 1890–1930’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 37, no. 2 (2000): 131–37.

52. GOB, Home (Special), File 793-B, 1933, MSA.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid.

57. For contrasting perspectives on the constitutive role of religious processions in communal conflict, see Sandria Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Christophe Jaffrelot, Religion, Caste and Politics (Delhi: Primus Books, 2010): 343–75.

58. The Times of India, February 22, 1927: 12.

59. CPB, SB, Bombay, File 297/A/III, 1927, CP.

60. CPB, SB, Bombay, File 297/A/II, 1936, CP.

61. CPB, SB, Bombay, File 318/A/V, 1937, CP; Bombay Chronicle, April 24, 1929: 5; The Times of India, April 25, 1929: 13; Bombay Chronicle, April 29, 1929: 5; The Times of India, April 29, 1929: 11.

62. CPB, SB, Bombay, File 318/A/V, 1937, CP.

63. The Times of India, September 9, 1930: 8.

64. CPB, SB, Bombay, File A/297/II, 1936, CP.

65. The Times of India, September 8, 1930: 9.

66. CPB, SB, Bombay, File A/297/II, 1936, CP.

67. GOB, Home (Special), File 792, 1932, MSA; The Times of India, April 21, 1932: 10.

68. The Times of India, April 21, 1932: 10; Bombay Chronicle, April 20, 1932: 1.

69. GOB, Home (Special), File 792, 1932, MSA.

70. The Times of India, April 20, 1932: 10.

71. Ibid.

72. GOB, Home (Special), File 792, 1932, MSA.

73. See also Gooptu, Politics, 314–20; D. Baul, ‘The Improbability of a Temple: Hindu Mobilization and Urban Space in the Delhi Shiv Mandir Agitation of 1938’, Studies in History 36, no. 2 (2020): 230–50; A. Vanaik, Possessing the City: Property and Politics in Delhi, 1911–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020): 192–221.

74. GOB, Home (Special), File 792, 1932, MSA.

75. The Times of India, March 28, 1932: 9.

76. The Times of India, March 29, 1932: 8.

77. Ibid.

78. GOB, Home (Special), File 793, 1932, MSA.

79. The Times of India, May 25, 1932: 7.

80. GOB, Home (Special), File 793, 1932, MSA.

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid.

83. GOB, Home (Special), File 870, 1935–36, MSA.

84. Ibid.

85. Ibid.

86. City of Bombay Improvement Trust: Proceedings of the Board, 1927–28 (Bombay, 1928): 141–42.

87. GOB, Home (Special), File 870, 1935–36, MSA.

88. Ibid.

89. Ibid.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid.; see also N.R. Ganneri, ‘The Hindu Mahasabha in Bombay (1923–1947)’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 75 (2014): 771–82.

92. GOB, Home (Special), File 870, 1935–36, MSA.

93. Ibid.

94. GOB, Home (Special), File 870 (14), 1936, MSA.

95. V. Das, Life and Worlds: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007): 149.

96. The Times of India, June 1, 1937: 11; GOB, Home (Special), File no. 910 (1), 1937, MSA.

97. Ibid.

98. The Times of India, April 18, 1938: 10; Bombay Chronicle, April 18, 1938: 1.

99. P.R. Brass, Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1998): 9.

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