Development at the urban fringe has been occurring ever since the first city began to expand, and Bombay certainly saw plenty of growth in the latter half of the nineteenth century. But it can plausibly be argued that its self-conscious suburbanization was triggered by a serious outbreak of plague in 1898. Accordingly, that is when, in House, But No Garden, historian Nikhil Rao begins his groundbreaking account of suburbanization, and suburbanism, in Bombay through the early 1960s.
The book is original in three ways, all important. First, Rao traces continuities between the colonial and post-colonial periods in a way which, for Bombay as for almost every ex-colonial city, is rare. In this case, it was a particular challenge because, when Bombay annexed territory in the 1950s, it expanded from 22 square miles to 186. Second, he demonstrates how conventional suburbanization happened in an urban area outside of Europe, North America or Japan and, moreover, without focusing on squatter or pirate settlements. The process that he describes, then, is ‘formal’, if unfamiliar in form. Third, and most importantly, Rao does an effective job of disentangling the reciprocal connections between social change and the physical development of the urban fringe. The result is a fine piece of scholarship that could profitably be read by anyone with an interest in South Asia, colonial cities, suburban growth or the built environment.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Bombay's population was approaching a million. Most residents lived in cramped and unsanitary conditions in the middle and southern portions of the island of Bombay. In 1898, a Bombay Improvement Trust (BIT) was established; it was soon planning slum clearance schemes, together with street widenings and extensions. One of its largest projects was Dadar-Matunga, in the north end of the island, where it used powers of eminent domain to plan and carry through a large suburban development consisting of walk-up apartments. The core of House, But No Garden is a case-study of this development. Drawing on documentary material from the Maharashtra State Archives, supplemented by interview with local residents and architects, Rao argues that its apartments became a middle-class norm. They later invaded older parts of the city as well as more peripheral territory on Salsette island to the north.
Rao's narrative takes account of the BIT's transformation of land and housing markets as well as the new modes of suburban living that they enabled. Eminent domain reduced ambiguities about land tenure, ironing out large wrinkles in the land market. New and widened roads brought fringe territory within easier commutes of the centre. In the inter-war years, cheaper cement concrete, the training of indigenous architects and municipal by-laws facilitated the construction of a new type of multiunit dwelling with private, indoor toilets. More sanitary, these were welcomed although, awkwardly, they required changed attitudes towards human wastes. Having two rooms instead of one, and with indoor facilities, families spent less time in the public spaces of the courtyard and street. This apartment district banished the small workshops and stores that typified the older wadis and mohallas of the city, helping to break down occupational-caste segregation. Dadar-Matunga became known to insiders and outsiders alike as a more generalized South Indian district, with an associated institutional infrastructure that included co-operatives, and also a political presence. ‘South Indian’ was loosely defined: it refashioned rather than eliminated caste distinctions, and had a class dimension which distinguished Dadar-Matunga from the neighbouring Dharavi slum.
At the end of the book, Rao sketches the course of suburban development into the early post-war period. Colonial administrators had begun to pay attention to Salsette in the 1900s, when they argued for ‘town planning’ as an alternative to eminent domain. This is more appropriately described as ‘re-planning’, for it entailed the enforced assembly, coupled with the co-operative redrawing and reallocation of sites among private owners in order to facilitate rational patterns of growth. Substantial development did not occur in Salsette until after 1945 when, as Rao shows, it was associated with new forms of municipal government. His treatment of this district and period fits a little uneasily with more fully rounded treatment of Dadar-Matunga, but are interesting and in every sense cover new ground.
There is much to appreciate here. Rao writes well; his argument is thoroughly documented and appropriately illustrated with maps, photographs and plans. He offers a new way of thinking about the BIT, the first colonial improvement trust, which has usually (and properly) been criticized for failing to rehouse all of the people it displaced. He has told us much that is new about twentieth-century Bombay, especially its transition from colonial city to modern metropolis. And, conceptually, he nicely integrates the analysis of city and suburb, society and space. By any standards, House, But No Garden is a significant accomplishment.
