SITE : STAGE : STRUCTURE
SITE : STAGE : STRUCTURE is an archival documentary project. It is a Transmedia Installation that integrates books, objects, photographs, short films, audio narratives, and heritage walks as a way of revitalizing memories and telling a history that is absent from the formal narratives.
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Ali Akbar Mehta
To the north and west one gains a distinct view of the many mildew-stained high-rises that contribute to one of the highest population densities in the world. To the south, one sees rows upon rows of warehouses and train sheds. And to the east, a clear view of the city’s historical raison d’etre: Mumbai harbor, populated now with freight and naval ships, once open a time with frigates and opium clippers. It is not a picturesque view, for towering in the middle is a massive, yellow gantry crane inscribed with the words “Mazagaon Dock Limited, Shipbuilders to the Nation.” As advertised, this is India’s top shipyard, creating warships and submarines for the Indian Navy, offshore platforms for the oil industry, and tankers and cargo carriers for commercial shipping.

The site of Mumbai’s former Chinatown, centered on Nawab Tank Road, lies in the crane’s shadow. The dockside location reminds one that the basis of the overseas Chinese community in India, like in most places across Asia, was the centrality of China in international maritime trade in the early modern and colonial eras. Until the eighteenth century, Mazagaon was hardly more than a Portuguese fort surrounded by fishing villages. Both pleasantly verdant and conveniently adjacent to one of the best natural harbors in Bombay, the place was bound to change when Zoroastrian Parsi merchants and the East India Company made Bombay the new commercial center of Western India. By the mid nineteenth century, Mazagaon had become a fashionable suburb for Europeans and Parsi merchants, populated with many churches, private villas, and even a couple of luxury hotels. The shipyard dates back to the early nineteenth century. That is where the Chinese worked, reportedly mainly as nut and bolt fitters. What remains of that community, like the much larger one in Kolkata, is composed primarily of Cantonese, Hakka, and Hupei – which is to say, ethnic groups from the Pearl River Delta area and the main inland areas impacted by the opium trade that was developed by the Portuguese and the British in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

While Kolkata’s Chinatown holds on, Mumbai’s has been almost lost to oblivion. It registers so weakly in the city’s memory that even most lifelong Mumbaikars have never heard of it. Even at its height, Bombay’s Chinatown paled in comparison with that in Kolkata, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the country’s Chinese-Indian population. One has to dig for mention of Chinese residents in histories of colonial Bombay. When they do appear, they are merely one name in the colorful and multilingual crowd of traders and immigrants from across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East that made Bombay famous as the most cosmopolitan place in the Orient. “Chinese with pig-tails; Japanese in the latest European attire; Malays in English jackets and loose turbans; Bukharans in tall sheep skin caps and woollen gabardines,” closes Commissioner of Police S. M. Edwardes in his account of the ingredients of Bombay’s melting pot streets in the first decade of the twentieth century. Also in “certain clubs in the city where a man may purchase nightly oblivion for the modest sum of two or three annas” – which is to say, in the opium dens –“the proprietor of the club may be a Musalman; his patrons may be Hindus, Christians or Chinese.” Intoxication, Edwardes observes, overcomes “distinctions of race, creed and sovereignty” – not unlike, say, money and commerce did in the street. But when the sun went down (or, if you were an addict, when the sun came up), Bombay’s various ethnic groups returned to homes in communities that were more often than not segregated from one another.

None of this I would have known or bothered to look into had it not been for Ali Akbar Mehta’s Site : Stage: Structure (2013-14), a show at the Clark House Initiative, a quasi-non-commercial space in south Mumbai. A converted antiques shop of odd dimensions, tucked away spaces, and personal odds and ends, the Clark House tends to make everything installed in its space look like a cabinet of curiosities. Mehta’s Site : Stage : Structure – an impressionistic and sentimental survey of the neighborhood through a mix of video documentary, photographs, and personal knickknacks – appeared to be that by design.

The focus of the installation was on the personal memories of the artist’s own grandparents and grandaunts and granduncles, all Bohra Muslims (another famed merchant community) who have been living in the neighborhood since the early twentieth century. They talk through video interviews about their daily lives, and about their family business of manufacturing fishing hooks, physical samples of which hang on the wall. There were also reflections of a less personal sort, and these were aimed at capturing the historical traces of Mazagaon’s slowly disappearing cosmopolitanism. Three fat photobooks focused on aspects of the neighborhood’s buildings and people. There were also photographs, taken by Mehta and hand-colored by a painter of movie hoardings hired by the artist, of the few surviving churches, crucifixes, and bungalows that once crowded this originally Portuguese settlement. In the same series was also an image of the giant crane at Mazagaon Dock, as well as one of the nondescript pink façade (beige in reality) of a three-story building that houses, on its second floor, the only distinctive remnant of the area’s Chinatown: the Daoist Kwan Tai Shek temple, dedicated to Guan Yu, the famous general of the Three Kingdoms period. It was reportedly built by Cantonese sailors in 1919. A Buddhist temple to the bodhisattva Guanyin was established on the building’s ground floor in recent years.

In another room at Clark House, Mehta had assembled images and objects related to the Kwan Tai Shek temple. On a shelf in the corner were a handful of ritual items, including cups and an incense burner, and figurines from Journey to the West. Pinned upon the wall behind them was a grid of sheets of silver-painted joss paper, burned to send wealth to deceased ancestors. A cabinet in another corner of the room contained various Chinese vessels. Some of the displayed objects were culled from the temple and its caretaker’s home. Others were fashioned by the artist in a makeshift manner (simple canisters splashed with red paint, for example) similar to that used at the temple itself to create facsimiles of items not available in Mumbai

The centerpiece of the installation was a twelve-minute video. It featured artfully shot details of things like the temple’s bright red ceiling, burning incense, and armored Daoist gods. Some information about the temple’s history and its rituals are given in the voiceover, provided by the temple’s jaunty caretaker in a comically round accent. “No way, not while I’m alive,” he says, responding to an unheard question of whether the temple will be dissolved and the land sold. Yet his defiance, and the fact that on most days the temple stays locked and unused, raises the specter that perhaps this generation of Chinese-Indians will be the last to stand up for tradition.

Granted, the Chinese settlement was only one part of Site : Stage : Structure. But as the installation overall could have benefited from a clearer mapping of the neighborhood’s shifting demographics, so the Kwan Tai Shek component might have foregrounded why Bombay’s Chinatown has been reduced to fragments. In 1962, during the Sino-Indian War, many Chinese-Indians, not unlike Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor, were either deported if they didn’t have Indian citizenship or sent to internment camps in Rajasthan and Gujarat if they did. Returning to their homes after the war ended, many found their property and businesses damaged or confiscated. In the spring of 1963, the PRC sent ships to India to repatriate those who wished to relocate to China. Others moved on their own to Western countries, many to Canada. The exodus continues to the present, with growing business opportunities throughout Asia, including China of course. Many of those who are educated abroad choose to stay on in those countries.

Though the internment camps and resulting outmigration are noted in a few scholarly texts, no historian has undertaken a full study. This episode was made known to a wider public a few years ago through Rafeeq Elias’s The Legend of Fat Mama (2012), a documentary for the BBC about Kolkata’s shrinking Chinatown. The story Elias tells of persecution, marginalization, and disappointed emigration applies also to Mumbai, judging from the extensive wall text at Mehta’s Clark House installation. “According to Tulun Chen, Mumbai-based chairman of the Maharashtra Chinese Association,” reports Mehta from one of his many interviews with the community, “there are just around 3,500 Chinese in Mumbai, down from an estimated 15,000 in the mid-1960s.” Those who remain are now third and fourth generation. If they have not disappeared into Indian society, they run hairdressers and Chinese restaurants, including some of the most famous in the city.

Sketch-like though it might be, Mehta’s project is the most focused attempt to document the history and fate of Chinese-Indians in Mumbai. Information about the community is otherwise available only in the form of spotty online travel and entertainment blogs. Some of the artists and curators associated with the Clark House conduct related forms of urban history and ethnographic research, though I have never seen anything at the gallery on the scale of Site : Stage : Structure. Such projects not only enrich Mumbai’s art scene by offering something other than aesthetic wall-hangings and floor pieces, or theory-laden group shows. They also contribute to the city’s self-knowledge as a place with a conflicted and tangled cosmopolitan past. In an era in which rightwing groups continue to insist on Mumbai narrowly as a Hindu Marathi city, counter-historical practices like Site : Stage : Structure serve much more than ethnographic curiosity.

– Ryan Holmberg

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Ryan Holmberg is an art and comics historian. After receiving his PhD in Japanese Art History from Yale University in 2007, he taught at the University of Chicago, City University of New York, and the University of Southern California. He is a frequent contributor to Art in America, Artforum, Yishu, and The Comics Journal, and is editor of two lines of translated manga from PictureBox, Inc. in New York: Ten Cent Manga, which focuses on the impact of American comics and mass entertainment on Japanese manga, and Masters of Alternative Manga. As a Sainsbury Fellow, Ryan is undertaking research that would eventually lead to the publication of his book project Garo and the Birth of Alternative Manga.

Ryan happened to walk in one fine day into Clark House, when he was researching a piece on Sino-Indian Connections in Recent Indian Art, which was published in the January/February 2015 volume of YISHU.

Mazgaon and Wadibunder

Pine Building, 2012 Bhaucha Dhakka, 2012

The word Mazagaon has been derived from the Sanskrit Matsya Gram, meaning fishing village. The original inhabitants were speculated to be tribals of Agari (salt-workers) and Koli (fishermen) tribes. However, folk etymology derives Mazagaon from the Marathi Maza Gaon, meaning my village. Another etymological claim suggests Portuguese origin, with the name borrowed from a city and fort of Mazagão in Morocco (now El Jadida) established by Portuguese in the beginning of the 16th century who totally evacuated to Brazil in 1769

One of Mazagaon’s oldest claims to fame was a variety of mango trees, which fruited twice a year. These mangoes were a celebrated commodity, and the Mazgaon mangoes find a mention as the ‘Mangoes of Mazagong’ in the epic poem Lallah Rookh by Thomas Moore in 1817. The mangoes would be packed for Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Apparently a few such trees were extant well into the 20th century. The small island was rocky, with a hill rising at the north, and forming a cliff over the harbour. To see what Mazagaon might once have been, one has to visit any of the tiny rocky islands bearing mango trees and small villages further down the Konkan coast.

Once very fashionable, Mazgaon lost much of its charm after the more affluent British and Parsi residents relocated to Malabar Hill. Post independence, the area was generally considered to be a Catholic enclave.

Mazagaon is home to a large population of Catholics, Hindus, Parsis, Jews and other communities. With most Catholics migrating abroad, Muslims (particularly Dawoodi Bohras) have become the majority in terms of population, who have been moving from the more crowded neighbouring Bhindi Bazaar. They are developing many places in Mazgaon – Huge skyscrapers, newer architecture and spaces are replacing the old. It has virtually become a Bohra-Muslim neighbourhood.

A Catholic East Indian village can be found in the “Mathar Pacady” area. The migrants originally from Goa set up transit camps, which later became permanent residences. The Goan Clubs are an integral part of this area, which still function as transit houses for sailors and paid members.

Nearby lie the famous Mazagaon Docks, famed as a site of shipbuilding since the 18th century. It still builds warships for the Indian Navy and nearby is the Mazagaon Dock Colony which houses Angre House, Sarine House, Curry House and P & O Terrace. The Harbour Line station of Dockyard Road is the nearest railhead. The area is peaceful and quiet, unlike other parts of the city.

Mazgaon Docks

Mazgaon Crane, 2012

“These are the Docks on one side. It used to be Mahindra and Mohammed: J.C. Mahindra and K.C. Mahindra joined forces with Ghulam Mohammed and started Mahindra & Mohammed as a steel company in Mumbai. Two years later, India won its independence, Ghulam Mohammed left the company to become Pakistan’s first finance minister, and the Mahindra brothers ignited the company’s enduring growth with their decision to manufacture Willys jeeps in Mumbai. Soon, the company’s name changed to Mahindra & Mahindra…”

Mazagon Dock has come a long way from being a small repair yard in the late 18th century to the country’s leading Defence Shipyard capable of meeting the requirements of the Indian Navy towards its warship building programmes including submarines. The current order book position makes MDL, one of the most loaded shipyards in the world.

Mazagon Dock Limited is the India’s premier shipyard constructing warships as well as offshore platforms.

The Yard was established in the 18th century, and over the 200 odd eventful years, has earned a reputation for quality work and established a tradition of skilled and resourceful service. After its takeover by the Government in 1960, Mazagon Dock grew rapidly to become the premier war-shipbuilding yard in India, producing sophisticated warships for the Navy and offshore structures for the ONGC. It has grown from a single unit, small ship repair company, into a multi-unit and multi-product company, with significant rise in production, use of modern technology and sophistication of products.

Main activities are ship building, ship repairs and fabrication of offshore structures with facilities situated at Mumbai and Nhava. We have the capability to build warships, submarines, merchant ships upto 30,000 DWT and fabrication of well head platforms, process and production platforms and jack up rigs. For outfitting work, the company has a large number of workshops with sophisticated equipment and machines specific to hull fabrication and ship construction work.

Hasanabad

Hasanabad, 2013

Hasanabad or Shah Hasan Ali’s Maqbara or Mausoleum is the resting place of 46th Imam – Aga Khan I, Imam of the Nizari Ismailite sect of the Shiite Muslims, circa 1884, Mazagaon.

Aga Khan, a resident of Iran arrived in Mumbai in 1846, and eventually became a permanent resident of the country and died in Mumbai in 1881. His funeral was attended by the consuls of Turkey and Iran as well as high-ranking British officials.

This marble mausoleum took a full three years to build and the minaret is said to be 19 feet high. A marble paean glows through the grime. Standing at the threshold of Hasanabad, it’s almost impossible to believe that this brilliant blue-domed building belongs to Mumbai. Its golden minarets evoke memories of Delhi or Hyderabad but not Mumbai’s Mazagaon.

Portuguese Bungalow:

Portuguese Bungalow, 2013

The first Portuguese settlers were the Jesuits, who established a church in the 16th century. Notwithstanding their claim, in 1572 the King of Portugal granted the island in perpetuity to the de Souza e Lima family, from whom the D’Souzas of Mumbai trace their descent. When the Portuguese ceded the island to the British, there was a well-established population of Roman Catholics, mainly fishermen. Most were Hindu converts, although Eurasians were not uncommon. Some black African slaves brought by the Portuguese, known as Kaffirs, had also entered the ethnic mix. Some of their traditional wooden houses can still be seen, and are now protected heritage structures.

This site refers to one of the only four remaining original examples of Portuguese architecture. It is unoccupied except for Security guards.

Mathar Pacady Lane

Mathar Pacady Lane, 2012

Tucked away in a quiet corner of the concrete jungle is Matharpacady (pacadi means village in Marathi). Back in the early 1900, this quaint little pocket, in the heart of Mazagoan, was called Saiba Gulli as 90 per cent of the residents were Catholics. It has survived the ravages of time and today is close to disintegrating following the nexus between local politicians and the builder lobby that wants to construct apartment blocks here.

The place still has a very Goan-Portuguese feel. Most of the houses are more than a century old and cannot be demolished without government approval. However, a seven-storey building was recently built on the remains of a house whose inmates had all died. Although it falls in the Grade 3 category of protected monuments, residents know it’s easy to find legal loopholes.

Mathar Pacady Eyemard Cottage:

Eyemard Cottage has been renamed after St. Julian Eymard, the Apostle of the Eucharist.

Brother Peter Paul, who works in the office of the Blessed Sacrament Provincial Order, explains, “Many people died in the 1875 plague. Our prayers to the saint saved the remaining few. Along with his two brothers, he is immortalised in this building that came up on land donated by the Edward Miranda family in 2006. Young and old still pray here. But a well, built by the original settlers, was sealed after the 1992 communal riots.”

According to another resident John Borges who lives here in Matharpacady since 1958, there have been a few changes. Earlier they had the litanies in Latin; but keeping in tune with the times, the music has also changed. However, the essence of thanksgiving still remains the same. Now the younger generation actively participates for they feel it is an important part of their spiritual heritage and they want to keep in touch with their roots.

Matharpacady that was once beautiful with mango, plantain, and neem trees has turned into a dumping area with godowns, warehouses and garages in the vicinity. The lack of conservation knowledge, ill-advised repairs, loss of original building materials, unaffordable maintenance costs, threaten the survival of Matharpacady heritage village amidst the towering skyscrapers. There are now in Matharpacady three buildings – Manish Apartments, Monark Apartments and Sakhari Apartments which have come in place of some of the village’s original structures.

Matharpacady has been fast losing its identity and socio-cultural history of over 300-odd years. One wonders if Matharpacady will survive. There are talks of transforming Matharpacady into tourism region.

Mathar Pacady Club, Mathar Pacady

The Matharpacady Club, a grand 100 year old structure, is amid a pile of rubble now. The Club celebrated its centenary in 2006, but sadly before it could be protected under heritage listings, the Duartes who owned the place sold it to a builder.

The first floor of the club has been demolished and only the ground floor remains with legal dispute between the builder and the club management. They are not fighting the loss of heritage; they are in fact willing to let go of the place if they are given a similar 2,000 sq. ft. space in the new structure, a shop and Rs 30 lakh too.

When construction pits were excavated, electricity and water supply were cut off. Hence the senior citizens of the area abandoned their evening haunt. The club now looks like a broken-down old-age home where the card tables and carom boards gather dust. There is rubble everywhere and during monsoon rainwater pours in.

Mathar Pacady Oart Holy Cross Oratory

Mathar Pacady Oart Holy Cross Oratory, 2012

The 125-year chapel, Mathar Pacady Oart Holy Cross Oratory, stands tall. The feast of St Rock is celebrated here every year on May 1.

The residents built the Holy Cross Oratory in this village in the late 1890s when Bombay was struck by plague. They offered prayers to St Roque – the patron saint of epidemics, for the protection of their loved ones. And legend has it that not a single Mathar Pacady resident fell a prey to that epidemic.

The tradition of praying at the Holy Cross Oratory has been going on for more than a century and has been kept alive by the residents who gather every evening even today and offer prayers and thanksgiving for protecting them through good and bad times.

According to a resident St John Valladares, this faith in the Cross has been kept alive for 87 summers. Every year from April 22 onwards, the community gathers at the Cross for thanksgiving with a rosary, litanies to Our Lady, the Holy Cross and St Roque, that culminate into a feast of the Cross on May 1. Everyone from grandparents to toddlers – all join in the prayers; and it is a way of thanking God for the well-being of all. Prayers are also offered for a good monsoon, which is another tradition from the community’s farming days.

The Oratory falls in the Grade 3 category of protected monuments along with the rest of the Mathar Pacady area and is also deemed a World Heritage Site.

D’mello Road

The Docks were close by; if you see very closely, you will find names of the streets named as Karvad street, Kalyan street, Kochin street, Ahmedabad street etc. based on where the goods were coming from. Wadibunder was supposed to be the area where shipment goods were taken inside and outside the docks, now that the containers have come, the whole thing has changed.

Some of the Warehouses are more than 150 years old, and most of them would be demolished soon in the coming years due to expansion and development and progress. Now there is heavy encroachment. Earlier there was a greater volume of slums, now in the last 4 to 5 years most of them have been removed.

If you stand in front of Burma Shell Petrol, you see they had this bogey sort of a thing. You will see that the railways containers were only for oil and petrol, which went inside the docks and came out only carrying oil. Now, Its not being used much, because you see, earlier, the trams were there, you had the crossway going in the afternoon and in the mornings and the entire traffic used to stop. Now the partition has come up.

BPT Railway Tracks

The tracks were part of the BPT Railways, which were functional before the other suburban railway lines. Earlier there were lots of them, now they have kept only one line, and its not really functional. They have built the BPT Road over what were the railway lines (tracks). These railways were started in the 1915, much before the Central or the Western railways.

There were so many trains, they even had a turntable, to keep the bogey or container on it, and whichever line you wanted to take, it could be rotated to match that.We spent our childhood playing in the rail yard. We used to play cricket there, we used to fly kites, even catch kites there. But all the railways are gone now.

There was one train they had which started from Apollo Bunder, where you got off a ship and directly took a train, which took you to Delhi, or wherever in the frontiers. That is also how the railways was used back then. When M. K. Gandhi came back from South Africa, he would have come by ship here in Bombay; the ticket for the ship and the train were same.

Koli House

Koli House, 2013

Kolbhat, Palva Bunder, Dongri, Mazgaon, Naigaum and Worli were among the islands the Kolis gave their names to. Kolbhat was distorted to Colaba; Palva Bunder became Apollo Bunder. The temple to Mumbadevi in Dongri gave rise to the name of the city. One of the smaller islands near Colaba, variously called Old Man’s Island and Old Woman’s Island, was a distortion of the Arab name Al-Omani, given for the same fishermen who ranged as far away as the gulf of Oman.

In Marathi, Koli means the originally heterogeneous marginal tribe-castes that took late in history to agriculture and were often press-ganged for porterage in army service. The same word also means spider and fisherman, presumably because the fisherman makes and uses a net to catch his prey as a spider his web.

With settlements dating back at least 400 years, the Kolis were the earliest inhabitants of the archipelago now known as Mumbai. They are thought to be members of the Kul tribe, which migrated from the mainland mass of Aparanta at beginning of Christian era or earlier. Kolis occupied the islands in successive waves and engaged in husbandry and fishing.

Around 38 Koliwadas exist in the region today, having survived periods of Hindu colonization around the end of the 13th century, Muslim rule until the mid-16th century, foreign colonization first by the Portuguese and then by the British, and the explosive expansion of modern Mumbai.

“This Mazgaon Koliwada house, is a particular architecture of the time. People built their own houses. The only kind of common feature you will find with most of these kind of houses is the wooden ‘V’ or the upside down ‘V’ and the grills. It is called Vaithi House, and the people who stay were Koli. This is a typical Koli building; In Yari Road, there still exist other types of Koli buildings and the Koli Houses – small houses, with the balcony belongs to the beginning of the 20th century, and the grills particularly reminiscent of the time. A consistent feature of these houses are verandahs with photographs of their family members on display.”

Behind the House is the Naqwa Road, named after the Koli figure Narsool Naqwa. They would get one of the Larger and spectacular Ganpatis of the area, which would be a major attraction of the time. They are fisherfolk, there family would sell fish, and the sons or the newer generation, which were highly educated, went to the best of schools. Their son was in school with me initially and then he went to Saint Mary’s. This is not their house, but the one behind this Koli House.”

The Kolis’ close connection with the history of Mumbai is evident in the city’s place names. The city’s original name of “Manbai,” “Mambai,” or “Mumbai” by some accounts derives from “Mumbadevi,” the patron deity of the Kolis. The earliest settlements in Mumbai were the koliwadis, which were named after local trees or other natural elements, as Kolis were then nature and tree-worshipers. For example, “Parel” is said to derive from “Padel,” the local name of a trumpet-flower tree. “Colaba,” Mumbai’s primary tourist and historical center, derives from “Kola-bhat,” which means “Koli estates.”

In the 17th century, Queen Elizabeth formally bestowed land tenure to the “Kolis of Dharavi,” an event commemorated in documents and a copper plate currently housed in a Mumbai museum. The Queen also gifted pistols to three Koli residents — Banduk Patil, Bapuram Koli and Kuptun Mangalaya Koli — as security against pirates that used to rob fishing boats.

The development of the modern city slowly marginalised these people of the sea. By 1770, they were already removed from Dongri by the East India Company. This historical process of elimination eventually pushed them to the strand near Cuffe Parade, from where they plied their ancient trade of deep-water fishing. The Backbay reclamation of the 60’s would have further marginalised them had they not approached the courts to stay the reclamation. Now their settlements are protected by law.

Mazgaon Gardens

Mazgaon Gardens, 2012

The Joseph Baptista Gardens, locally known as the Mazagaon Gardens, is a 1.5 acres (0.6 ha) park in south Mumbai in Mazagaon.[1] It lies atop a hill, the Bhandarwada Hill, and offers a panoramic view of the Mumbai harbour and the southern business district of the city. Beneath the gardens is a water reservoir, constructed by the second Municipal Commissioner of Bombay, John Hay Grant between 1880–1884. The gardens are located behind the Dockyard Road railway station, at an altitude of 32 metres (105 ft). Shortly after India’s independence in 1947, the gardens, was named after Joseph Baptista, an Indian freedom activist.

Old Gloria Church Cross in BPT Area

Old Gloria Church Cross, 2013

The original Gloria church, Nossa Senhora da Glória, was built in 1632 from a donation by the de Souza family. It was destroyed in 1911, being replaced two years later by a new Gothic church of the same name built a opposite the Byculla Railway Station, a kilometer away. When a Church is shifted, The Cross is replaced. So what remains to commemorate the original location of the Old Church is the original Cross, revered and maintained by a small Catholic community living in Bob’s Bungalow in front of the Site.

Barber Shops, Dockyard Road Station

These Barbershops are a historic landmark of Dockyard Road. Built under the Railway Bridge, these shops are atleast 100 years old. They are the descendants of the Barbershops near the Docks that specialized in the facilities of Hamaams. The Hamaams may be gone but these shops still service a lot of clientele that comes from the docks.

People used to come very early morning to work at the Docks, or very late in the evening from it. Once upon a time, everywhere under a brigde you could find Barbers, the fact that they still exist is a big thing. They have been there for more than 80 to 90 years. There used to also be Saloons, some of which had their own Hamams, but now they no longer exist.

Ashok Karande, Cobbler, Mathar Pakadi:

There are no commercial establishments in Mathar Pacady. The only exception is the decrepit shop of cobbler Ashok Karande, built by his forefathers more than 100 years ago. He has been managing it since the 1970s.

Priest at Patel Agiyari, Mazgaon Village

The Parsi Agiyary is the oldest Agiyary of Mathar Pakardi. The Parsis were very fashionable people, whenever you come to the Agiyary, you find the latest and the fanciest cars, or a motorbike etc.

Mazagaon was occupied by the Sidi оf Janjira, an admiral in the Mughal Navy in 1690. It is said that he was driven away а year later by the Rustomji Dorabji, who organised the fishermen in Dongri into а fleet. Rustomji was given the title ‘Patel’ after this feat, and his descendants have remained the only Parsi family of Patels.

In 1820, Kolkata was home to an estimated 50,000 Chinese nationals. In those simpler times, there was no need for passports and visas, and skilled people could migrate to wherever they found employment.

The Chinese in India came from all over the Middle Kingdom — Canton (now Guangdong) in the south; Hupeh (Hubei), a central province; the Hakka, who were originally from the northern provinces, but later migrated all over China; and Shantung (now Shandong), an eastern province.

But almost 200 years after large-scale migration of Chinese began to India, the community has dwindled significantly. According to Tulun Chen, Mumbai-based chairman of the Maharashtra Chinese Association, there are just around 3,500 Chinese in Mumbai, down from an estimated 15,000 in the mid-1960s.

“The Chinese are very few in number now, as a matter of fact, up to 1961 hey were good in number, and after the Chinese War they were detained in, or sent to concentration camps to Devlali, Ahmednagar, Ahmedabad and so many other places. The ones who remained left for Hongkong, Canada and so many other places.

Before 1961, you could see a lot of Chinese on the roads, and is you saw one, you would see that they would wear there one style of clothes, Chinese style clothes, and the child would be behind the back and the foot size would be very very small because the Chinese said that if you are beautiful, it means you have very small feet.

The temple now has become a bit famous, because now people are talking about it, newspapers are covering it, the festival is covered, and every year is the year of a different animal in the Chinese religion, which is celebrated accordingly. Most of the Chinese today are working as hairdressers, or working in a restaurant. “

Sadly, while bustling Chinatowns can be found in many parts of the world — including the US — in India, they are on the decline. Mumbai does not have a Chinatown as it did at the time of Independence. The Chinese came to Mumbai in the early part of the 19th century settled around the Mazgaon docks area in south-central Mumbai, and established a temple (the Kwan Tai Shek) and a cemetery. By the 1850s, the Chinese moved to other localities, including Byculla and Kamathipura. The latter became a notorious red light district, and is today one of the largest and oldest in Asia.

“There used to be a Chinatown in Shooklajee Street, where a lot of Chinese were staying; and if you go to Grant Road or to Falkland Road, there were a lot of Chinese dentists, now you don’t see them anymore. Only one or two are there, and there children have also become dentists, and they speak very good Hindi and Marathi; They have blended themselves very well, but you can make them out because they look different from us. “

Tangra in east Kolkata — which used to house over 350 tanneries — was once the most vibrant Chinatown in India. Today, Tangra has less than a quarter of its original Chinese population, while Shuklaji street has just a handful of Chinese families living there.

The Chinese-Indian community has traditionally specialised in a handful of professions, and even today most of the surviving members can be found in these crafts: foods and beverages (restaurants), dentistry, hair salons and shoemaking.

Says Ryan Tham, 27, a descendant of a prominent Chinese-Indian family: “There are about four families in Mumbai that run Chinese restaurants: the Wangs, the Chens, the Nankings and the Thams.”

Tham’s grandfather was born in Kolkata, and moved to Mumbai about 60 years ago. In 1962, he launched Kokwah, the first cabaret venue in India. Later, he opened the Mandarin, near the Gateway of India. His son Henry, who married a Bengali, sent his two sons — Ryan and Keenan — to Australia for higher studies. For several years, the family also ran the famous Thams salon, near the Taj Mahal hotel. Henry and his two sons now run Henry Tham, a fine-dining resto-bar in Colaba.

“We have been in the food and beverages business for the past 50 years,” explains the young Tham, who is often seen in celebrity circles and exclusive parties. “But I consider myself more Indian than Chinese. I am fluent in Hindi and Marathi and completed my schooling in Mumbai.”

Agnes Chen is another third-generation Chinese-Indian who feels more Indian than Chinese. Born in Kolkata, she was educated at the Loreto Convent and is fluent in Bengali, English, Hindi and French. “We are Chinese genetically, but in all other respects we are Indian,” says Agnes, who moved to Mumbai 13 years ago. “About 70 per cent of the younger generation Chinese-Indians have migrated to countries like Canada, the US and Australia,” explains Anges.

“I was too busy with my career and did not get the time to migrate,” she smiles. A hairstylist and dresser, she has worked for several multinationals, including L’Oréal, Procter & Gamble and Wella. She has lived in London and Paris, travelled across the world organising hair fashion shows, and has also trained over 10,000 hairdressers.

Today, she runs her own hair salon, Butterfly Pond, located in the over-100-year-old heritage building, Royal Terrace. Agnes points out that the overseas Chinese community is usually very enterprising, and most Chinese-Indians have set up their own businesses. Unlike many Chinese-Indians, she entered into an arranged marriage with another Chinese from Kolkata. Her nine-year-old daughter, a fourth-generation Chinese, was born in Mumbai.

Edward Wang, another young third-generation Chinese-Indian, is also extremely busy, expanding and modernising the restaurant — China Garden — which his father started in Mumbai. What does he think about young Chinese in India and their social interactions? “I don’t have a single Chinese friend, though I have a few acquaintances,” explains the 32-year-old. According to him, there is an increasing trend of Chinese marrying Indians

“Two sons of one my employees married Indian girls. Another employee’s son married a Nepali girl,” says Wang, who is single. His father, Nelson Wang, started life as a shoemaker in Hyderabad. He came to Mumbai with less than Rs50, and began working at a restaurant. He pioneered the concept of Indian-Chinese cuisine, creating dishes like Chicken Manchurian. Other restaurateurs have honed these skills, churning out meals like Gobi Manchurian, Chinese-bhel and chilli-fried tofu.

While many young Chinese-Indians have chosen to migrate to the West or Australia and New Zealand, there is a clutch of professionals who continue to thrive in India and have no plans to leave the land their forefathers made their home 200 years ago.

1.1 This is an area in which majority of residents are Hindus, but there are certain known pockets of Muslims. Communally sensitive areas which experienced previous communal trouble are Kalapani Junction, Sakhli Street, Junction of Meghraj Shetty Marg and Baburao Jagtap Marg, Tank Pakhadi Road, Hindustan Masjid, Sunder Galli, Tambit Naka, Paise Street, S–Bridge and Dhobighat.

1.2 On 7th December 1992, at about 1230 hours, trouble started near the Byculla Fire Brigade Station with an attack on the Mhasoba Mandir by a mob of Muslims. The Muslim mob damaged the temple and when this news spread, a Hindu mob collected near the Mhasoba Mandir and started throwing stones and other missiles at the Muslims who had gathered near Meghraj Street. The police intervened and resorted to firing to control the situation. The miscreants damaged not only the temple structure, but also the idol inside and ransacked the belongings of the temple’s priest who lived on the premises. On the same day, a Vithal Mandir situated on Meghraj Street was also damaged and the property of the priest living there was also ransacked. The property damage was estimated to be over a lakh of rupees.

1.3 At 2030 hours, on 7th December 1992, there were clashes between Hindu and Muslim mobs at Sundar Galli and Kalapani Junction. Stones were thrown by the miscreants from Patra Chawl side on B.J. Road.

1.4 On 8th December 1992 there were pitched battles between mobs of Hindus and Muslims in Tank Pakhadi, Transit Camp, Tambit Naka, Hindustan Masjid and Khatau Mill areas. During the melee one police officer, A.S. Sawant, was injured on his thigh by stone throwing and some of the miscreants in the Muslim mob attempted to snatch away the rifle of one of the constables. Police resorted to firing resulting in injuries to two persons.

1.5 During December 1992 the police registered six offences, out of which two pertained to the attack on the Mhasoba and Vithal Mandirs. The other four offences consisted of three attacks on Muslim properties and an attack on a rationing shop on 9th December 1992.

1.6 Trouble started in January 1993 with an incident of stabbing at Mominpura Patra Chawl at about 0100 hours on 7th January 1993 in which a Hindu was stabbed by unknown persons. At the same time, the news about incidents of stabbing, arson, and stone throwing occurring with alarming frequency in the adjoining jurisdictions of Dongri, Pydhonie, Nagpada and in Mahim heightened the communal tension in this area. The police managed to maintain an uneasy peace on 7th January 1993 and upto the evening of 8th January 1993.

1.7 From 2100 hours on 8th January 1993, riots erupted at BIT Chawls, Maulana Azad Road, Sakhli Street and Kalapani Junction. The trouble seems to have first erupted in BIT Chawls No. 12, 11, and 23. Though the police claim that the incident was one of a violent clash between armed mobs of Hindus and Muslims, the true picture seems to be different. According to the evidence of one of the Muslim victims, Mumtaz Rehman, the trouble in the BIT Chawls started at about 7.30 p.m. with the Hindu residents attacking Chawl No. 12 occupied by Muslims with stones, soda–water bottles and petrol bombs, shouting “Landyabhai ko maro”, “Pakistan ko bhagao” and “Bara number me ghuso”. Sixty–three out of the eighty tenements in Chawl No.12 are occupied by Muslims and the rest by Christians.

In the other BIT Chawls, the preponderant majority is of Hindus, though a few tenements are occupied by Muslims. When the stone throwing started, Mumtaz Rehman telephoned the Agripada Police Station to complain that the Muslim residents of BIT Chawl No.12 were being attacked by Hindus. The telephone was answered by an unidentified person in the police station who, on receiving the request for help, rudely replied, “Landybai Chup baitho, Abhi kuch nahi huva” and banged down the phone. Mumtaz then frantically phoned for help to some Muslim corporators of Janata Dal and some Muslim officers in the military. After about an hour or so, a police mobile came to BIT Chawl No. 2 with three constables and an officer. The main entrance of that chawl has a collapsible iron grill which had been shut and locked by the residents who feared for their lives. The police repeatedly rattled the collapsible iron grill, calling upon the residents of Chawl No.12 to open the lock.

According to Mumtaz, the Hindu miscreants in the surrounding chawls were standing around with swords and choppers in their hands. But instead of dealing with them, the police threatened the residents of Chawl No.12 that if they did not open the collapsible door they would be shot. By this time, some of the miscreants had cut off the telephone line, electricity line and water connection of Chawl No.12. There was also an attempt to set fire to Chawl No.12, which, according to Mumtaz, occurred in the presence of the police without the police taking any action. The miscreants set fire to two taxis and two motorcycles of Muslims, looted four gas cylinders from Muslim houses in Block No.11, kept them in front of Chawl No.12 and attempted to set fire to them. Major catastrophe was, however, avoided since the police took charge of and removed the gas cylinders.

The water, electricity and telephone lines were restored only on 9th January 1993 at about 1230 hrs, after the arrival of military personnel accompanied by plumbers. The police claim that the collapsible iron door had been connected to live electric wires as a result of which the police constable who attempted to open the collapsible door got an electric shock. The story appears apocryphal. Mumtaz says that the police were repeatedly rattling the collapsible door. The Senior Police Inspector’s evidence shows that no attempt was made to discover if the theory of electric current was true. As a matter of fact, at the material time the electric connection itself had been disrupted. Senior Police Inspector Tikam, says that he did not notice any electric wires connected to the collapsible iron shutter, nor did the police attempt to force open the said door.

A police picket was posted in front of Chawl No.12 and in the morning at about 6 a.m. the police managed to enter the building from a side entrance. This time the police were armed with electric testers and when they tested the iron grill of the shutter, it was not found electrified. There is also no mention of any of this story in the Station Diary of the police station, though Tikam admitted that this was a very serious incident and gall serious incidents must be noted in the Station Diary.

Sarwaribegum, resident of BIT Chawl No. 8, says that, at about 2200 hours on 8th January 1993, the miscreants repeatedly banged on her door and broke open the door to her tenement. She along with her two daughters–in–law and children was inside. One of the miscreants, Santosh Nagaonkar, started damaging the articles in the house and another placed a chopper on her neck and asked about the whereabouts of menfolk. The women pleaded for their lives, managed to run away and seek shelter in Prabhat Building. Sarwaribegam says that, when all this was happening, she saw the police standing 15 feet away from the building, doing nothing.

When she complained to the police about the attack on her chawl and requested action against the miscreants, the police asked her to go away. She made a complaint to the police station on 16th January 1993 narrating what transpired during the night of 8th January 1993. She denies the correctness of what is alleged to be her statement (Exhibit 550 (P)) and maintains that she had specifically given the name of Santosh to the police officer who took down the complaint. So much, for the reliability of the police records.

1.8 The Senior Police Inspector claimed that there were several instances of private firing upon the residents of Pathan Chawl (now known as Bhagwa Mahal) resulting in injuries to three Hindus, Chandrashekhar Bhiva Sawant, Sanjay Ramchandra Sawant and Prakash Keshav More. These three persons gave identical evidence that, because of fireballs thrown at Pathan Chawl by the Muslim residents of the adjoining building known as “80 tenements”, the Pathan Chawl caught fire. And when the residents of Pathan Chawl were running around to extinguish the fire, they were shot at from the 80 tenements Chawl. They also claimed to have identified the person firing at them as one Nasir Bakerywala.

1.9 That these three persons were injured by bullets is certain; it is doubtful whether they were injured in an incident of private firing. The material on record seems to suggest that probably they were injured in police firing, while participating in the riots, which they are now passing off as the result of private firing. Though each one of them claims to have seen Nasir Bakerywala firing at them, one says that the firing was from a pistol and another that it was from a big gun. None of them named Nasir Bakerywala in the police statements. The police have also submitted a supplementary report to the Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) (Exh.569© giving full particulars of the incident in CR No.33/93. In that supplementary report these three are shown to have been injured in police firing.

1.10 The metamorphosis of ‘Pathan Chawl’ into ‘Bhagwa Mahal’ is also interesting. Though all others claimed that there was no connection between Shiv Sena and Pathan Chawl, Mohan Kadam Bahadur Lama, a resident of Pathan Chawl from 1969, who knew Prakash Keshav More, Sanjay Dattaram Sawant, Chandrashekar Bhiwa Sawant and Dattaram Vasant Narvekar, gives a different version. According to him, the name of Pathan Chawl was changed to Bhagwa Mahal when the Shiv Sena started moving about frequently. Someone from the Shiv Sena had come and said that Pathan Chawl should henceforth be called Bhagwa Mahal and, “since they said so, it is also called Bhagwa Mahal”. This obviously indicates that the residents of Pathan Chawl or Bhagwa Mahal were very much protagonists, if not activists, of Shiv Sena.

Lama’s affidavit was filed at the instance of one Tukaram Amre and another “fat police officer” was accompanying him. This Tukaram Amre was the person instructing the Shiv Sena’s counsel when the cross–examination was going on before the Commission and was identified by the witness Lama. Lama also said that, apart from him, Tukaram Amre had brought four or five persons to file affidavits and was accompanied by one fat police officer. This evidence leads the Commission to think that the story about private firing is a contrived one, put forward at the instance of the activists of Shiv Sena and the police, though the identity of the “fat police officer” is unascertainable.

1.11 Meherunnissa Mohammed Yakub Ansari (Exh.577) also says that from about 1930 hours on 8th January 1993, till about 1330 hours on 9th January 1993, there were continuous attacks on their chawl.

No.12. The attackers were all Hindus from BIT Chawls who kept shouting, “Landyabai ka ghar kidar hai” and knocking on her door. They were carrying choppers and other weapons. She is emphatic about what the police told her when she complained to them. Says, the witness, “I cannot forget during my entire life the words used by the police — ‘Pakistan chale jao; yahan kyon ate ho marne ke liye’”. After the Muslim residents had moved away to safety locking their houses, their houses were systematically ransacked and looted.

1.12 On 10th January 1993 riots erupted simultaneously at about 1030 hours near Fancy Market, Moreland Road, Hirve Chawl on Maulana Azad Road, Pathan Chawl on B.J. Road and Dhobighat. There was extensive arson and looting of property. In fact, the vicious nature of the riots can be gauged from the statistics given by the police themselves. About 200 Muslim families from Dhobighat area had abandoned their houses and fled to safety. Their houses were systematically ransacked, damaged, looted and subjected to arson. According to the police, in all about 200 incidents of arson and looting took place on 10th January 1993; in almost all cases the victims were Muslims.

1.13 There were crude attempts by the police to cover up the role of the Shiv Sena in the incidents of January 1993 :

(a) Though the Senior Police Inspector had filed particulars of the Mahaartis organised (Exhibit 514(P)), in which the number of Mahaartis were shown as having been organised by the Shiv Sena, he later on claimed that there was a mistake in it and filed another sanitized version in which it was sought to be maintained that the different Mahaartis were organised by different organisations, though the leaders of the Shiv Sena happened to remain present at the Mahaartis.

b) There was another attempt to underplay the role of four accused arrested in C.R. No.17 of 1993, who were reported to be Shiv Sainiks. Senior Police Inspector Tikam had made an endorsement in the case papers of C.R. No.17 of 1993 that the four accused persons arrested from BIT were Shiv Sainiks and that a report to that effect has been given to Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mehta of S.B.–I CID. When closely questioned about this endorsement, Tikam feigned lapse of memory. Daljitsingh Parmar, the investigating officer stated that the Senior Police Inspector Tikam must have got the information that the four accused were Shiv Sainiks and, though he made inquiries from public and interrogated the accused, he could not get confirmation of the said fact. He had even questioned the Shakha Pramukh of Shakha No.37 who stated that the four accused arrested in C.R. No.17 of 1993 were working along with Shiv Sainiks, but were not “authorised members” of Shiv Sena. No attempts appear to have been made to look into the records of membership or to cross–check the information given by the Shakha Pramukh. Daljitsingh Parmar conceded that if he had done such exercise he would have been able to ascertain whether the four accused were members of Shiv Sena and that it was a mistake on his part not to have done so.