Beautiful, Bustling, Bollywood – it’s Bombay!
Central India, India
Best known as home to Bollywood and as India’s commercial capital Mumbai, or Bombay as it was, was also the point many Raj-era Britishers landed in India. The Gateway to India fronts onto Colaba, overlooked by the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower Hotel and beyond lie a wealth of museums, backstreet markets, historic architecture and even beaches. A visit to Mumbai is an education and a delight, the starting or ending point for many an adventure in the less-visited centre and south of India.
Background
A juxtaposition of the ancient and modern, the fabulously rich and desperately poor Mumbai’s history starts with Ashoka in the 3rd century BC when the seven islands that form formed part of the kingdom of Ashoka, the famous Emperor of India. After his death the islands passed to various Hindu and Muslim rulers when, in, 1534 the Portuguese arrived. They already possessed other important trading centres such as Goa, Daman, and Diu and they took the area by force and named the area "Bom Baia" which in Portuguese means "Good Bay".
In 1662 the islands were given to the English King Charles II as a dowry on his marriage to Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza and in 1668 they were acquired by the East India Company on lease from the crown for an annual sum of just 10 pounds in gold. The British corrupted "Bom Baia" to "Bombay" and yet the local Kolis used to call the islands "Mumba" after Mumbadevi, the Hindu deity to whom a temple is dedicated at Babulnath near Chowpatty beach. The first Parsis or Zoroastrians to arrive in Bombay was Dorabji Nanabhoy Patel and in 1689 the Siddi Chief of Janjira made several attempts to re-possess the islands the son of the former, a trader named Rustomji Dorabji Patel successfully warded off the attacks on behalf of the British with the help of the 'Kolis', the original fisher-folk inhabitants of these islands. Today a large Parsi population survives.
Over the coming decades Bombay was to rise to become a great city with the Gateway of India built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911. The Quit India movement gained momentum and led to the final withdrawal of the British on 15 August 1947 when the last British troops on Indian soil left for England through the archway of the Gateway of India. The city reverted to the local name of Mumbai in 1995.