Seven islands renamed from Bombay to Mumbai in 1995
Mumbai, officially called Bombay until 1995, is the capital of Maharashtra and India’s financial centre, built on what were once seven separate islands off the west coast. Its name honours Mumbadevi, patron goddess of the local Koli fishing community, joined with the Marathi word for mother.
Colaba, Old Woman’s Island, Bombay itself, Mazagaon, Worli, Parel and Mahim made up the seven. Stone Age sediments near Kandivali show early occupation, Ashoka’s Maurya Empire ruled here in the third century BCE, and the geographer Ptolemy called the cluster Heptanesia, Greek for seven islands. The Kanheri Caves in Borivali, cut in the first century CE, became an important Buddhist centre. In the late thirteenth century King Bhima made Mahim his capital, and the Delhi and Gujarat sultanates followed.
Gujarat’s sultan, fearing the Mughals, handed the islands to Portugal under the Treaty of Bassein, effective in 1535, and the Portuguese name Bombaim came into use. The English Crown leased them to the East India Company in 1668 for just £10 a year, and within fourteen years of 1661 the population rose roughly sixfold, to about 60,000. From 1782 the British joined the islands with the Hornby Vellard causeway and reclaimed land from the sea, a project completed in 1845 that turned the city into a great port and capital of the Bombay Presidency.
The old tale that Bombay meant good little bay in Portuguese has no scientific basis; nineteenth-century writers such as Louis Rousselet traced it to the goddess Mumba. The Government of India made Mumbai the official English name in November 1995, pressed by the Marathi nationalist Shiv Sena after it won the state election. Residents call themselves Mumbaikars.
The 2011 census counted almost 12.5 million people in the city proper, the most in India. In the early 2010s Mumbai produced nearly 5 per cent of India’s GDP, a quarter of its industrial output and a third of its tax revenue. It is ranked an alpha world city, draws migrants nationwide and is often compared to New York.
Source: Mumbai
