Complicating the notion of the "Dual City": Analyses of Middle and Working Class Urban Forms in Bombay 1896 - 1930s

Another essay about cities in India...this time it's about plague, sanitation and class in colonial Bombay.

Some observers of South Asian cities in the nineteenth century have concluded that South Asian cities were sharply divided into “Black Towns” and “White Towns,” reflecting the contrasting urban designs and living habits of Indian and European people (Chattopadhyay, 154.) However, the 1896 outbreak of the bubonic plague in Bombay and the urban transformations that followed the spread of the plague challenges this notion. Convinced that South Asian working class neighborhoods were too overcrowded and fostered disease, colonial authorities in Bombay initiated the eradication of slums and major urban reform. While the colonial authorities’ demolition of slums displaced the Indian working class, the Indian middle classes had the opportunity to move into colonial constructions during this period, or selectively adapt European urban standards to their own living standards into other constructions in Dadar-Matunga. Indian middle classes accepted European urban standards in order to maintain sanitation and as a means of distinguishing themselves from the lower working classes. The middle class adoption of certain European urban standards into their new constructions, alongside the reality that the working class could not afford such sanitary dwellings due to economic inequality rather than racial segregation, complicates the notion of the “dual city” in Bombay. 

In 1896, the bubonic plague swept through Bombay, claiming thousands of lives. The British asserted the miasma theory, which stated that this disease stemmed from the spread of foul-smelling air (Oldenberg, 97). Guided by this belief, colonial authorities established the Bombay Improvement Trust and The Bombay Development Department: institutions which sought to fully control Bombay’s urban development and demolish Indian slums where they believed this ‘bad air’ was circulating (Rao, 110). In an all-out effort to eliminate the factors that spread the disease, colonial authorities tore down slums, and took out living rooms from large unsanitary constructions to let air and light stream into buildings (Hazareesingh 29). The Bombay Improvement Trust also opened up crowded locales, created new streets, and took over land to expand the city (Echenberg 75). The spread of disease prompted colonial institutions to forcefully interfere in Indian residential life so that Indian constructions complied with their urban standards of what constituted sanitary space. 

The Working Class of Bombay: Exclusion and Rejection from Colonial Urban Standards 

After tearing down overcrowded Bombay slums, the Bombay Development Department (BDD) constructed new tenement blocks intended to rehouse the working class, a group that mainly consisted of industrial laborers. These tenements were however too expensive or restrictive for most of the poor, and many units were instead occupied by lower-middle-class tenants or remained partially vacant. The planners of these tenements moreover misunderstood the needs of the working class. Indian urban design included open multi-functional spaces such as the veranda, and the working class preferred such living arrangements. For working classes, the private space that a multi-room dwelling offered was less important than the sociality that was promised by the open veranda. The constructions built by the BDD did not suit the living habits of the working class, which in part led them to turn away from these accommodations (Rao 115). 

The economic framework of Bombay, which was marked by a high demand for housing and financial exploitations of wage workers, also impacted the working classes’ ability to adopt modern urban standards promoted by colonial institutions. The eradication of working class slums led to the increased demand for housing, which subsequently caused a sharp rise in housing rents which the working class could not afford. Moreover, indigenous capitalists of Bombay, seeking to work around the constraints of foreign competition, dramatically reduced the cost of labour and maintained a highly flexible labor force (Hazareesingh 29). As a result, the working class could not afford to move into the BDD constructions or emulate European urban standards. Instead, their scarce economic resources confined them to overcrowded, low quality housing in Bombay (Rao, Lecture, 21 Oct. 2025). 

In addition to their inadequate wages, working class Indians did not have the opportunity to provide their own input on urban design or policy. The Municipal Corporation consisted of mainly colonialists and elite Indian landowners, a group which did not include working class voices. After evicting fifty thousand people from their homes, The City Improvement Trust did not build enough housing units to accommodate the newly displaced working class. Consequently, the working class had no choice but to live in unsanitary conditions built on non-Trust land. Since the Municipal Corporation did not impose building regulations on non-Trust lands, landlords could legally continue to construct inexpensive and unsanitary buildings (Hazareesingh 30). In this way, the colonial goal of sanitary order ironically produced new congested and unhealthy living conditions for the working class (Rao, Lecture, Oct. 31, 2025). 

The fact that working class Indians lived in unsanitary conditions while higher Indian classes and colonial authorities lived in hygienic environments complicates the dual city notion that there was a strict ethnic divide between “White Towns” and “Black Towns.” In reality, economic inequality within the Indian community itself produced stark contrasts of living arrangements. European colonials, Indian middle classes and Indian elites occupied spaces that were sanitary and held spatial privileges while the Indian working class was confined to densely populated and unsanitary dwellings.

Selective Adoptions of Western Urban Practices by the Middle Classes in Bombay

As the Bombay Development Department’s chawl rents lowered, the lower middle classes moved into some of their chawls, while many other middle class families moved to areas such as Dadar-Matunga, where they redefined Western domestic ideals on their own terms (Rao 101). Typically, Indian urban house designs included outdoor courtyards, nahanis (or water taps), the veranda, and toilets located outside of Indian dwellings, while Western urban designs were mostly cement constructions with low ceilings and, most notably, toilets that were placed inside living spaces as opposed to outside them (Rao, Lecture, 3 Oct. 2025). The growing group of Indian architects, along with the introduction of new building materials, enabled a wave of new middle class constructions which fused both European and Indian elements of design.

The increased concern about sanitatary practices and the desire to distinguish themselves from the working classes prompted the Bombay middle class to incorporate Western domestic ideals into their living habits. For instance, in the early twentieth century, middle class Indians started to place their toilets inside of their flats as a symbol of modernity and middle-class respectability. The integration of toilets into Indian dwellings was a status symbol and was, in a biological sense, a sign of cleaner living. Yet, from a South Asian ritual perspective, the inward migration of toilets into the flat was initially frowned upon. Many middle class Indians viewed the toilet, and the entry of people to clean the toilet into their dwelling as a polluting practice (Rao, Lecture, 31 Oct. 2025). These attitudes started to shift as efficient plumbing replaced the night-soil gatherer, and middle classes began to regard the disposal of bodily wastes through the lens of sanitation rather than through caste (Rao 130-131). Despite the tensions between these ritualistic and sanitary values, the middle classes eventually accepted the placement of the toilet inside the dwelling, a domestic standard introduced by British urban design and sanitation ideals (Rao 100–102). By the 1920s and 1930s, self-contained flat living in Bombay was strongly ingrained in emerging ideas of middle class identity. 

At the same time, the Bombay lower middle classes insisted on keeping certain Indian elements of the home. They called for the reintroduction of nahanis or bathing areas and the installation of water taps within homes. Moreover, The Bombay Development Department transformed chawls into two- or three-room tenements to accomodate middle class demands for multi-room dwellings. The multi-room dwelling, which enabled parents to sleep in separate rooms from their children, was a crucial sign of class for middle class families (Rao 116). By the mid-1920s, the lower middle class’ specific preferences for both European and Indian design elements had asserted a new housing market that developers in Dadar-Matunga quickly capitalized on. In these ways, continuous negotiations between European and indigenous urban design shaped urban spaces for the middle class. As European builders tailored their constructions to align with Indian tastes, Indian residents also integrated European urban standards while preserving their own indigenous living habits.

In conclusion, Bombay’s urban transformations in the early twentieth century challenges the idea that there was a strict binary between “Black Towns” and “White Towns” in South Asian cities. Lower middle classes of Bombay selectively implemented Western domestic ideals into their indigenous living habits to advance their own interests in better sanitation and superior class belonging. Meanwhile, since the working classes were economically excluded from moving into the Bombay Development Department’s constructions and adopting European urban practices, their housing options were restricted to overcrowded and unsanitary accommodations. These dynamics complicate the notion of the “dual city” by revealing that class hierarchy, rather than simply the racial divide between Europeans and Indians, strongly defined urban design practices and living habits in Bombay.

    Bibliography 

Hazareesingh, Sandip. The Colonial City and the Challenge of Modernity: Urban Hegemonies and Civic Contestations in Bombay City 1900 - 1925. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Echenberg, Myron. Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894 - 1901. NYU Press. 2007. 

Chattopadhyay, Swati. “Blurring Boundaries: The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 

Oldenburg, Veena Talwar. The Making of Colonial Lucknow, 1856-1877 Princeton University Press, 1984. 

Rao, Nikhil. House, But No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay’s Suburbs, 1898-1964. University of Minnesota Press.   

Rao, Nikhil. “Lectures on Urban Housing in Bombay” October 3 - 31 Wellesley College. Lecture.