THE PERIOD OF COLONIAL RULEAmerican cotton during the Civil War. The fact that the railway had
crossed the Ghats and penetrated deep into the ‘Desh’ around 1860
contributed to this sudden cotton boom. Bombay emerged as a leading
port at that time. But when the boom was over and cotton was cheap
again, Bombay became India’s great industrial centre with a large textile
industry which produced some yarn for export but mainly cheap cloth for
the Indian home market.
Unlike Calcutta’s jute industry—which was exclusively export
orientated and dominated by British entrepreneurs—this import
substituting textile industry of Bombay was built up by Indian
businessmen, particularly Parsis and Gujaratis. The number of foreign
businessmen settled in Bombay was small and they never emerged as a
pressure group, as was the case with the British community of Calcutta.
On the other hand, partnerships between British and Indian businessmen
of a kind that hardly existed in Calcutta since the demise of Carr, Tagore
& Co. were fairly frequent in Bombay.
This metropolis of western India was very cosmopolitan. It took pride in
being the ‘Gateway of India’ and in this capacity it became more
prominent after the Suez canal was opened and steamships eliminated the
need to wait for the monsoon. The fact that for many decades British coal
was cheaper in Bombay than Indian coal from the mines near Calcutta
shows the commercial importance of this western connection. Of course,
this was also due to the freight rates charged by the railways which, while
procuring coal cheaply for their own use, made others pay for it dearly.
This was not very helpful for the industrialisation of India, and gave the
advantage to Bombay, which had access to coal delivered by sea.
The rise of Bombay as an industrial and commercial centre was of great
importance for all of western India. This city set the pace in thought and
action, and in this respect it was particularly significant that this was not
an imperial city like Calcutta but a city of indigenous enterprise. The new
elite of this part of India was also very different from that of eastern India.
No absentee landlords of large estates had palatial homes in Bombay. An
urban middle class dominated the scene. The graduates of Bombay’s many
colleges came mostly from families with rather modest means: they worked
hard to get jobs which enabled them to make a living and perhaps also to
get other relatives educated. There was no ‘Renaissance’ here as in Bengal,
but the regional languages and literatures did develop and so did a lively
political journalism. Municipal politics also played a great role in Bombay
and municipal government was taken very seriously. In spite of Lord
Ripon’s emphasis on local government and the legislation accordingly
introduced by him, this field remains to this day rather neglected in India.
But the people of Bombay had a sense of civic consciousness and some of
the most prominent men of the city were associated with its municipal
corporation.