Places in Mumbai linked to India's freedom movement

Mumbai's pit stops to freedom
Khadi. Khilafat. Swadeshi. Satyagrah. Boycotts. Bonfires. Cricket. Civil
Disobedience. Freedom. It All Happened Here.

Bombay Talkies

Malad

Himanshu Rai's old talkies stopped talking long ago but it was here that
Subhash Chandra Bose was shot for a historic newsreel. According to a book
by film writer Colin Pal, Netaji announced to rolling cameras his decision
to break with the Congress and launch his own party the Forward Bloc.
Unfortunately, the acetate-based negative has been either destroyed or lost.

Hindustani Prachar Sabha

Marine Drive

Tucked away off Marine Drive, this institute to promote Hindustani was set
up by Mahatma Gandhi in 1942. Dadabhai Naoroji's granddaughters Perin
Captain and Goshi Captain also played a vital role in establishing it.
Hindustani was one of Gandhi's pet projects. He believed that Urdu and
Sanskrit were beyond the command of the common man and that Hindustani was a
unique reflection of both. Today, the institute is a friendly place where
foreigners go to learn Hindi beyond namaste and shukriya.

Chowpatty and Wadala

Bombay was instrumental in helping Gandhi as he "twisted the lion's tail and
literally applied salt to it'' to use a phrase from K Gopalaswami's book
Gandhi and Bombay. Since Gandhi had forbidden women from going with him on
the Dandi March, the Bombay women-Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and the Captain
sisters - decided to make salt in the city itself, at Chowpatty, the city's
most famous beach, and at the white saline stretches in Wadala.

    Thousands gathered with pitchers on their heads to take home sea water
and prepare salt. Day after day, new salt pans were constructed and enormous
crowds blocked all approaches to the seashore and defied the law, inviting
arrests. Kasturba Gandhi made salt at a Vile Parle chavni. K F Nariman, the
eminent lawyer after whom Nariman Point is named, was in the forefront of
the salt movement, as was Yusuf Meheraully.

Bombay High Court

It was at the Central Court Hall, a magnificent domed room, that Lokmanya
Tilak was tried for sedition in 1908, and defended brilliantly if
unsuccessfully by Jinnah. Strangely, both Gopal Krishna Gokhale (moderate)
and Tilak (extremist) respected the young lawyer. In 1916, when Tilak was
once again charged with sedition, he asked Jinnah to defend him, and he did
so, this time successfully.

Horniman Circle

Named after Ben Horniman, the pro-India, profreedom editor of The Bombay
Chronicle. The paper spoke out so strongly against the excesses of
Jallianwala Bagh that Horniman was promptly deported in February 1919. A
strike was called to protest his deportation. Gandhi added his voice to the
chorus and spoke out at several meetings against the censorship imposed on
the Chronicle. 1919 was the year in which the freedom movement exploded on
the streets of the city, with strikes against the Rowlatt Act, bonfires and
hartals. The police had a hard time controlling the protesters.

    The elegant gardens at Horniman Circle have a fountain with a modern
metal sculpture of birds in the editor's memory-like St Francis of Assisi he
used to feed the birds in the park.

Maidans

It was at the sprawling maidan outside the Tejpal Hall, where the first
Indian National Congress session was held in 1885, that the rousing Quit
India movement was launched in August 1942. The slogan was coined by trade
unionist Yusuf Meheraully. Quit India, which spread like wildfire through
the country, finally broke the back of the Raj, and, although much less
violent, was compared in its scale to the ferocity of 1857. Gandhi fasted to
protest the violence the call had triggered but his clarion Do or Die
message was taken to heart and executed in letter and spirit.

    Other maidans have played their role too. The elegant Oval Maidan hosted
the 20th INC session, in 1904, a session in which the organisers were
vehemently criticised for turning the meet into an extravagant tamasha.
Pherozeshah Mehta of the Reception Committee stoutly defended himself and
called his opponents mean-minded. He even quoted Wordsworth to effect.
Jinnah, a Mehta protege, was present at this session.

    To wind back to the 1857 Rising, it was at the Esplanade, now Azad
Maidan, that two sepoys were tied to a canon and blown to bits by police
chief Charles Forjett, on grounds of sedition. They were the first martyrs.
One of them was called Mangal.

Raj Bhavan

Mohammed Ali Road

There's nothing regal about this house on Mohammed Ali Road near Alankar
Cinema but it was where the Reds met. Two communist Urdu newspapers, Qaumi
Jung and Naya Zamana, took on the vicious propaganda of the Muslim League.
The likes of Sardar Jafri and Kaifi Azmi worked in the dailies, fuelling
fires against the British and fighting Muslim league sympathisers.

Rajgruha,

Hindu Colony, Dadar

Dr Ambedkar's house, which the scholar politician built with such loving
care-he studied the rotunda prototype of the British Museum during his years
in England and drew up the plans himself-is in a state of neglect. But at
least it stands, unlike the restaurant at Kala Ghoda, Wayside Inn, where
Ambedkar wrote the Constitution. Famed also for its fish and chips, the
corner resto closed down a few years ago, and now houses a swank new eatery.

The Gymkhanas

The long stretch of land along Marine Drive, formerly called Kennedy Sea
Face, is dotted with cricket gymkhanas-Parsi, Islam, Hindu and Catholic.
This was the birthplace and nursery of cricket in India, and the venue of a
hotly challenged colonial tournament, the Bombay Pentangular. With the teams
formed on the lines of creed, the five-way match steadily devolved into an
ugly religious stand-off. Tightly interwoven as it was with the freedom
struggle, the tenor of the Pentangular was dictated by factors like
Congress-British negotiations, the world war, and the increasingly toxic
divide between Hindus and Muslims. The crowds at the ground,too, were deeply
divided, and by the mid 1940s, the Muslim team was being openly called
Pakistan.When the Hindu team won, the crowds chanted 'Bande Mataram' and
burst crackers. It was Gandhi who called it to a halt. "I have never
understood the reason for having Hindu, Parsi, Muslim and other Communal
Elevens," he said. "Can we not have some field of life untouched by communal
spirit?" The last communal Pentangular was held in 1946.

Docks

The Naval Ratings Mutiny of February 1946 shook Bombay to its marrow. Goaded
by poor conditions, tired of being bossed around by the British officers,
and infected with nationalist fervour, Indian sailors in the Bombay harbour
revolted. British officers were offered an insolent left-hand salute, and
that was the least of the disobedience. As rioting spread, the army had to
be called in to restore order. The mutiny inflamed the port cities of
Calcutta, Madras and Karachi too. Sardar Patel had to be dispatched to
Bombay to bring things back under control.

Gateway of India

Under this imposing arch, built to welcome King George and Queen Mary,
marched the last regiment of British troops. They climbed on board their
vessel, and then, in one accord, threw their white sola topis into the sea.
The Raj had ended.

Sardar Gruha Crawford Market The chawl in which Lokmanya Tilak lived, is
positioned, with delicious irony, right opposite the Victorian building
where the Bombay police is headquartered. The police and Tilak were old
adverseraries, with the police having to face the wrath of the mill workers
who went on a six-day strike to protest the six-year deportation sentence
given to their leader. Sardar Gruha, where Tilak died, still houses the
office of his Kesari newspaper and a majestic white bust. But the chawl
itself, without any signage, is lost in the neighbourhood's clutter of
commerce. Contrast this with 60 Talbot Street in London, where Tilak spent
barely a few months. The house has been marked with a plaque. At the
commemoration ceremony, Lord Mountbatten said in his inaugural speech, "I
have an uneasy feeling that most people younger than me have probably not
heard of him at all and therefore the existence of Tilak Trust and this
house is important.''



Mani Bhavan Laburnum Road, Gamdevi Gandhi stayed here between 1917 and 1934
whenever he visited Bombay, and the wooden house is associated with many
landmark events and ideologies of the freedom struggle: Khadi, Khilafat,
civil disobedience, satyagraha, swadeshi. It was from the terrace of this
two-storied house that Gandhi was arrested on January 4, 1932, just after he
had finished his prayers. A museum and research centre, Mani Bhavan has more
than 50,000 books on Gandhi, and gets as many foreign visitors as does
Leopold Cafe. You can buy Gandhi memorabilia here, such as a packet of
stamps brought out in his honour by countries including Kyrgyzstan and
Congo. Children love to walk around the tableaux depicting the Mahatma's
life story, from his birth in Porbandar to his assassination. It is all very
soberly done, except for the final caption: 'The perverse assassin of the
ages lodged hot lead in the soft flesh of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.'


Babu Genu Road Kalbadevi Babu Genu, a mill hand, was only 22 when he flung
himself in front of a truck carrying foreign goods. This was in December 12,
1930, at the height of the swadeshi movement. Babu's body was placed in the
office of the Congress committee at Kalbadevi. The next day, stalwarts such
as Jamnadas Dwarkadas, Kanhaiyalal Munshi, Lilawati Munshi, Perin Captain
and Jamnadas Mehta carried the pall to the crematorium. The story of Babu
Genu's death was published in The Times of India, Bombay Chronicle, Bombay
Samachar and Navakal. The road he died on, in the heart of Kalbadevi, was
named after him.

Congress House Opera House The headquarters of the indian National Congress
in Mumbai, this structure witnessed many historic moments. One of the high
points was when the terrace was converted into salt pans during the Dandi
March. Deputy Police Commissioner Cowasji Petigarra raided the house with
200 men to dismantle the salt factory. The satyagrahis, however, remained
calm, and the police were further flummoxed when a shield of women
satyagrahis came forward and barred their way. Finally, Petigarra gave
orders to push the ladies aside. Up charged the posse to break the salt
pans.

Jinnah House Malabar Hill The emotionless Jinnah loved this house on the
hill whose construction he personally supervised. It was at the white
colonial bungalow, now being readied for a cultural museum after years of
being in purdah, that the Gandhi-Jinnah talks of September 1944 were held.
By this time, relations between the Muslim League and the Congress had
completely broken down. Wrote Rafiq Zakaria, "For two weeks from September 9
to 25, the two leaders spent hours together trying to convince the other but
neither succeeding in the task...Jinnah was uncompromising on his Two Nation
demand...It was during these talks that Gandhi asked Jinnah whether his own
son Harilal, who had converted to Islam, had overnight become a member of
another nation by doing so. Jinnah had no answer.''

Khilafat House Byculla This modest whitwashed building was the hub of the
All India Khilafat Committee, launched in 1919 by the Ali brothers-Mohammed
Ali and Shaukat Ali-with the active support of Mahatma Gandhi. The Khilafat
was formed to protest both the British threat to Islam's holy places in
Mecca and Medina as well as the Jalianwalla Massacre in Amritsar. Few know
that Ali brothers' mother Bi Amman also played a key role in the Khilafat
movement, and insisted on being buried in a khadi kafan. Here stalwarts,
including Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Ali brothers and Hakeem Ajmal Khan
confabulated constantly against the Raj. Post-independence, the campus
suffered from official apathy until the late Islamic scholar Rafiq Zakaria
saw to its restoration. A renovated Khilafat House, inaugurated by Indira
Gandhi on April 19, 1981, now imparts B.Ed, D.Ed and computer classes for
Muslim students. Mohammed Ali, who was one of the founders of the Jamia
Millia Islamia University and advocated Hindu-Muslim unity, died a broken
man in London, after the Round Table Conference, and was buried in
Jerusalem. The Ali brothers and Mohammed Ali Jinnah were sworn ideological
enemies - Shaukat Ali once rushed up to assault Jinnah at a Congress
session - so it is deeply ironic that many in Pakistan mistakenly believe
that a busy road in Mumbai is named after their Qaid-e-Azam.

ISLAND OF CALM: The first Indian National Congress session in 1885 was held
at the Tejpal Hall. Bombay was the default venue - Pune was the original
choice but an outbreak of cholera forced a change of plan. W C Bonergee was
the first President. There were very few Bengalis present but a large number
of South Indians who impressed the rest with their fluency in English.
Today, the hall (below) is locked up.

The first bonfire of foreign goods was lit in Bombay in 1921. Hats, caps,
shawls and suits went up in a blaze. "In burning my foreign clothes I burn
my shame," said Gandhi


Publication:Times of India Mumbai; Date:Aug 15, 2007; Section:Times City;
Page Number:2

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