In his work, Gyan Prakash offers a journey through the history of Bombay, understood through the myths and fables that structure representations of this city. His ambitious project nevertheless fails to explain the transition from a cosmopolitan city to a city torn by community tensions.
Gyan Prakash’s work is part of what he himself described in one of his articles as “ urban turn “. For two decades, urban studies have in fact multiplied in an academic field, where, until then, work on rural India had largely dominated. The starting point of the book is that adopted by the numerous reflections recently carried out on Mumbai/Bombay: the feeling, since the communal riots and the attacks of 1992-1993, of witnessing the end of the cosmopolitan city, now plunged into violence. G. Prakash’s work, however, stands out from other publications, marked above all by a socio-economic history perspective, by choosing to focus on “ fables » produced in the city. It therefore sets itself the goal of “ to make visible the historical circumstances depicted and hidden behind the stories and images forged in the past and today » (p. 24). He implements this program in the nine chapters of the work which follow a generally chronological progression, and thus attempts to revisit the history of the city, from the arrival of the Portuguese to the attacks of 2008.
It is through two emblematic markers of Mumbai’s urban planning that the author discusses the colonial period: the imposing neo-Gothic style buildings built in the 1870s-80s by the British authorities (chapter 2) and the promenade reclaimed from the sea from the 1920s, Marine Drive, which became the most famous avenue in the city (chapter 3). Taking up analyzes known since the work of A. King, G. Prakash interprets this “ gothic city » (p. 72) as the assertion of British power over the city, at a time when it was experiencing significant commercial and industrial development, with the opening of textile factories. This urban planning of Western modernity has its downside: working-class, unsanitary and miserable neighborhoods. Insisting on the effects of colonial domination, which he considers incapable of identifying the causes of this situation – the misery caused by industrial development, the author nevertheless fails to show us the other agents of the development of this “ urban horror » (p. 63), namely the textile employers, with their policy of low wages and the indigenous urban elites, who administer the municipality and refuse to pay for the poor.
From chapter 2, the author uses new material and is no longer content to draw on the works that preceded him. Through the Back Bay land reclamation project, which led to the creation of Marine Drive, it gives a vivid overview of local political life and elite culture in the 1920s and 30s. This major project implemented by the British authorities gave rise to a political scandal, orchestrated by the congressman K.F. Nariman. The latter uses the technical errors made and the overrun of almost 90 % of the budget planned to denounce colonial mismanagement. The plots finally reclaimed from the sea were covered during the 1930s and 40s with buildings (housing and cinemas) in art deco style. G. Prakash interprets the adoption of this style as a desire of industrial and merchant elites to claim a form of globalized industrial modernity, against colonial neo-Gothic, and as a reflection of the cultural mutations underway (diffusion of jazz , beginning of the cinema industry, etc.).
The author then chooses to deal with the question of the Partition by retracing the journey of some emblematic figures of the city’s multicultural intellectual milieu, notably the members of the Progressive Writers’ Associationfounded in 1936, proponents of social realism, andIndian People Theater Associationcreated in 1942 under the leadership of the Communist Party. The riots which broke out between Hindus and Muslims the day after independence in Bombay severely affected these intellectuals. Gyan Prakash links this episode to the decision of some of the members of the Progressive Writers’ Association to turn to the film industry. The social fiber of these writers who became screenwriters explains, for the author, that the 1950s can be considered as the golden age of Hindi-language films, where they still address the daily problems encountered by the population.
Chapter 5 propels the reader to the late 1950s, in the middle of a legal case, the Nanavati trial. This involves a naval officer who, having killed his wife’s lover, a rich merchant, pleads it was an accident. G. Prakash recounts the mobilization campaign orchestrated by the tabloid Blitz for the acquittal of the accused, whom the newspaper makes a symbol of the nation betrayed by the rich. Although the officer was found guilty, he was eventually pardoned by the political authorities, after spending less than three years in prison. For the author, this news item, which became a media event, marks the entry into the era of populist politics. However, it seems difficult to follow this reasoning from the materials that G. Prakash has chosen to present. By focusing its analysis on articles published by an English-language newspaper (with consequently more limited circulation), it is not able to demonstrate the political significance and media implications of the affair, beyond spheres of the elite and active public opinion.
The work then deals with the rise of Shiv Senaa party of the Hindu extreme right created in 1966. As the title of the chapter indicates “ From red to saffron “, it is above all a question for G. Prakash of explaining the decline of the communists in the working-class districts of the city – their stronghold until the 1950s – and their replacement by the Shiv Sena. The success encountered by the latter would be due to its capacity to forge new political subjects, “ the sons of the ground » and a new urban culture, based on direct action and violence. The story taken as its starting point is in fact that of the assassination, in 1970, of the very popular communist leader Krishna Desai by members of the Hindu party. By choosing to only deal with working-class neighborhoods, G. Prakash, however, obscures part of the history of the Shiv Senawhich initially resonated among the city’s Maharashtrian middle classes. For it to end up penetrating among the workers, the Hindu party had to take charge, as the communists had done in the 1920s and 1930s, of the different forms of worker sociability and be able to find work for some of its members. Unfortunately, the author, in his attempt to explain the rise of Shiv Sena by the cultural, did not take into account these fundamental aspects to understand its roots.
In chapter 7, the work returns to the architectural myth by contrasting two urban projects: Navi Mumbai, the new city created in 1970 and the continued reclamation of Back Bay. The first symbolizes the hopes placed in urban planning to develop an efficient and organized urban area, “ a space of industrial capitalism » (p. 261), while the other crudely shows the failings of liberal democracy. The resumption of reclamation in fact gave rise to a political scandal, the government having sold, without going through an auction as required by law, plots of land to large industrialists and merchants. G. Prakash’s analysis of the trial of this case is one of the most illuminating passages of his book, since he brings together crucial issues for understanding contemporary developments in Mumbai, where cases of collusion of interests between the political class and the real estate giants have become the symbol of urban management where speculation dominates, at the expense of the majority of the population. The author also takes up this theme in his chapter 9, to deal with projects to eradicate the largest slum in Asia, Dharavi.
It was through the appearance in 1993 of a superhero in a dog mask, Doga, who, unlike his counterparts in the comics Americans, does not deliver criminals to justice, but eradicates them with violence, that G. Prakash analyzes the most recent decades of the city’s history. In his eyes, Doga is in fact the product of the urban crisis which seems to have gripped Mumbai since the 1980s, with the closure of textile factories, the rise in communal violence which culminated in the riots of 1992-93, the importance of the mafia that the attacks of 1993, ordered by gang leader I. Dawood, made brutally visible. Doga asserts himself as a champion of the anti-communalist struggle, conversely authorities and in particular the city police who, during the riots, turned a blind eye or even participated in the violence against Muslims.
G. Prakash’s attempt to write a global history of the city, through the study of its myths, remains unconvincing. This is largely due to the lack of a preliminary definition of what the author means by “ fable », which ultimately leads him to treat on the same level discourses of very diverse nature and posterity. If the image of Bombay is modern, beautiful, etc. runs through its entire history, the same cannot be said of the Nanavati affair. It is also regrettable that the work did not leave greater room for reflection on the modes of production, dissemination, reappropriation of these myths, as well as their use by certain urban groups, who that they participate fully in the political and cultural life of the city, rather than adopting the somewhat naive posture of “ undo the fables to update the history of the city as a society » (p. 24). This lack of rigor leads to the construction of a sometimes very caricatured vision of the history of Bombay, including certain social groups, such as the indigenous elites during the colonial period or the working classes (whose apprehension of the city is curiously not mentioned , in chapter 9, that through the works of a visual artist, without addressing the forms of their abundant urban culture), remain absent despite the important role they play in shaping urban life. By failing to convey the complexity of urban society and the myths it produces, by not historicizing certain phenomena (riots between communities did not begin with the Partition, but from the middle of the XIXe century, at a time when rivalries appeared on the labor market), G. Prakash therefore fails to deconstruct the story of the transition from the cosmopolitan city to the communalist city, that is to say, to satisfy the objective that ‘he had set himself.