East Indians on the West Coast
A rough survey of East Indians in Mumbai revealed that there were 2.5 lakh in the city, 80,000 in Vasai, and 12,000 in Thane (in the 2010s). [1] Why, one might ask, would a Christian community living on India’s west coast call itself East Indian?
The reasons are not known, says Mumbai-based historian Dr. Fleur D’Souza (see video below). Dr. D'Souza notes that the community gave itself the name East Indian when it formed the Bombay East Indian Association (BEIA) in 1887. The association sought to uplift Bombay’s indigenous Roman Catholics and distinguish them from those migrating to the city from places like Goa and Mangalore.
Dr. D'Souza also clarifies a common misconception about the community's choice of name. People often assume that the community chose East India to gain favor with the British East India Company. However, the British Crown and Parliament had taken over control of India in 1858, making the company defunct by 1887, when the BEIA formed. East Indians, who considered themselves Bombay’s ‘original inhabitants’, still hoped for preferential treatment from the British, Dr. D’Souza says.
The History and Present of Mumbai’s East Indians | An Interview with Dr. Fleur D’Souza | By Subuhi Jiwani
The interview with Dr. D'Souza highlights historical nuances such as these. It touches on D’Souza’s family history and the history of Christians in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region; community life under the Portuguese (1534-1739) and the British (1661-1947); the experience of urbanisation post-Independence; the leading lights of the community; and East Indian identity, cuisine, dress, dialect, and song.
In fact, dressing is the subject of another exploration (see video below). Mogan Rodrigues, a freelance tour guide with experience chronicling East Indian oral histories, talks about the lugra, or East Indian sari. He, a native of the East Indian enclave of Uttan, saw that it was disappearing from women's wardrobes and decided to revive it with a few textile experts.
While the lugra is a version of the Maharashtrian navvari sari, it differs from it slightly—and Rodrigues tells us how. In the video, two women help drape the lugra on Rodrigues’ wife Sharon and speak about how they learnt to drape it. One of them, Mary D’Souza, speaks about why she still wears a Lugra every day.
The East Indian Sari or ‘Lugra’ | An Interview with Mogan Rodrigues | By Subuhi Jiwani
These videos present a glimpse of East Indian life in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. They are part of an expansive and evolving cultural landscape that we hope to etch in detail in the future.
Footnotes:
[1] From a footnote in Dr. Fleur D’Souza’s essay, ‘The East Indians of Mumbai: Identity, Icons, and Issues’, in the edited volume Mumbai: Socio-Cultural Perspectives: Contributions of Ethnic Groups and Communities (Primus Books, 2018), edited by Anila Verghese, Swarupa Kamat and Rashna Poncha.