Mumbaikars in the 1930s may have had a better sense of community than we do, holed up as we are in our apartments. The Parsis and Kanara Saraswats, early settlers who built housing projects for their communities, developed a unique ecosystem that made for harmonious living, said Abigail McGowan, professor, South Asian visual and material culture and historiography at the University of Vermont.
Ms. McGowan, a specialist in modern South Asian history, focused on architectural structure and its impact on the community in her talk on Friday at the School of Environment and Architecture, Borivali. Her address, delivered as part of a paper titled ‘A Home for Us: Community Housing in Late Colonial Bombay’, centred on the progressive architecture and lifestyle of the Parsi and Kanara Saraswat communities.
“All community housing projects offer space and encouragement for community activities,” she said. In the late 1930s, for instance, residents of Parsi Cusrow Baug had access to gardens, tennis and badminton courts, a school, library, two dispensaries and an agiary that hosted services five times a day. The society organised lectures, classes for women, kirtans, celebrations of students’ successes in examinations and sports, and weddings. “The amenities brought residents together. That’s not to imply that the goal was community prejudice, but to argue that the housing projects made it easier to build a life around community.”
For both communities, housing projects emerged from a growing sense of public efforts being unable to address housing needs. The Bombay Improvement Trust, and later, the Bombay Development Directorate built chawls to provide cheap housing for the lower socio-economic strata. The city’s individualistic communities offered their own housing solutions, like the Parsis and Kanara Saraswats, building flats and residential complexes intended to preserve health, improve comfort and strengthen community bonds.
“Community housing set out to solve those problems through multi-room flats, which met middle-class demands for privacy and respectability, grouped together in compounds that then shaped community identities. A progressive Parsi model of home and community building is relevant even today, as observed in the city’s architectural layouts.” Adapting from such practices has helped shape today’s society besides helping the community grow socially and architecturally, she said.
Growth of art, craft
Ms. McGowan is also a student of the intersection of material culture, crafts, architecture, politics and everyday life. “When you enter an art deco building in south Mumbai or Matunga, you are surrounded by big, old, formal Victorian furniture or a beautifully carved dowry chest from Kutch. This is how architectural space intersects craft, creating a holistic sense of how the house should be.”
She also examines the politics of craft development in colonial western India. In her first book, Crafting the Nation in Colonial India, she talks about the standardised British notion of Indian craftsmanship, which was that India is stuck in its past. Craft, for the British, was the only industry that made sense in India. Besides, it was an idea of what the village community looked like: natural and organic, with a conservative outlook.
Today, though, while the craftsman remains, her role in Indian society is not necessarily as central. Most artisans “would rather have their kids do an MBA or learn to use computers, since they’ll earn more money”.
