The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai: Story of Urban Sprawl
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The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai: Story of Urban Sprawl TITHI SANYAL Master of Architecture 2018 Tithi Sanyal is a student in the Master of Architecture program at the University of Michigan. She received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Balwant Sheth School of Architecture, India in 2015. Shortly after graduation, she joined Anukruti, an NGO that develops community and play spaces in the slums of Mumbai. The organization transforms micro-pockets into creative and safe places, adding considerable value to the “blue-collar” communities of Mumbai. Her interests lie in understanding children’s behavior and tendencies in order to inform design that fosters learning through creative play. 22 ABSTRACT SANYAL In Mumbai, informal dwellings such as slums and tenement housing, or chawls, are an outcome of the exponential increase in the city’s population after the upsurge of mills and industries during 19th-century British rule in India. Due to insufficient housing for the migrant working population, slums and pavement dwelling conditions came up at the doorsteps of factories, mills, and workshops within the city in the 1940s. By looking at the two distinct time periods, Colonial (1858-1947) and Post-Colonial India (1947- present), this paper intends to compare the living and housing condition of the so-called slum neighborhoods to the chawls of the city. Slums and chawls create unique living and resting scenarios that blur public and private spaces and are understood as informal and flexible, yet extremely functional living possibilities. This paper depicts how chawl settlements, as established and influenced by British colonialism, gave rise to slum settlements and public sleeping, and inspired different living scenarios in formal, informal, and pavement-dwelling conditions in post-colonial Mumbai. Further, the paper investigates how the chawl, through the administration of the state, has not only restructured the overall urban fabric but has also given way to non-conventional ways of living in both formal and informal settlements. n Mumbai, there is a vast array of city from mere tents, one-room concrete I unconventional living conditions that structures, and brick units, to chawls, arrive out of necessity. Chawls and apartments, bungalows, and high-rises. slums are two striking examples of such unconventional housing arrangements, The paper is structured in a documentary both being products and producers of format that begins with a brief description flexible living within the city. Overcrowded of the chawl, slum, and pavement-dwelling living conditions in these dense conditions in Mumbai. The paper then neighborhoods promote social habits contextualizes these unique housing like public sleeping in communal areas, types and their conceptual shifts through people bathing in the open, storing one’s historical narratives during the Colonial belongings in common spaces, and even Period (1661-1947) and the Post-Colonial the sharing of civic amenities such as water Period (1947-present) of India. The city taps and toilets. Originating during early historically was known as Bombay during 19th-century British colonial rule in India, the colonial times and is presently known these housing conditions have evolved to as Mumbai in post-independent India; for accommodate a growing population within clarity, the city is referred to as Mumbai a limited footprint. The advent of a robust throughout this account. Additionally, the and economical public transportation analysis is carried out from the standpoint system in the mid-19th century led to rapid of the individual, the neighborhood, and urbanization in post-colonial Mumbai.1 the state. In doing this, the paper seeks to This urbanization has resulted in a range of communicate how boundaries between housing conditions that are observed in the public and private spaces are perceived AGORA 12 23 The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai by locals in an informal, flexible, yet extremely functional living condition within each settlement type. The paper closes by illustrating a unique way of living: “Body as Home,” a form of dwelling that draws inspiration from the chawl, the slum, and the pavement dwelling housing types. HOUSING MUMBAIKARS Mumbai’s geography is characterized Figure 1: Hari Bagh Chawl, Mumbai. A typical three story chawl with a courtyard serving as a socio-cultural by blurred territorial edges arising from spillover space. the city’s organic growth of formal and informal developments. Social-cultural In this description, these kinds of housing anthropologist Arjun Appadurai are not neatly segregated by neighborhood articulates the current nature of socially boundaries for one simple reason – the negotiated housing arrangements insecurely housed poor are everywhere throughout Mumbai in his paper and are only partly concentrated in bastis Spectral Housing and Urban Cleansing: (slums), jopad-pattis, and chawls.3 Over Notes on Millennial Mumbai (2000). He time, the chawl has had a significant writes, influence in generating informal housing types and living conditions within the . there is a vast range of insecure city. The chawl is a single, continuous housing from a six–foot stretch of building with either a linear or a courtyard sleeping space to a poorly defined formation. Chawls typically include two tenancy situation shared by three to six vertically stacked, identical floors.4 families, “renting” one room. Multiple neighboring chawls often come Pavements [transition] into jopad- together to form a courtyard, known as a pattis (complexes of shacks with wadi. Historically, these larger courtyards few amenities), which [transition] have been sites for social and political into semi-permanent illegal gatherings.5 structures . Another continuum links these structures to chawls Each level of the chawl is comprised of a (tenement housing originally built series of single rooms along a gallery or for mill workers in Central Bombay a corridor. Residents on each floor share (Mumbai)) and to other forms of common toilets, washing areas, and other substandard housing. Above this public spaces, such as staircases. Each tier are the owned and rented single-room unit is generally eight by eight flats of the large middle class feet in dimension, with a floor-to-ceiling and finally, the flats and (in a tiny height of nine feet.6 These already cramped number of cases) houses owned conditions are commonly condensed even by the rich and the super rich.2 further when residents use ceiling spaces for bunks or additional storage. Further, 24 and economically mixed population, without a defining political identity. Usually, SANYAL “slums provide shelter to the poor, lower classes and . migrants who come to the city in search of jobs.”9 However, it is not uncommon for slum dwellers to remain in these units even after securing a steady income. During the colonial rule, slums were architecturally understood as temporary squatter housing situated Figure 2: Interior view of a room in the Jam Mill chawl near places of employment. However, in showing a three-by-three-foot open washing area-mori within the kitchen (Rajesh Vora, The Chawls of Mumbai- independent India, these settlements have galleries of life, 2011). gradually shifted to undesirable areas in and around the city, such as wastelands or each room contains a three-by-three-foot marshy areas adjacent to railway tracks. washing area, or mori — a water tap or a corner space to store water. Today, the Appadurai mentions that the slum also mori is sometimes converted into a private transitions into pavement-dwelling washing and bathing area within the unit. conditions via the use of ephemeral At the ground floor, there are communal materials such as tarpaulins. Theorist washing areas for utensils and clothes that Madhura Swaminathan (2003) defines are also equipped with a shared water tap.7 these dwellings as a “small space enclosed on two sides by gunny sacks or old saris Like the chawls, slum neighborhoods [women’s attire], and covered on top also have overcrowded living conditions. by sack cloth, old sheets of plastics or However, slum settlements are much more occasionally, tarpaulin, and held up by a diverse in their construction; they range couple of wooden rods. The walls of the from tent dwellings to mud and thatched buildings adjoining the pavement provide structures to cement and brick rooms.8 Each a third wall to the pavement dwelling.”10 unit is generally under eight by eight feet These units are generally four-by-five-foot in size, with no civic amenities. In contrast, shelters sufficient to seat no more than slums are typically inhabited by a socially five members in each. These pavement Figures 3 & 4: A narrow alley space between two linear chawls similar to the narrow alleys within slum settlement. AGORA 12 25 The Chawls and Slums of Mumbai dwellings derive their name from their in present-day central Mumbai in areas location – insecure spaces throughout the like Tardeo, Lalbag, and West Parel.15 The city such as on the sidewalks or in front of expansion of industries in Mumbai resulted gutters.11 in a demand for both commercial space and housing for the working class.16 Poverty Overall, the informal living conditions drove lower- and middle-class workers to in Mumbai can be theorized under the live in the least desirable spaces, which categories of chawls, slums, and pavement were often near industries. This process led dwellings. While the clear distinctions to countless migrant mill workers taking between each category have become more residence in undesirable areas, forming and more blurred over time, their origins segregated enclaves within the city.17 can all be traced back to colonial rule in India. In 1863, the British orchestrated the construction of a robust and affordable WORKING-CLASS transportation system of local railways. In HOUSING IN 1872, the addition of trams, trains, and bus COLONIAL MUMBAI routes throughout the city allowed people to move into the suburbs post-independence.18 The Portuguese bestowed the city of However, during the inception of public Mumbai on the King of England in 1661, and in 1668, the East India Company leased the city for industrial pursuit.