Look beyond modern Bandra and you find the coastal roots of Mumbai

Before Bandra became a suburb of high-rises and crowded roads, it was a collection of farming villages tied closely to the coastline. The sea was the source of food and in many ways, community life.

A recent exhibition at Pioneer Hall brought that older Bandra back to life. Titled reClamation, the day-long show brought together old family photographs, documents and visual material. As per various accounts, reclamation altered how people reached the water, what they ate, how they worked and even how some of Bandra’s communities related to their own past.

Old Bandra was made up of numerous small fishing settlements. A historical study of the Bandra precinct notes that, until the late 19th century, Bandra consisted of 25 small villages, some fishing villages and others agricultural settlements. Chimbai, near St Andrew’s Church, was one of its established fishing villages.

The sea reached much further into what is now built-up Bandra. Waves once reached the walls around the Mount Mary area, while the shoreline also touched parts of Bazaar Road, Chapel Road and St John Baptist Road.

Koli households worked with what the sea provided, while East Indian Catholic cooking developed through a mix of local ingredients and Portuguese influences. Fish, coconut, rice and spices became part of an everyday food vocabulary. A recent history of Bandra’s food culture traces this directly, from Koli preparations of pomfret, surmai, rawas, prawns and bombil to the East Indian tradition of bottle masala and fish curry with rice.

That relationship also shaped food preservation. Drying fish was practical when the catch exceeded what a household could immediately consume. Bombil, for instance, could be dried and stored.

Portuguese rule arrived in the 16th century, followed by Jesuit missionary activity. St Andrew’s Church traces its history to the 1570s, while the Mount Mary shrine began as a small oratory on the hill in the same period.

The relationship between faith and the coast is particularly striking at Mount Mary. The basilica’s history records that an earlier statue associated with Our Lady of Navigators came from St Andrew’s Church. Local tradition also links the statue to a Koli fisherman who dreamt of finding it in the sea.

By the 1970s, reclamation around parts of Mahim Creek and Bandra had begun altering the relationship between the villages and the water. The development of the Bandra-Kurla area also involved large-scale reclamation of marshland around the Mithi and Mahim Creek system. An MMRDA planning document records substantial reclamation in the area over the decades.

For the fishermen, the consequences were immediate. As per reports, fishermen had to cross the newly reclaimed areas and navigate around buildings to reach a shoreline that had once been close to their homes. Promises were made to the community around fishing rights that did not materialise. 

Some families adapted by moving into other occupations. Shops, carpentry and liquor-making became alternatives for sections of the community. Others continued fishing from Chimbai.

The exhibition displayed documents dating to 1848, including records connected to fishing rights around Mahim Causeway. One 1912 letter referred to fishermen from Chimbai being permitted to fish in return for an annual payment. Another document concerned a fishing stake leased to Bandra fishermen. A 1933 notice from the Bombay Suburban Collector announced the proposed sale by public auction of ancient fishing rights in Bandra Creek.

Chimbai remains one of the reminders of that older Bandra. A 2017 report described Chimbai as a centuries-old fishing settlement whose sandy beach had been replaced by a heavily polluted shoreline. The pressures have continued. Fishermen from Bandra, Mahim and Worli have protested reclamation and infrastructure projects, arguing that construction in Mahim Bay has affected fishing and altered access to waters.

Old Bandra's sea shaped what people caught, cooked and preserved. It influenced where villages grew and where churches were built. It determined livelihoods and routes between communities. Reclamation eventually pushed that sea away, but it could not entirely remove the culture that grew around it.

That is what makes the family photographs and old fishing records at reClamation so important. Today, much of that coastline survives in photographs, documents and memories, glimpsed behind roads, buildings and sea-facing promenades.