Colonial Legacy Bridging Cultures
Bombay of 1958 was a multicultural hub with English and Portuguese colonial legacies, as well as competing local cultures. This map heavily emphasises the English colonial legacy in Bombay, perhaps as a way to make the city more welcoming to the typical western visitor. Perhaps the high proportion of English colonial products are simply a reflection of the reality of Mumbai in 1958. The street names alone include a myriad of English names: Grant, Lamington, Nesbit, Queen’s, Ballard, Duncan, Clare, Haines… to this day, a cursory search on Google maps shows that few of the street names have changed: this element of the legacy is undeniable.
However, there is also an element of the cartographer’s choice in this emphasis on English influence, for example, in the contrasting treatments of Gloria Church and Haji Ali Dargah. There is a hierarchy in the symbology of this map: in decreasing order of prominence, the drawings of buildings and use of colour, text labels, and then numbers and icons which are explained in the references and key respectively. The Gloria Church, a Roman Catholic church built by the Portuguese in 1632 and since rebuilt in the English Gothic style, is granted two high-level symbols: a large drawing and label. The Haji Ali Dargah, a mosque and tomb on the western coast of the city constructed in 1431, is depicted with a smaller drawing, despite being known as one of the city’s most distinct landmarks.(1) While it is problematic to assume that these two landmarks are equally crucial to the city’s identity, this comparison can demonstrate something of the Government’s intended message in producing this map. The map is also marked with less important Western symbols such as the YMCAs.
Religious sites in this map are distilled to a similarly broad east vs. west level. During this time, there was ongoing tension between Marathi and Gujarati over ownership of the city’s cultural identity. While religious belief does not map exactly to administrative states, the predominant Marathi religion is Hinduism, and the predominant Gujarati religion is Sikhism. Both religions’ place of worship is referred to as a temple. This guide map has select icons for temples, churches, and mosques, but does not differentiate between the temples’ affiliations. Perhaps this oversight is allowed by the cartographer in order to make the map clear and simple, and upon the assumption that the average tourist might not care about the difference.
Citation
Thomas, Amelia. Goa & Mumbai. Lonely Planet, 2012. pp. 87–88.