HISTORY OF BOMBAY :
The history of Bombay's textile areas is one of the most important, if also least known, stories of modern India. Covering a dense network of textile mills, public housing estates, markets and cultural centers, this area covers about a thousand acres in the heart of India's commercial and financial capital. Bombay has always been on the top in fashion sarees. The seven islands that now form Bombay were first home to the Koli fisher folk whose shanties still occupy parts of the city shoreline today. The islands were ruled by a succession of Hindu dynasties, invaded by Muslims in the 14th century and then ceded to Portugal by the Sultan of Gujarat in 1534. The Portuguese did little to develop them before the major island of the group was included in Catherine of Braganza's dowry when she married England's Charles II in 1661. The British Government took possession of all seven islands in 1 665 but leased them three years later to the East India Company for a meager annual rent of 10.00.
Bombay played a formative role in the struggle for Independence, hosting the first Indian National Congress in 1885 and the launch of the 'Quit India' campaign in 1942. Bombay (AKA Mumbai) is the glamour of Bollywood cinema, cricket on the maidans on weekends, bhelpuri on the beach at Chowpatty and red double-decker buses. It is also the infamous cages of the red-light district, Asia's largest slums, communalist politics and powerful mafia dons.
This pungent drama is played out against a Victorian townscape more reminiscent of a prosperous 19th-century English industrial city than anything you'd expect to find on the edge of the Arabian Sea. Bombay has vital street life, India's best nightlife, and more bazaars, saris bazaar than you could ever explore.
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