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 soon developed as a trading port for elegant sarees and textiles thanks to its fine harbor and the number of merchants who were attracted from other parts of India by the British promise of religious freedom and land grants. Migrants included sizeable communities of Parsis and Gujaratis, and south Indian Hindus fleeing Portuguese persecution in Goa. Their arrival, and that of later immigrant groups, laid the basis for Bombay‘s celebrated multicultural society. Within 20 years, the presidency of the East India Company was transferred to Bombay from Surat, and the town soon became the trading headquarters for the whole west coast of India.
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