The Cousins Thackeray by Dhaval Kulkarni

Author:Dhaval Kulkarni [Kulkarni, Dhaval]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353056476
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

History of migration

In Mumbai, the north Indians are referred to as ‘bhaiyas’, which literally means ‘elder brother’. However, its Mumbai usage is as a contemptuous term. It has a historical context. As the Marathas expanded militarily into north India, Purbaiyas—as people from the eastern Uttar Pradesh belt were called—joined them as soldiers, with some even migrating to the Peshwa capital at Pune.

In the Peshwa era, the Marathas virtually emerged as masters of Hindustan and Marathi speakers dispersed to north and east India. Maratha generals like Malharrao Holkar, Ranoji Scindia and others settled in the north, taking with them several people from Maharashtra.

After the British defeated the last Peshwa, Bajirao II, he was exiled to Bithoor near Kanpur. His foster son, Nanasaheb, played a pivotal role in the First War of Indian Independence of 1857 with fellow Marathis like Tatya Tope and Rani Lakshmibai. The family of Govind Ballabh Pant, the first chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who later became the Union home minister, hailed from Karad in Maharashtra. Baburao Paradkar, one of the doyens of journalism in Hindi, was from Sindhudurg.

In his 1994 book, Bambai ke Uttar Bharatiya, journalist-turned-politician, Ram Manohar Tripathi, who was a minister of state in Maharashtra, notes that the dhobi (washerman) community from the north was the first to migrate to Mumbai before 1857 as domestic servants of the British. Similar competing claims are also made by those from the Purvanchal and Braj regions.52 Tripathi records that in 1858 or 1860, two north Indians were blown off using cannons at Azad Maidan in south Mumbai for crimes that have not been recorded in the annals of history.53

After the great war of 1857, many from north India, mostly Muslims from Varanasi, Allahabad, Jaunpur, Barabanki and Fatehpur, fled to Mumbai and other areas in Maharashtra to escape the wrath of the British.54

In India Moving: A History of Migration, Chinmay Tumbe notes that de-industrialization in the early nineteenth century, due to cheap machine-made British cloth flooding the Indian market, led to weaving communities migrating from eastern Uttar Pradesh to Mumbai, Bhiwandi and Malegaon in Maharashtra.55

Kolkata was a stronger magnet for economic migrants in north India. However, they chose to migrate to Mumbai as it grew into an industrial city, after the establishment of the railways, textile mills and engineering units and development of its port after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Some like the Yadavs trooped into Mumbai to meet the demands of the rising population and began supplying milk and started tabelas (dairies) in areas like Grant Road, Pila House, Parel, Colaba, Tardeo and Agripada.56

Tripathi writes how migrants from north India initially launched businesses that required low capital investment like selling groundnuts, paan (betel leaf) and coal. They gradually forayed into other sectors like running flour mills and driving taxis. Those from the ‘Braj’ area of Uttar Pradesh like Hathras, Aligarh and Mathura, started shops selling bhelpuri that Mumbai is famous for. They also gave Mumbai another culinary trademark—kulfi.

From 1930 onwards, the number of north Indians in Mumbai, especially those from Uttar Pradesh, increased.

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