Property, Custom, and Religion in Early Nineteenth-Century Bombay

Sukriti Issar

Analysis of a novel source of data about early nineteenth-century Bombay, with a novel methodology, makes an important contribution to debates about inter-religious contact in South Asia.

After the fire of 1803 in Bombay, landowners were asked to lease or sell their lands to people. Bombay’s register of sales deeds, which lists the names of buyers, sellers, and neighbors, also permits identification of their religious affiliations when supplemented with archival information about the bureaucratic practices affecting property transactions. Findings suggest that property transactions within religious groups comprised most of the sales (60 percent). Contemporary petitions show that residents sometimes appealed to the state to prevent the sale of property to people who did not share their religion.

Many diverse examples illustrate how religion and urban space intersected in early nineteenth-century colonial Bombay. Landowners attempted to control the religious composition of the groups that were renting their land or buying their neighbors’ land. Given the right of first refusal, and other instances of attempts to sell or rent property only to co-religionists, property transactions are ready terrain for analyzing inter-religious contact.