Revisioning Mumbai- Conceiving A Manifesto for Sustainable Development

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The Asiatic Society of Mumbai, historically has been an interface to discuss and involve public participation in the city's issues. It has been the womb where city institutions like the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and the Mumbai Port Trust have originated.

In its Bicentenary year, the Society wished to deliberate on the Urban Conservation process dealing with the reordering and regeneration of the urban fabric, physical as well as metaphysical As a vehicle for deliberating all issues of tangible and intangible heritage the Society hosted a conference dealing with the Vision for Mumbai in the 21st century with primary focus on Urban Conservation as a catalyst for reordering the Post-Industrial City Although urban conservation processes in contemporary Mumbai have been limited to the physical environment there has always been an underlying need to understand, recognize and assist all connotations of heritage This legacy in the form of social and local history, language and literature, customs and rituals, performing and visual arts is as important as the physical environment in the entire process of cultural evolution of Mumbai.

This publication aims at reintroducing Mumbai through its various socio-economic patterns and changes and alternative histories and geographies, and several cultures. It further aims at presenting various cultural practices in negotiating the myriad landscapes of Mumbai. While doing so, it tries to present an achievable manifesto for sustainable development.

"The smallest society brought together by the love of knowledge in respectable in the eye of Reason, and that feeble efforts of infant literature in barren and inhospitable regions are in some respects more interesting than the most successful exertions of the human mind" Thus began Sir James Mackintosh, Founder President of the Literary Society at the time of inauguration on 26th November 1804 in Bombay. Two hundred and more years have passed since then and the smallest society" has grown in size and stature and has taken its prime position in the list of institutions that have withstood the test of time and survived vicissitudes for over two centuries One can only count on fingertips such renowned institutions of scholarship and learning that have survived to celebrate their bicentenary and to write the saga of their glory and inspire both the old and the young to carve their future bright.

James Mackintosh who came to Bombay as its Supreme Court Recorder -in today's terms, Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court was a dynamic man with a vision and made a significant contribution to the growth and development of the Bombay city. His immediate task was to clean up the Police Department and streamline administration to his credit, he successfully carried out both these tasks. It was his idea provide a suitable building for public meetings and entertainment and also for reception of public monuments of British Art. The majestic Town Hall was completed in 1830 and the Literary Society - by then rechristened as Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and its library moved to the east wing of the building. From then on the growth of Bombay and the growth of the Asiatic Society became so intertwined that neither could be considered in isolation.