Bombay Gazetteer in huge demand, third edition released…..Prashant Rangnekar
Intense competition and demand for the old city gazettes published by the British have compelled the Maharashtra State Gazetteers Department to come out with a fresh stock of these documents — one of the most authentic accounts of the city’s history.
The third edition was released last week after private players started publishing them, claiming the copyright law does not extend to government gazettes which are over a century old.
“The copyright of this book ended in 2009-2010. Many publishers were keen on printing these volumes as they are an important source for city history. A publisher from Delhi published a set of these gazettes recently to which we took an objection as the department still exists and does active work. We decided to publish these gazettes again and sell it at half the market price. More importantly, since it is a government department, there is little scope of making any change in the book, thus underlining its authenticity,” said Arunchandra Phatak, executive editor and secretary of the state gazetteers department. The department is selling the gazettes for less than Rs 1,000.
First published in 1909, the gazettes were reprinted in 1977-1978, but soon ran out of stock. For more than three decades, the department did not publish them. The three volumes, also sold in the e-book format, have information on every aspect of the city from the macro-elements like history, geography to micro elements like the communities, to even the taxes levied by various people who ruled the city. It also has some rare photos of the city dating back to the early 19th century.
Most of the information was collected by Sir James Macnabb Campbell, an English scholar, who was asked to prepare the gazettes for Mumbai. Campbell’s departure from India put the project in a limbo as the cost of printing the three volumes was high.
Subsequently, S M Edwardes was asked to resume the work. The book has topics by experts that include several bureaucrats of British India and locals specialising in various fields. For instance, the section on Muslims in the city was written by Faizullah M Taki, who worked with the city police.
The roots of The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island can be traced to 1905 when Lord Curzon was the Viceroy.
In 1871, William Wilson Hunter came up with the concept of having gazettes for India. A decade later, the Imperial Gazette of India was published. In 1905, Curzon wished to have a detailed gazetteer that resulted in the publishing of three volumes of The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island edited by Edwardes. The book was finally published in October 1909 and sold for Rs 6.
After Independence, the Indian government again undertook the task of Indian gazettes called the Gazetteer of Indian Union. Accordingly, gazettes were written on 300 districts in the country.
In the state, gazettes were written on 26 districts, including many Marathwada territories formerly ruled by the Nizam. The state completed the three-volume series on Mumbai in 1987.
“These gazettes were written to safeguard the British Empire, but they are authentic and an important source of history that can hardly be challenged. The state government also published its series of gazettes, but even then the main source of information for them was the British gazettes,” said Dr Dawood Dalvi, a historian and president of Konkan Itihaas Parishad, that researches on the history of Konkan, including Mumbai.