Girgaum Chowpatty is one of the most politicized sites of the city, notwithstanding a court ruling some years ago that declared the beach strictly for recreational purposes only. Even then, the ruling had qualified that the Ganesh visarjan ritual was a ritualistic recreational act, and made official one more moment in the neighbourhood’s long lasting trysts with politics.

After all, the Saarvajanik Ganesh mandals were an innovative attempt by Tilak at politicizing what was essentially a domesticated ritual. He made it a Mumbai event, one that would bridge divides between castes, classes and even religions to help prepare a united front against colonial powers. It was a master stroke. In one swift gesture, the meaning and significance of recreation, ritual and politics got merged into one quivering mass of humanity.

Tilak’s move was truly radical – he wanted the ritual to break through caste barriers, question prejudice and become a forum for discussion and debate. After 1893, community participation in the festival became huge, with poetry recitals, performances, intellectual discussions, music and dance becoming integral to the events and the tenth day procession to submerge the idol in water bodies becoming one more way of bringing the divided city together.

The Girgaum beach would never be the same after that, much to the chagrin of the elites who lived across on Malabar Hill and other posh neighbourhoods in the vicinity. Very much like their descendents today – who were the prime movers in banning political rallies near the beach – supposedly for causing traffic jams. Most of them didn’t seem to care that the site had been anointed by politics and that it was a historical space precisely because rallies helped the city come together in the name of some worthwhile cause or the other.

A few decades after Tilak’s move, another resident in the neighbourhood managed to transform the beach into a moment of ferment. Gandhi, who lived down Laburnum road, had inspired most of the neighbourhood to support his clever moves. When he started the famous Dandi march as part of the satyagraha to protest against the infamous salt tax in 1930, Girgaum Chowpatty resounded to his call with great gusto. Thousands and thousands of Gandhi’s followers descended on the beach to symbolically create salt echoing his act in Dandi, Gujarat. And when the followers were lathi charged and attacked by the police, they found an unexpected ally across the road – in the form of Wilson College. According to some records, its principal, opened the gates and transformed the space into a refuge for the Gandhians in open defiance against the colonial rulers.

For several years after that the beach was constantly used by Mumbaikars to voice their concerns. Especially since the powers ruling their lives, resided close by and could be heckled on their way home in the evenings. Along with Azad Maidan and Shivaji Park, the city repeatedly bristled with concern about different issues ranging from Dalit radicalism, to peasant movements, to fighting against the brief stint with authoritarianism during the Emergency in the mid 1970’s.

It was thus a pleasure to see how the gay movement too kept up an old Mumbai legacy celebrating the reading down of Article 377, and held one of the biggest gay pride marches in the country that made Girgaum Chowpatty resonate with politics. Once more the neighbourhood supported a stand against a colonial moment and celebrated along with the marchers fighting against discriminatory prejudice.

Published in Mumbai Mirror, August 26, 2009