The immigrants came from all parts of India and overseas, and even though they adapted to city life, they clung tightly to their home ties and home cultures, including their language. Distinctive groups settled into distinctive occupations and lived in recognizable neighborhoods. There were Marathispeaking workers in greatest number, since their part of the mainland was the closest; Gujarati-speaking Hindu, Jain, Parsi, and Muslim merchants and workers; Hindi-speaking peoples from northern India, Urdu-speaking Muslims from everywhere, Konkani speaking Goan Christians, and South Indians speaking four or five different languages. Superimposed on it all was a cadre of British administrators, businessmen, and professionals, and the westernized Indians who worked with them. After Indian Independence and partition, in 1947, Mumbai became the new home of many displaced persons from Pakistan, largely Hindi-speaking Hindus and Punjabi-speaking Sikhs.
The Republic of India has given Mumbai official national and state languages. In 1965, Hindi was decreed to be the official national language in place of English, despite vehement objections from non-Hindi-speaking Indians. When the Indian states were reorganized along linguistic lines, the Nehru government first exempted Mumbai because of its cosmopolitan character. But street riots ensued, and in the face of heavy political pressure, Mumbai was joined with the nearby mainland in the new State of Maharashtra in 1960. Marathi was proclaimed the official state language. Thus, Mumbai had a national language (Hindi), a state language (Marathi), a language of the well-educated (English), a commercial language (Gujarati) , and more than a dozen smaller groups with their own traditional tongues.
Mumbai had linguistic press problems before it had a Hindi news press, even before it was a city. In 1674, the British East India Company dispatched one Henry Hills, printer, to Mumbai Island with a simple press, a few fonts of type, and a supply of paper at the request of a bania (a Hindu businessman or financier) who wished to see “the Brahmani writings” in print. But when Hills arrived, the baniu, who was paying for the project, was disappointed to learn that all the type was in the Roman alphabet, and he soon lost interest in the entire venture. What became of the unfortunate Hills is not recorded.
Mumbai’s early newspapers, beginning with the Herald in 1789, were published by Englishmen, in English, for the English community, and they concerned themselves entirely with that community. One of them was the Bombay Times, founded in 1838, which became the Times of Zndia in 1861 and has been the leading paper in western India ever since. Jawaharlal Nehru once wrote: I remember that when I was a boy, the British-owned newspapers in India were full of official news and utterances; of service news, transfers, and promotions; of the doings of English society, of polo, races, dances, and amateur theatricals. There was hardly a word about people of India, about their political, cultural, social or economic life. Reading them, one would hardly suspect that they existed.
The first Hindi news paper was the Mumbai Samachar, a Gujarati weekly founded in 1822 and became the leading Hindi daily. Since the Gujaratis are largely a business community, their journals have always placed heavy emphasis on commercial Hindi news. The Hindi-language news was slower to develop, as most Maharashtrians are workers, and when it did it took a heavily political tone. Papers were founded later in other languages. According to the Register of Newspapers, there were 35 Mumbai dailies distributed among seven languages among which Hindi news played a multifaceted role to serve the urbanites.
Nine are in Marathi, eight in Urdu, seven in English, six in Gujarati, two in Hindi, one in Sindhi, one in Punjabi, and one “bilingual.” In addition, there are weeklies in Konkani, and each day several hundred papers in the South Indian languages are brought into Bombay. The three English-language groups are the largest: the Times of India, Free Press and Indian Express groups, with their morning and evening papers, financial dailies, Sunday supplements, and their vernacular publications. Each of the three groups, for instance, includes a thriving Marathi daily.
