Framing Identity: Bombay’s East-Indian Community and its Indo-Portuguese historical background (1737-1928)

Abstract

In 1739 the Portuguese were expelled from the Estado da Índia’s Northern Province, leaving behind a considerable Indian Catholic population, adding to the Catholics in Bombay Island living under British administration since 1665. Known today as “East-Indians”, this ethno-religious community has a distinctive presence in the present metropolis of Mumbai, although their churches, neighborhoods and villages have been almost completely submerged by exponential urban growth. Following a brief historical context, this text addresses the fundamental themes that pervaded the construction of East-Indian collective identity from the 1730s until 1928, and how this implied re-equating and balancing notions of “foreignness” and “Indianness”.