Ms. McGowan, a specialist in modern South Asian history, focused on architectural structure and its impact on the community in her talk on Friday at the School of Environment and Architecture, Borivali. Her address, delivered as part of a paper titled ‘A Home for Us: Community Housing in Late Colonial Bombay’, centred on the progressive architecture and lifestyle of the Parsi and Kanara Saraswat communities.

“All community housing projects offer space and encouragement for community activities,” she said. In the late 1930s, for instance, residents of Parsi Cusrow Baug had access to gardens, tennis and badminton courts, a school, library, two dispensaries and an agiary that hosted services five times a day. The society organised lectures, classes for women, kirtans, celebrations of students’ successes in examinations and sports, and weddings. “The amenities brought residents together. That’s not to imply that the goal was community prejudice, but to argue that the housing projects made it easier to build a life around community.”

For both communities, housing projects emerged from a growing sense of public efforts being unable to address housing needs. The Bombay Improvement Trust, and later, the Bombay Development Directorate built chawls to provide cheap housing for the lower socio-economic strata. The city’s individualistic communities offered their own housing solutions, like the Parsis and Kanara Saraswats, building flats and residential complexes intended to preserve health, improve comfort and strengthen community bonds.