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In this thesis I argue that the management of Muslim pilgrims and the Haj traffic in Bombay was the result of the localization of an international regime of regulation aimed at controlling Hajis as mobile threats to public health and imperial security. International scientists, doctors, and politicians problematized Hajis as diseased, dangerous and disorderly through discourse produced in print material and at international conferences taking place across the globe. Local, elite concerns over their own power, Bombay’s urban spatial order, and the city’s international trade shaped the way these larger global and imperial projects were implemented in Bombay. These findings point to the importance of local, place-based social, political and economic structures in the day-to-day governance of empire.

In this thesis I argue that the management of Muslim pilgrims and the Haj traffic in Bombay was the result of the localization of an international regime of regulation aimed at controlling Hajis as mobile threats to public health and imperial security. International scientists, doctors, and politicians problematized Hajis as diseased, dangerous and disorderly through discourse produced in print material and at international conferences taking place across the globe. Local, elite concerns over their own power, Bombay’s urban spatial order, and the city’s international trade shaped the way these larger global and imperial projects were implemented in Bombay. These findings point to the importance of local, place-based social, political and economic structures in the day-to-day governance of empire.

"Originally submitted in 1933 as a thesis for the master of arts degree of the Bombay University." / "Select bibliography": p. [204]-207.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 351-360). Also available via the World Wide Web.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [321]-327).

This dissertation traces a series of cultural negotiations through which the Parsis, a community of ethnic Zoroastrians, fashioned themselves into ‘modern’ citizens in the setting of colonial Bombay. It examines the ways Parsis negotiated change in a number of personal spheres such as their dress, deportment, dining and domesticity as well as the ways the community managed internal groupings such as Persian Zoroastrian refugees and the Parsi poor in the landscape of Bombay. It proposes that it was this unusual, simultaneous fashioning at the levels of the personal and the broader community, that turned the series of negotiations into a project of self-fashioning. It argues that it is in these cultural and intra-communal domains of self-fashioning that we see some of the more difficult negotiations, as well as the inner tensions, that the Parsi model of modernity entailed at the different levels of Parsi society.

If there is anything that challenges a discussion about architecture, it would be defining architecture. It is too broad a subject to construct any particular opinion and follow on, even while attempting to create an understanding of it at the level within graduate program. For me, in a way, architecture has constantly re-constructed its character and impression, and that by itself becomes its permanent trait vis-a-vis a given place and time. But, it also subtly shifts its prominence from being an object to being an experience, from being permanent to being ephemeral or from being a summation to being a subtraction. At this moment, my pursuit of understanding architecture lies in its subtraction or absence from a collage of variables that compose everyday life.Revisiting Bombay's busy streets after spending a considerable amount of time in the United States was a familiar experience for me, but it quickly helped me recognize and acknowledge constituents of my everyday living (associated with the events of the city) that were immediately subtracted while living in the West. An everyday experienceassociated with the city, like the vending stalls, convenience stores, songs, noise, people, etc. could not be found in cities I visited in the U.S. All these experiences such as eating at food stalls and having a cup of tea on the street-side, buying electronics and latest music albums from a make-shift stall assembled from pieces of wooden planks; or simply walking on the street-side as if it were never a side walk but a festival of attainable consumerism - collectively form an event that is embedded in Bombay's urbanism. Herein, I chose to get up-close with the actors and their created spaces and interview them in order to gain insights into the totality of making a living on the street-side. Additionally, in order to extend my knowledge of architecture, I designed a vending stall that both acknowledges the worlds of the street-side and vendors, even as it is informed by my training as an architect.I am challenged as a graduate student to consider architecture within the context of my everyday life. A whole new dimension of space (of ad-hoc and tactical nature) that has always been there, gradually and randomly shaping my relationship with the city's streets while challenging the order of the city. Although invisibly present all the time, this study has made me more aware of its influence. Hence, I have tried to readdress everyday life on the street-sides within the local and global settings of Bombay, studying events and people associated with it. Looking for a probable architecture on the street-sides of Bombay within the boundaries of the quotidian and the modem realities becomes my thesis. / Department of Architecture

Two things struck me during my time in Dharavi. The first was the bad public health and the second the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of the people who lived there. The health issues, a result of inadequate sanitation, can be directly linked to the shortage of toilets. For every toilet there are a thousand users and because of this over a quarter of the people in Dharavi choose instead to publicly defecate. On the other side of the coin however, stands Dharavi’s remarkable recycling industry and in Dharavi alone 80% of Mumbai’s plastic waste is recycled and given new use. The concept revolves around recyclability and combining industry with sanitation; recycling the produced waste and generating income. If there’s a way to profit from human waste it is likely that people would go to certain lengths to collect the necessary material. By removing the waste and converting it to humanure, positive side effect would include cleaner streets and in general a healthier population. The idea is therefore to build a waste management facility where income is generated through the collected waste and used to improve the surrounding community. In this proposed space you can go to the toilet, throw away your trash and food waste and even use the functions provided to do chores or simply relax. The food and human waste from toilets could be used as fertilizer and sold for a profit or perhaps even used as fuel. The garbage could be collected and sorted on spot and then sold onwards for further refinement.