45 Fun Facts About Mumbai

Mumbai is the capital of which Indian state?

Maharashtra: the state was born in 1960, when years of protest split the old two-language Bombay State in two and the city stayed on as capital of the Marathi-speaking half.

Which party, newly in power, pushed through the 1995 renaming of Bombay as Mumbai?

Shiv Sena: the party argued that 'Bombay' was a relic of colonial rule and chose a name honouring Mumbadevi, a goddess long worshipped on the islands.

The Kolis, the earliest known inhabitants of Mumbai's islands, traditionally made their living how?

Fishing: the Kolis' patron goddess, Mumbadevi, is the likeliest origin of the city's name, a better bet than the old tale that it comes from the Portuguese for 'good bay'.

Mumbai was built on an archipelago of how many islands?

Seven: the Greek geographer Ptolemy knew the cluster as Heptanesia in the 2nd century, some sixteen hundred years before the islets were merged into one.

Bombay's islands passed to England in 1661 as part of whose dowry on her marriage to Charles II?

Catherine of Braganza: her brother was king of Portugal, which had held the islands since the 1530s, and by 1668 the Crown had already passed them on to the East India Company.

England leased Bombay's islands to the East India Company in 1668 for what annual rent?

£10: the future financial capital was at first no great prize, just a toehold on the west coast that the Company ran from its older base at Surat.

From the 1780s onwards, how were the separate islands of Bombay joined into one?

Causeways and reclaimed land: the first big step was the Hornby Vellard, an embankment that stopped high tides flooding the low central plain, and later schemes filled in the rest.

India's first passenger railway, opened on 16 April 1853, ran from Bombay to which neighbouring town?

Thane: the 34 km line was the first step in opening the hinterland by rail, which, with the Suez Canal and the cotton mills, fuelled Bombay's boom in the later 19th century.

Which conflict of the 1860s set off a cotton boom in Bombay?

The American Civil War: with the cotton of the Southern states cut off, Britain's mills turned to Bombay and fortunes were made, until peace in 1865 sent prices crashing and the bubble burst.

When Bombay State was split along language lines in 1960, which state was created alongside the one that kept Bombay?

Gujarat: four years of protest by Marathi speakers against sharing a two-language state ended with its partition into a Gujarati-speaking north and a Marathi-speaking south.

The Gateway of India was erected to commemorate the 1911 landing of which British monarch?

George V: he and Queen Mary are said to have been shown only a cardboard model when they landed in 1911, because the real arch was not completed until 1924.

Who left India through the Gateway of India in February 1948?

The last British troops: a battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry marched out through an arch that had been built to mark a British monarch's arrival, saluted by soldiers of the new Indian Army.

Mumbai's great Gothic Revival railway station, now known as CSMT, carried what official name until 1996?

Victoria Terminus: it took a decade to build and was named for the queen's Golden Jubilee, and since 1996 it has been renamed twice in honour of a 17th-century Maratha king.

The Elephanta Caves in Mumbai Harbour are dedicated mainly to which Hindu god?

Shiva: the island's own name is a later accident, given by Portuguese sailors who found a large stone elephant there, a statue that now stands in a public garden in the city.

Marine Drive's nickname, the Queen's Necklace, comes from what?

Its streetlights seen at night: from the high ground at the northern end, the lamps strung along the long C-shaped curve of the bay look like a string of pearls.

Which cable-stayed bridge has carried traffic across Mumbai's Mahim Bay since 2009?

The Bandra–Worli Sea Link: until it opened, one congested road was the only link between the western suburbs and the old island city, so the bridge gave rush-hour drivers a second way across.

Which form of public transport carries the most commuters around Mumbai?

Suburban trains: known simply as 'locals', they are the backbone of the city's transport, and at peak hours they run far more crowded than they were ever built for.

Mumbai's dabbawalas do what for a living?

Deliver home-cooked lunches to workers: each tin carries a code of colours and numbers showing where it must go, so carriers who never meet the customer can pass it from hand to hand across the city.

Vada pav, a favourite Mumbai street snack, consists of a deep-fried potato dumpling served in what?

A bread bun: the snack is usually credited to Ashok Vaidya, who began selling it from a stall outside Dadar station as a quick, cheap bite for commuters on the move.

Which Mumbai district, often called Asia's largest slum, houses around a million people and thousands of small workshops?

Dharavi: its lanes support a thriving trade in leather goods, garments, pottery and recycled plastic, all on prime land in the very middle of the financial capital.

Bollywood is the industry making films in which language?

Hindi: the nickname welds Bombay to Hollywood and was coined only in the 1970s, by which time the city's studios had already been making films for sixty years.

Who made 1913's Raja Harishchandra, thought to be India's first feature film, in Bombay?

Dadasaheb Phalke: with no actresses willing to appear on screen he cast men in the women's roles, and the country's highest award for a lifetime in cinema now carries his name.

Which 1931 Bombay production was India's first sound film?

Alam Ara: once films could talk, Indian cinema began to split into separate industries, one for each of the country's major languages.

Which 1975 blockbuster starring Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan is often called Bollywood's 'curry western'?

Sholay: its bandits, hired guns and revenge plot borrow openly from Hollywood and Italian westerns, yet it is widely rated the most iconic film the Mumbai industry has made.

The Bombay Stock Exchange, established in 1875, holds what distinction?

Oldest stock exchange in Asia: it grew out of a handful of brokers who met to trade under a banyan tree, years before they had a building of their own.

Antilia, the 27-storey tower completed on Mumbai's Altamount Road in 2010, serves as what?

One family's private home: industrialist Mukesh Ambani's house has its own temple, cinema and 168-car garage, plus a 'snow room' where the family can escape the humid Mumbai heat.

In 2024, Mumbai overtook Beijing as the Asian city with the most what?

Billionaires: the 2024 Hurun rich list found the city had added 26 in a single year, lifting it to third in the world behind New York and London while Beijing slipped to fourth.

Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium hosted the 2011 final of which tournament, won by India against Sri Lanka?

The Cricket World Cup: captain MS Dhoni promoted himself up the batting order and finished the chase with a six, giving India its first title since 1983.

Which festival fills Mumbai with pandals for up to ten days and ends with idols being carried into the sea?

Ganesh Chaturthi: it grew into a mass street festival under British rule, when the nationalist Bal Gangadhar Tilak revived public celebrations as a way round a ban on political gatherings.

Mumbai is home to the world's largest population of which religious community?

Parsi Zoroastrians: descended from Persians who fled religious persecution, they settled in Bombay once the East India Company promised toleration, and their merchants did much to build the city.

What brought Mumbai to a standstill on 26 July 2005 and closed its airport?

Record monsoon rain: about 944 mm, more than three feet of water, fell in a single day, the wettest the city has known, and tens of thousands of people were stranded overnight.

What replaced most of Bombay's cotton mills after the 1982 strike?

Malls and towers: the textile strike drew in nearly 250,000 workers and lasted more than a year but ended in defeat, and the land of the shut mills was later sold off for redevelopment.

The Haji Ali Dargah, built in 1431 on an islet off the Mumbai shore, honours what kind of figure?

A Sufi saint: Haji Ali Bukhari is said to have been a rich merchant who gave away everything he owned, and his tomb stands on an islet that pilgrims can reach on foot only when the tide is out.

Which 1942 campaign against British rule was launched in Bombay with Gandhi's 'Do or Die' speech?

The Quit India Movement: the slogan itself was coined by Bombay's mayor, Yusuf Meherally, and when the British answered by arresting the leaders at once, the arrests only spread the revolt.

The Kanheri Caves, more than a hundred rock-cut chambers in Mumbai's northern hills, were made by followers of which religion?

Buddhism: monks went on cutting cells and halls into the hillside for centuries, and the complex grew into a university guarded by giant carved Buddhas.

What is a resident of Mumbai called in Marathi?

Mumbaikar: the Marathi ending -kar means 'one who belongs to', which is why a person from Pune is a Punekar and one from Nagpur a Nagpurkar.

Which political party held its founding session in Bombay in December 1885?

Indian National Congress: it began as a polite gathering that asked only for modest reforms within British rule, and decades passed before it became the movement demanding independence outright.

India's main nuclear research centre, at Trombay in Mumbai, is named after which physicist?

Homi Bhabha: the Bombay-born architect of the country's nuclear programme set the centre up himself, and it was renamed in his memory after he died in an airliner crash on Mont Blanc in 1966.

Which of these Indian batting greats was born in Bombay in 1973?

Sachin Tendulkar: he scored a century on his first-class debut for the city as a schoolboy of 15 and retired in 2013 as the leading run scorer in Test cricket, with a hundred international hundreds.

Which business district at the southern end of Marine Drive is one of Mumbai's two main financial centres?

Nariman Point: the seafront road leading to it was meant to be part of a far grander scheme for the bay, but delays and mismanagement saw most of the plan abandoned.

Most of Greater Mumbai's suburbs lie on which island, north of the original Bombay Island?

Salsette Island: the city spilled north onto the far larger island from 1950, taking in its suburban boroughs and villages, so old Bombay Island is now just the southern tip of the metropolis.

Which 1989 port across the creek at Nhava Sheva was built to relieve Mumbai Harbour?

Jawaharlal Nehru Port: opened as an overflow for the old harbour, it grew into India's biggest container port, a title it held until the private port of Mundra overtook it in 2021.

Which of these national institutions has its headquarters in Mumbai rather than New Delhi?

The Reserve Bank of India: the central bank sits beside the country's leading stock market, which is why banks, insurers and investment houses cluster in the city instead of the capital.

Which national park, known for the wild leopards that live in it, lies inside Mumbai's northern suburbs?

Sanjay Gandhi National Park: it was set aside largely to protect the catchments of two lakes that supply the city's water, and its leopards now live alongside millions of human neighbours.

Besides its home state, the Bombay High Court has jurisdiction over which other Indian state?

Goa: the court keeps a bench there, and when the city it sits in changed its name in 1995 the court did not follow, remaining the Bombay High Court.