Remembering Jim Masselos, the Australian Scholar of Bombay's Social History

The Wire

a day ago

James Cosmas Masselos (1940-2025) studied and wrote about Bombay/Mumbai for six decades. He was a pioneer in the study of the history of urban South Asia, held in great esteem and affection by generations of scholars who regard his work as foundational to their own.
Jim was at the tail end of a generation of Australians who made a global impact on London in the 1960s such as Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes and Barry Humphries.
However, after graduating from the University of Sydney, Jim headed not to London but instead made the journey by sea to Bombay (as it was) on a studentship funded by the Indian government under the Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Plan. Supervised by Professor William Coelho at the Heras Institute of Indian History and Culture, St Xavier's College, Jim submitted his doctoral thesis to the University of Bombay in 1964. This was a study of the origins of nationalist associations in late 19th century Bombay and Poona.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jim wrote a series of essays which laid the foundations for a new kind of urban social history. He explored how 19th-century Bombay was made from below by a range of social actors. These writings traversed a range of themes: the world of the urban mohalla, crowds and popular culture, and the changing rhythms of everyday life in the city.
In the 1980s, Jim began his work on Congress' efforts at popular mobilisation in inter-war Bombay, then in the early 1990s, he looked at how other visions of the political that threatened to undercut its secular fabric. Thus, shortly after the 1992-93 riots in Mumbai, he published an essay that examined the first Hindu-Muslim riots in the city a century earlier.
Professor Prashant Kidambi quotes an essay of Jim's from 1992: 'Bombay was always an Indian city; even in the days of the Raj Bombay was never merely a white enclave surrounded by an Asiatic universe.' It was a view that stood in stark contrast to prevailing notions of the so-called 'colonial city', which regarded it as a largely European construct in whose fashioning Indians had little or no role.
Jim drew on empirical and archival material using strong analytical frameworks. He underlined the shaping of Bombay by the dynamic between the formally 'defined city' and the informally inhabited 'effective city'.
Again Kidambi quotes Jim:
'The city defies the intentions of its masters to impose an orderly planned pattern upon it. The contrast between the habitation wishes of its population and the plans of those who formally control the shape of the city remains a constant tension in the structure of the relationships which create the urban complex.'
Kidambi notes four major themes in Jim's work:
'First, he has documented the ways in which urban communities, far from being manifestations of primordial cultural identities, were historically reconstituted in the modern city. Second, he has shown a remarkably keen and prescient awareness of the centrality of space in the making and unmaking of these communities. Third, he has highlighted how diverse forms of power, operating at different scales, have structured social relations in the city. And finally, he has also been concerned with how one form of power, that expressed in the discursive practices of nationalism, sought to acquire and exercise hegemony in the city.'
Bombay before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos, edited by Prashant Kidambi, Manjiri Kamat, and Rachel Dwyer.
Using these four divisions, Kidambi structured the book of papers that was co-edited by him, Professor Manjiri Kamat of Mumbai University and myself that were published in the UK (Hurst Publishers), India (Penguin) and the USA (Oxford University Press) as Bombay before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos (2019). These drew from presentations made at a conference held in his honour at the Department of History, University of Mumbai, in 2017.
Many urban historians and colleagues remembered him when he passed away. Manjari Kamat wrote to me and said:
'Jim Masselos, an alumnus of University of Mumbai and former Honorary Reader in History at the University of Sydney can be seen as a pioneer among the urban historians of Bombay."
"His later writings, particularly his seminal article, The Power in the Bombay Moholla which appeared in the journal, South Asia in 1976 and the articles he published thereafter on crowd events in the city during the nationalist movement inspired historians to shift their attention to neighbourhood networks and popular movements to understand India's urban modernity and the unfolding of the nationalist movement in Bombay.
"It was Jim's constant endeavour to connect the present to the past as in the case of his article on the1993 riots juxtaposed with a study of the riots of 1893 that set him apart and reflected his deep engagement with the changes and continuities in his beloved city of Bombay.'
Jim's colleague in the University of Sydney, professor Robert Aldrich said:
'Jim was a much loved teacher of courses in Indian history, Southeast Asian history and other fields, his classes always enriched by his sojourns in Asia and his deep appreciation of Asian art, film and culture in general. Jim shared his passion for history and for South Asia. Just last year, a colleague told me how he had just met and chatted with a group of undergraduates whom she was taking to Mumbai for a summer course – and how excited the students were to see one of Jim's books on a display table in a bookshop when they were there. Jim was immensely kind and generous with his students, many of whom became lifelong friends (and some them distinguished scholars in their own right), and they have now been remembering him with great fondness and sadness at his passing.'
There is a consensus about Jim that he was not only a fine scholar but a great friend, a supportive mentor, a generous sharer of his time. My husband and I were lucky to get to know Jim over many years, first meeting during the riots in Bombay of December 1992. My husband was unwell, so Jim and I went to wonderful parties hosted by journalists and writers. He introduced me to many film makers including Shyam Benegal and Mani Kaul. I remember walking back from a party on Malabar Hill along Marine Drive talking and laughing uproariously. I kept wondering why my new acquaintances kept saying Michael (now well) looked much younger and better. It was only when he was asked why he'd shaved off his beard I realised they meant Jim which led to much more laughter and wondering if Greek Australians and British Irishmen looked the same.
I was a doctoral student when I met Jim and he set me the example of never talking down to people. He talked to everyone with respect and kindness. He had three sisters of whom he was very fond and he occasionally talked about growing up in Sydney of Greek heritage. He used to get me to try to say 'Dimitri' (his Greek name) correctly and laughed at my hopelessly romantic Hellenophilia.
Jim certainly had the famous Greek xenophilia – love of foreign people and cultures, the opposite of xenophobia. He had many friends in India from royalty to the ordinary person. He wasn't interested in money or status at all and was happy to tramp around the streets although allowing himself more comfort in retirement. Jim was also extraordinarily hospitable at home, throwing parties and dinners for us, making our way to his kitchen through the books and papers that had spread from his study and were taking over his whole house. He always took time out when we visited to show us around Sydney, his other favourite city.
Jim often worked with Jackie Menzies, the Head of the Asian Art at the Art Gallery Gallery of New South Wales, holding conferences there and leaving them most of his enormous collection of Indian artefacts. He was an immensely cultured man and loved art and cinema (though I never persuaded him to like 'Bollywood'). The four of us met several times in Australia and in London and ate at restaurants and drank good wine, creating lifelong memories. One time Jim, Michael and I went to a very fancy restaurant – then the most famous – in Sydney where Jim was allowed to bring some special bottles from his cellar. The waves at Bondi Beach were much louder than usual the next day.
Jim had not been in good health for a while and was very ill over the last few months. I had hoped that I would get to see him one last time but it wasn't to be. Perhaps it's best to remember him as he was with his jhola and his cigarette, always smiling and full of great conversation. Eonia i mnimi – eternal memory.