This book explores how ideals of house and home provided crucial sites for the negotiation of India’s urban modernity during the twentieth century. Focused on Bombay, the cosmopolitan metropolis that defined the nature and possibilities of urban life on the subcontinent, Abigail McGowan centers domestic space in the narrative of urban expansion to show how both home and city were remade in accordance with modern ideals of sanitation, community, consumption, and national identity. McGowan highlights the gender, caste, and class politics of home ideals, arguing that the urban landscape of Bombay was constructed not just through built form and planning regimes, but through personal experiences and material expressions of domestic space. Rather than telling the story of the city from the outside inward, this book looks from the inside outward, showing how the development of urban space in Bombay and across the modern nation was propelled by the decisions and aspirations of housing reformers, community leaders, state planners, and regular consumers in designing, building, and decorating the ideal Indian home.
