Bandra became a part of Mumbai only in 1950. Prior to that, it was a separate municipality, and before that, till the mid-19th century, a separate island. In the 16th century, the North Konkan coast came under the control of the Portuguese and Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries began to forcibly convert the population to Christianity.When the Portuguese handed over the seven islands of Bombay to the British, Bandra was not part of the deal. And so, Bandra has a slightly different history from Bombay, and that has a part to play in Bandra retaining its Indo-Portuguese Roman Catholic character in spite of wide-scale development. On our #BandraBreeze open-jeep heritage tour, we breeze through five centuries of Bandra’s history in a two-hour ride.
