Through the twentieth century, Bombay exerted a pull in the Indian imaginary as the locus of a definitive modernity. And if the stream of labor migrants that continues to pour, unabated, into the nation's largest city is any indication, its mid-1990s rebranding as Mumbai has marked no diminution in the intensity of that appeal—notwithstanding the identity politics behind the name change, a demagogic nativist populism that famously boiled over in the Shiv Sena-orchestrated anti-Muslim “riots” of 1992–93. Yet the character of the modernity the image of the city evokes has indeed changed. To track the contours of that image over the decades—and to relate them to events on local, national, and transnational levels—is a multifaceted challenge for a historian. Gyan Prakash has reached for the prize with a generous grasp and a sure touch, and Mumbai Fables is an ambitious and rewarding book.
In designating Mumbai as an “enchanted city,”...
