Did You Know?
For Fifty Years, Two Clocks Faced Each Other Across a Bombay Square, 38 Minutes Apart
Until 1955, Bombay kept its own time. Bombay Time ran 38 minutes and 50 seconds behind Indian Standard Time, and which clock you used said something about who you were.
The fight started early. A first attempt to impose a single time on the city failed in 1870. In 1881 the governor, Sir James Fergusson, ordered all government offices onto railway time and invited the public to follow. The city was unimpressed — a rumour went round that the governor's sudden enthusiasm for standardisation had rather a lot to do with him having twice missed trains. The government was forced to restore local time in 1883.
That same year, the senate of Bombay University spent a meeting arguing about what time the university's new 280-foot clock tower should keep. One member's argument was simply that the clock and the tower belonged to Bombay, so they should keep Bombay's time.
Then in 1905–06 the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, imposed Indian Standard Time nationally. This was the same Curzon who had just partitioned Bengal, and in Bombay, refusing his clock became a way of refusing him. Public clock towers were stoned. Office workers and factory workers struck. A petition against IST was signed on the grounds that it was contrary to the principles of modern science.
At the Jacob Sassoon Mill, more than 2,000 workers gathered and wrecked the timekeeper's office, because the new time meant starting work before dawn. The mill gave ground and let them start at 6 a.m. Bombay Time — 6:39 a.m. Standard Time — which is to say, at sunrise.
The clock: and then the city simply ran on both, for fifty years.
Newspapers printed the daily list of engagements with "BT" or "ST" beside each entry, so you knew which time — and which politics — the event belonged to. The clock crowning Victoria Terminus showed Standard Time. Directly across the square, the Municipal Corporation's clocks showed Bombay Time. The two faced each other, thirty-eight minutes apart, for half a century.
Madras Time was phased out. Calcutta Time lasted until 1948. Bombay held out until 1955 — and even afterwards, Parsi fire temples kept using it for rituals, and Mumbaikars went on saying they were "running on Bombay Time" when they turned up late.
Sources
- bombaywiki (CAMP), *Bombay Time* (exactly 38 minutes and 50 seconds; Victoria Terminus and City Hall clocks facing each other)
- Atlas Obscura, *The Long History of 'Bombay Time' and Resistance to Colonial Rule* (1870 and 1881 attempts; Rajabai tower controversy; 2,000+ workers at Jacob Sassoon Factory)
- Shekhar Krishnan, *Bombay Time: Clock Work in the Colonial City, 1870–1955*
- Live History India, *When Setting the Clock Divided the Subcontinent* (BT/ST signs in newspapers; Jim Masselos quote; Calcutta 1948, Bombay 1955)
- Oxford ORA, *The Politics of Time in Colonial Bombay* (Fergusson's rumor about missing the train; backtracking in 1883)