Codes of Contention: Building Regulations in Colonial Bombay, 1870-1912 SUKRITI ISSAR * Abstract This paper investigates the contentious institutionalization of building codes in colonial Bombay. Based on original archival research, the paper demon- strates that building codes were inflected with a discourse of moral regulation that masked the material interests of the state. Resistance to these regulations came from many quarters; conflicts within the state, public opinion expressed in the press, and political strategizing of residents and landowners in the public sphere. The paper argues for greater attention to the historically variable interconnections between power and resistance in specific empirical contexts. ***** A person who shall erect a new building which abuts on a street of less than fifty feet … or who shall after erection of such a building make any addition thereto shall not, with- out the written permission of the Commissioner, erect such building or raise the same by means of any such addition to a greater height than one and a half times the width between the point at which such building approaches nearest to the street and the opposite side of such street… 1 In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the colonial state in Bombay (now, Mumbai) institutionalized building codes and regulations in response to the emerging global consensus that over- crowding, lack of circulation of light and air, and poor drainage were public health catastrophes (Beverley 2011; Dossal 1991; Kidambi 2004). This paper traces the contentious institutionalization of build- ing codes and related regulations. As the opening quote shows, build- ing codes were minute mechanisms to regulate space and built form. 2 Resistance to these regulations came from many quarters; conflicts within the state, public opinion expressed in the press, and political strategizing of residents and landowners in the public sphere. Resi- dents challenged the knowledge that undergirded these regulations. They protested, petitioned, and recruited lawyers and health experts (or ‘professional gentlemen’) to provide ‘medical certificates’ and to give testimony in their favor. 3 In the process, they exposed the state’s categories and knowledge as inherently political and socially constructed. South Asian colonial cities were spaces of new forms of social control and autonomy (Beverley 2011). The new forms of social control * Sukriti Issar is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Sciences Po, Observatoire Sociologique du Changement (OSC), FNSP, 750006, Paris, France, and may be contacted at sukriti.issar@sciencespo.fr © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. •• No. •• •• (2015) DOI: 10.1111/johs.12113