Antop Hill’s silent story: Peace-ful shrine links Mumbai and China

“While Chinese customs call for visiting our departed loved ones a month after the Chinese New Year, many Chinese in Mumbai also visit the cemetery to pay respects on the News Year Eve after visiting the Kwan Kung temple,” said Steve Yi, a member of Indian Chinese community, whose family settled in Bombay in the 1930s.

The cemetery is cared for by a Muslim family, who have been working at the site for four generations. (Express Photo by Ganesh Shirshekar

It was in 1880 that a land parcel for a Chinese cemetery was allocated, amid rising demand and as a part of the government’s cemetery relocation project.

According to the Gazateer of Bombay City and Island, erstwhile Bombay was home to as many as 305 Chinese persons by the year 1872, accounting for 0.05 per cent of the city’s total population of 6.44 lakh people. It was during the pre-colonial period that the Chinese had first made their inroads into the region, particularly around the port towns of Thane and Kalyan. But their settlements in Bombay began during the colonial era when the Britishers brought them to work for the East India Company.

Bharat Gothoskar, city chronicler and founder of Khaki tours, said that in the early years, large populations of Chinese settled around Mazgaon and the Shuklaji Street — where the first of the city’s Chinese cemeteries were situated.

“Most of the Chinese population was concentrated around the Shuklaji Street, where thriving businesses emerged. Most Chinese worked as dentists, or ran authentic Chinese food shops, worked on the port while the women ran beauty parlours. While the first Chinese cemetery was located around these areas, there came a demand for another location as the city grew,” said Gothoskar.

Amid rising population, the government finally sold the land for a new Chinese cemetery in Antop Hill at the cost of six annas per yard. Six Chinese merchants in Bombay — Yue Lun Ching, Yue Loong Hing, Thow Ving, Quan Lun Yau, Kwong Sang Loong and Nam Lee Wah — facilitated the construction of the compound wall around the ground. While work commenced in November 1889, it was completed by February 1890 under the supervision of Dadabhoy Framji Shroff.

It was in 1880 that a land parcel for a Chinese cemetery was allocated, amid rising demand and as a part of the government’s cemetery relocation project. (Express Photo by Ganesh Shirshekar)

Resting in quietude, today, the cemetery is seperated into two halves by the Shaikh Mistry road running through it.

Chinese burial rites entail burying the body at one site for five years, following which the body is exhumed, bones cleaned and stored in an urn which is then kept in the second half of the cemetery.

Steve Yi, a member of the Maharashtra Chinese Association, explained, “As per our rituals, one portion of the land near the shrine is where the bodies are buried while the other land parcel is where the urns are kept. Since our population in Mumbai is limited, we do not face a space crisis as the urns are small and kept in close proximity.”

The cemetery is cared for by a Muslim family, who have been working at the site for four generations. Samrunnissa Shah, the family’s matriarch who has been working at the Chinese cemetery for the past 70 years, said that it was her father-in-law, Mohammad Hanif, who first started working at the cemetery grounds.

“We do gardening, clean, dig the burial spots as well as work on transferring the urns,” Shah told the Indian Express.
While much around the spot has changed over the decades including the very population of the Chinese community, the cemetery — with its marble stone, trees and centuries old tombstones — stands as a quiet reminder of the city’s often forgotten link with the Chinese.