ABSTRACT
‘Bombay’, a contemporary observer complained to the Bombay Gazette in October 1905, ‘appears to be specially [sic] endowed with supreme ideas of tenderness and mercy for the poor; houses for the poor, low rents for the poor, enjoyment for the poor, sanitation for the poor, low interests for the poor, special legal protection for the poor cultivators ….’ 1 The letter writer’s comments were in response to the controversy that had erupted over the long hours of work in the city’s cotton mills. However, his remarks are interesting in that they point to a new development in public debates over the ‘social question’, namely, the prominent place that were accorded in this period to issues concerning the moral and material ‘uplift’ of the ‘masses’.
