Through an unknown lens: A new visual project at CSMVS revisits Mumbai’s role in India’s freedom struggle

Updated On: 14 October, 2025 08:59 AM IST | Mumbai | Shriram Iyengar

A visual project at CSMVS shown through the lens of an unknown protagonist, highlights a cataclysmic time when the city played a key role in India’s Independence struggle

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A procession organised by the Bullion market Bombay to condemn the repressive policy. The procession passing the Victoria Terminus. c. 1930–1931. PICS COURTESY/Alkazi Foundation of Arts (afa), Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya

On April 13, 1930, the lanes outside the Bombay Stock Exchange suddenly became trading grounds for a dangerous contraband — salt. The recently-opened exhibition, Disobedient Subjects, at the Mumbai Gallery of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) highlights the acts of citizens that defined civil disobedience in 1930-31.

“We associate the movement quintessentially with Gandhi, but the album [and exhibition] appears to be making a different argument: that the people of Bombay made the movement that in turn made Gandhi globally famous,” shares curator Sumathi Ramaswamy, also co-editor of the title, Photographing Civil Disobedience: Bombay 1930-1931 (Mapin Publishers) that is part of the exhibition.