Reading Between the Signs
Multilingual signs in Mumbai (image: Khorshed Deboo ).
A stroll in the Fort area in the southern part of Mumbai is an exercise in engaging one’s visual, aural and olfactory senses. Your inclination to wander around at will on a weekday is driven by the frenzied pedestrian movement and the onslaught of traffic. This largely commercial district contains banks, law firms, fuss-free lunch establishments, tea stalls, streetside hawkers, shops – from hole-in-the-wall kiranas (grocery shops) to international couture labels – and a few longstanding places of worship that are tucked away in its labyrinthine lanes. It is named after the erstwhile fort walls that were built by the British East India Company in 1716, and demolished during the 1860s. While these ramparts are long gone, the vast swathe where the fort once stood is now occupied by a number of historic buildings in varying architectural styles, as well as landmarks and streets that are often still referred to by the names that existed prior to the formal nomenclature being tinkered with by the city’s municipal authorities over the last few decades.
I have walked through these streets for as long as I have lived in Bombay (as the city was called until 1996, when it was officially changed to “Mumbai”). Over the last three decades, familiar sights have conjured a mental map that is imprinted in my head, while unfamiliar ones await their entrenchment in my mind’s eye. Among the many elements that make up the visual fabric of the cityscape, signage is one that not only serves the dual purpose of communication and publicity, but is also capable of revealing stories and secrets if one peels back the layers. They are a defining part of the city’s character.
While in Fort, stand on the axis of the Horniman Circle Gardens to face a brick-red building that houses the premises of the oldest-running newspaper in Asia, The Mumbai Samachar. Across the building’s facade, “The Bombay Samachar (Pvt.) Ltd.” is rendered in black metal lettering, blending English and Gujarati. Today, this metal signage sits cheek-by-jowl with a hand-painted sign in Marathi, the most widely spoken language in the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. It asserts “मुंबई समाचार” (Mumbai Samachar), written in the Devanagari script that runs from left to right, and which is characterised by long, horizontal strokes at the tops of the letters, usually joined to form a continuous line.
Turn right onto Cawasji Patel Street, punctuated by stationery and Xerox shops, and you arrive at a coral-hued building with wrought-iron railings that houses Lilson Tailors, whose English signage – deft, flat brushstrokes in red – has now made way for a mundane, screen-printed one in Marathi. The old sign in the Roman script still exists, but it is no longer prominent enough rues the store’s proprietor, whom I seem to have awakened from his postprandial torpor with my questions. A few hundred metres away on the corner of Gunbow Street stands the Art Deco-style Hornby View, where Ideal Corner – doling out plates of fragrant mutton sali boti and caramel custard for more than 30 years – occupies the ground level. The Parsi eatery’s frontage has a haphazardly suspended flex banner in Marathi, almost overshadowing the elegantly hand-painted, cursive-lettered English signage underneath. Amble past meandering lanes housing old buildings whose pitched roofs are covered with red Mangalore tiles and you take in the aromas of Kerala-style ghee roast wafting from the unassuming Rahmaniya hotel. Here, the round, smooth-edged flourishes of the ligature-heavy Malayalam signage has been relegated to a corner.
As summer tightened its tentacles over the city earlier this year, a transformation was underway – a number of storefronts across Mumbai did away with their extant signage, replacing it with makeshift signs announcing their names in Marathi. What used to be a visually multilingual urban landscape is now stripped of its diversity. What’s wrong with having signage in Marathi, one may ask; it is the official language of Maharashtra, after all. Moreover, when the city is dealing with deadly potholes, collapsing overbridges, and a lack of potable water and affordable housing, how can one lament the disappearance of aesthetically pleasing signboards?
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In March 2022, the Maharashtra government amended Section 36 (A) of the Maharashtra Shops and Establishments (Regulations of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act. As a result, the use of Marathi-language signboards using the Devanagari script, with a font size no smaller than that of any other language employed in the sign, is now mandatory for all commercial establishments. Those failing to conform, Mumbai’s governing Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) decreed, would be fined a penalty of rupees 1 lakh (roughly £1,000). The amendment applies to every commercial unit in the state, from tiny family-run grocery shops, through to international fashion and luxury heavyweights. While the rule warranting the use of Marathi on signage has been in place since 2017, the March amendment, cleared by the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, added the restriction that the Marathi typeface has to be the most prominent language on all facades. Thereafter, in April this year, the BMC issued a notice that mandated all establishments across the state to change their principal signage to Marathi by 15 May. This move was quickly met by opposition from the traders’ and retailers’ associations in Mumbai, following which the deadline to install the signage was extended twice, first to June and then to September.
Most shop owners felt hamstrung by the decision, a situation not helped by the ambiguity of official communication around the amendment and government threats in the form of hefty penalties. “This thoughtless compulsion has led to the loss of several historic signboards in the city, some of which were multilingual themselves, in terms of the scripts used,” says Simin Patel, city historian and founder of Bombaywalla, a digital platform chronicling Mumbai’s structures. “They reflected the original owners’ and customers’ community base, the areas of specialisation, the period of the shops’ establishment and the typefaces that were then in fashion.” For Patel, the diversity and particularity of neighbourhood signboards – materials and typefaces that have endured for close to a century – are fast disappearing. One can rarely find hand-painted signboards any more, or letters crafted out of wood or metal, but these were once telling as to demographics across the city. “Through the signboards in the locality of Girgaum, for example, the clientele was largely Maharashtrian and Gujarati, whereas in Bhuleshwar and Kalbadevi, there was a predominance of Gujarati and Hindi languages.” Patel says. “In areas such as Colaba, signboards were just in English.”
For a city that has seen waves of migrations over the centuries, Mumbai is bound by – and brimming with – a babel of languages and dialects from across the country, and a potpourri of invented lingos, too. The cosmopolitan nature of the city’s inhabitants means that the social structure of a certain neighbourhood had to be kept in mind while designing signboards, contributing to the larger integration of design within the city. “Lots of old, hand-painted signs in the Roman script had so much character, and have been replaced with poorly designed ones in Marathi,” says Tanya George, a Mumbai-based type designer, typographer and design educator. As part of her work, George leads Typewalks, where locals and tourists alike can sign up for a guided walk of Mumbai’s neighbourhoods, with a focus on acquainting people with the city’s varying signs. “In cases where there were smaller signs in Devanagari, we’ve lost examples of hand-painted solutions that newer designers could learn from. This, in some way, is an irreplaceable resource.” Lokesh Karekar, a visual artist and founder of design and illustration practice Locopopo Studio, thinks otherwise, however. “I don’t think this will affect the tangible heritage of multilingual signboards,” he says. “In fact, it will encourage establishments to use more regional type as signage.”
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Following the amendment, the Federation of Retail Traders Welfare Association (FRWTA) petitioned against it in the Bombay High Court. After the High Court rejected its plea, the association approached the Supreme Court of India. The FRTWA submitted that the adoption of Marathi by the state was for official purposes and that its mandatory usage could not be forced upon individuals. It also stated that since Article 19 of the Constitution of India gives every citizen the right to freedom of expression – in terms of mode and medium – the state could not dictate in what language a signboard must be displayed.
What does the amendment mean for shop owners and the logistical challenges they’ve had to face? Prashant Shirole runs a photocopying shop in the Byculla locale. In business for the last three decades, he got his signage redesigned to Marathi in October. For Shirole, this was a cumbersome, expensive process, exacerbating the fact that businesses are still recovering from losses faced during two years of pandemic-induced lockdowns. He believes that arbitrary decisions by the government have resulted in a template-like emergence of signboards. “I don’t disagree with the new rule, but the government should make it permanent once and for all, instead of being fickle,” he says. “The signage is the face of a business, and the patchwork we’ve done owing to changing deadlines looks shoddy.”
It’s one reaction amongst many, which is something George can attest to. “I’ve spoken to shop owners whose reactions fall across the spectrum – from ‘annoyed that they have to pay for a new sign,’ to ‘indifferent about the old ones,’ to ‘excited about a brand-new sign,’” she tells me. “Mumbai’s constant, dynamic migrant population also means that someone’s loss might be another’s gain.” According to Karekar, however, the current use of flex banners or vinyl text is only temporary. “I think it is a makeshift solution by most shop owners to be safe from the fine,” he says. “It’s transitory and establishments will come up with creative – and hopefully aesthetic – signages.”
By early October, officials from the BMC visited shops across the city to check whether they had installed Marathi signboards, and about 75 per cent had complied, according to a report published in the daily Mid-Day newspaper. As of 4 November, the Supreme Court has restrained the BMC by passing a temporary order stating that no action should be taken against retailers who had failed to put up signboards in Marathi.
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The question of language in Maharashtra politics touches a raw nerve; moreover, this is not the first time that the use of Marathi has been made mandatory by the state. In March 2022, for instance, the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly passed a bill aiming to make the use of Marathi mandatory within the official work of local authorities. In April, Uddhav Thackarey, the former chief minister of the state, said that “[knowledge] of English is important. I don’t hate other languages, but I will not tolerate insult to Marathi. There is no need to hate other languages but there should not be encroachment by other languages too.” A look into Maharashtra’s political and administrative past reveals a history of language- and identity-based politics, using (or rather, misusing) Marathi as a means to consolidate nativist votes. The regional political party Shiv Sena was established in 1966 by Thackarey’s father,[1] driven by the agenda of safeguarding the interests of the sons of the soil, maintaining “Marathi pride” (or an attempt to impose Marathi on the non-Marathi-speaking citizens) by instilling fear among those who wouldn’t comply with their demands through the use of violence, threats or legal action. Shiv Sena first won the BMC elections in 1985 and has held the reins of the civic body for five consecutive terms since 1997. Furthermore, its alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1995 gave the party power in the Maharashtra Assembly. Although it was voted out in 1999, Shiva Sena returned to power in 2014. Over the decades, the party has become notorious for issuing warnings to shops in Mumbai to change their signboards from English to Marathi. Those who didn’t pay heed had their shops vandalised by party workers.
After cracks between Shiv Sena and the BJP began to appear from early 2019, the two formally parted ways in November of that year, with Shiv Sena subsequently forming a coalition government with the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) called the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). Today, even though Shiv Sena divided into two opposing factions in June 2022 after a group of rebels walked out from Thackarey’s cabinet to form a new party and eventually a new government, the Marathi-only diktat hasn’t deterred the current government’s push for Marathi signboards as a bid to consolidate the Marathi vote bank in the run-up to forthcoming municipal elections. Moreover, it is important to note that the amendment was made while Thackarey’s government was still in power.
The design community in India seems to be divided on the amendment. Since Marathi is the local language of Maharashtra, Karekar feels that the shift is more about ensuring the presence of the language of the land, rather than imposing anything upon anyone. “Marathi has a rich cultural legacy, extending to literature and theatre,” he says. “The intention is to celebrate and preserve the Marathi language and Devanagari script, which is otherwise waning from public appearance.”
George, meanwhile, feels conflicted about the revision. “While I dislike the identity politics that lies at the heart of it, the outcome makes spaces more accessible,” she says. “With establishments requiring prominently placed Marathi signs, spaces open up to a wider public. It might take away from a shop owner the choice of what kind of buyer they want to welcome. However, one could also see it as an invitation extended to those with purchasing power, but who might have found English names on storefronts intimidating.” George believes the move will make Mumbai more inclusive for those unable to read whatever languages may have previously made up the urban landscape, given that Marathi is the most widely spoken language. It is also the language used for administrative matters and that which is typically preferred by locals. “It lets delivery persons navigate a little more easily, or helps people pronounce foreign names, given the phonetic nature of Devanagari,” she explains. “While there are numerous benefits, it’s just unfortunate that it’s not those benefits that have driven the amendment. If I had my way, we would have more languages to reflect the diverse backgrounds of the city’s inhabitants, but that’s probably wishful thinking.”
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Typographic decisions such as the curvature of the loop of a letter, the placement of dots and diacritics, or how well the shapes of consonant ligatures render when positioned side by side, all determine what the final outcome of signage in Marathi may be. “I was surprisingly happy to see the new well-executed signages in the Devanagari script, in the case of global brands such as Starbucks, Diesel, Superdry and Hugo Boss,” says Karekar. “It will be interesting to observe how brands adopt the Devanagari type as their main signage.” For Prathamesh Amberkar, however, the third-generation owner of Innova Signage (previously Vijaya Arts) in Fort, the amendment has not particularly translated into a jump in orders. “Even though the municipal authorities keep threatening establishments with fines, they are slow to act upon it,” he says. “Also, the deadline for changing signboards to Marathi has kept getting extended since May, and shop-owners developed a wait-and-watch approach.” Amberkar’s grandfather started the business close to 60 years ago, making hand-painted boards using cut-out letters. “Today, there are plenty of options available in terms of material technology,” Amberkar adds. “A lot of establishments gravitate towards the use of stainless steel or aluminium or even acrylic – they are more durable as opposed to flex or neon-backlit LEDs.” While there are an emerging number of design agencies and independent designers experimenting with Indian letterforms, George feels that the botched-up flex banners have more to do with typesetting technologies that haven’t caught up to support Indian scripts at large. “It’s quite an effort to type in Devanagari and the designer needs to be familiar with the many facets of this process,” she says. “In the past, the job was handled deftly by sign painters who created custom signs using their skills. But since printing on flex is cheaper, and acrylic letters are bound to survive more monsoons than paint on a board ever will, it has become hard to find people who can afford to practise it or want to take it up.” There is, she argues, significant room for greater education. “It would have been wonderful to see training programmes to design signs for Indian scripts go hand in hand with the amendment, or it being tied with a programme benefitting those who might already be practising it,” she says.
At a literature festival held in Mumbai in November 2022, Jerry Pinto – one of my favourite novelists – stated: “At best, we can only negotiate with a city, not necessarily claim it fully.” This perhaps holds true for decisions upheld by government agencies, and in which citizens do not particularly have a say. Reigniting hope for the visual identity of Mumbai may be a far-fetched thought, but documenting its structures and their stories before they come undone is the least we can do. While there is a perceptible loss of older signages, for example, George says that she is grateful for the people and social media accounts who have been documenting them. “My own Typewalks, in some ways, try to build appreciation for signage,” she says, “getting people to notice and appreciate the skill [involved in their creation].”
The temporary signboards may have added to the visual chaos of Mumbai, but do we only really notice things when they’re gone? The older signboards were ubiquitous all this while, hiding in plain sight. “While it’s still early stages, I hope for designers creating identities to think about the Indian language logos – in this case, Marathi – from the get-go rather than it being an afterthought,” George says sanguinely. “I’m hopeful that in the coming years, designs will improve as they will be competing for attention, leading to more readable solutions than the ones we see today.”
1 Uddhav Thackarey has led Shiv Sena since 2004.
Words and Photography Khorshed Deboo
This article was originally published in Design Reviewed #1. To buy the issue, or subscribe to the journal, please visit the online shop.