India Guide
Mumbai
The Dr Bhau Dadji Lad Museum
Address: Byculla-East, central Mumbai
Price: Rs20
Opening time: Daily except Wed 10.30am–4.30pm
The only reason you might wish to venture into the postindustrial wasteland of Byculla would be to visit the Dr Bhau Dadji Lad Museum. When it opened in 1872, the Victoria and Albert Museum, as it was then, was hailed as "one of the greatest boons the British have conferred on India" – an elegant, fashionably decorated edifice in high Palladian style, set amid classically planned botanical gardens (which these days accommodate a rather depressing zoo). A century or more of neglect took its toll, but the building was recently restored to its former glory.
Its collection of lithographs, prints, documents, uniforms and models relating to the development of Bombay don't perhaps quite live up to the promise of their sumptuous Victorian surroundings, but will interest aficionados of colonial history. In the adjacent garden, the carved stone pachyderm after which the Portuguese are said to have named Elephanta Island presides over a collection of forlorn British statues, moved here during Independence beyond the reach of angry mobs.