Parel is a suburb of Mumbai. It is also the name of a railway station on the Mumbai suburban railway. Most of the mills in Mumbai used to be in this area till some years ago. Now, most of these mills have shut down.

History

Parel was one of the original seven islands that formed Mumbai. It belonged to the 13th century kingdom of Raja Bhimdev. The name has come from the Parali Vaijanath Mahadev temple, dedicated to Shiva.

When the Portuguese conquered Bombay, they gave the authority of this area to the Jesuit priests, who replaced the Parali Mahadev temple with a church and a convent. They remained with the Jesuits until they were confiscated by the British, when the priests sided with the Sidis during their battle with the British in 1689. In the 1770's, William Hornby, the Governor, shifted his official residence to Parel. This area then became one of the poshest areas of the city. In 1867, tanners and dealers in dry fish were relocated in this area. By the 1870's several cotton mills had been established in the reclaimed lands in Parel(West). Gradually, Parel became very polluted. In 1883 the Governor's wife died of cholera in the Government House. Two years later the Governor's Bungalow was moved to Malabar Point. During the plague epidemics of the 1890's, the old Government House was leased to the newly founded Haffkine Institute. After the plague epidemics, mills proliferated in this area. It became an industrial area and in addition provided space for mill workers. With the gradual decline of the mills in the late twentieth century, this space is being recycled.