Aksa Beach

This guide to Aksa Beach in Mumbai traces the Catholic village behind the sand back to Portuguese missionaries who converted the Koli fisherfolk and East Indian farming families here in the 1500s. It follows those communities through British rule, when their mixed identity as Christian yet deeply local people left them in an awkward position, and to the answer some gave in 1887 by calling themselves East Indians. Watch the wooden fishing boats when the afternoon light turns golden, at the far end from the naval base.