The "Native Town", the former "Black Town", was first established as a bazaar area for indigenous merchants and craftsman. Now packed with "chawls", multi-storied apartment blocks with shops on the ground floor, it still shows clear traits of the original spatial grouping in accordance with the occupants' religion, cast/business (Jati) and home countries, which coincided with the segregation principle under the British rule. However, a close look at the overlaid survey data as to the attributes of the present property owners, business owners, their employees and inhabitants of all of the blocks in the two typical quarters of the Town also shows distinct deviation from the original setting. The systems that barely maintain the long standing sub-communities can be concluded to be the remains of the "Jati" system and the unique form of tenure of chawls, but the modern stresses causing changes in property ownership, businesses and the family structure are now undermining the stability of the spatial composition of the Town.
