The area around Lower Parel and Parel was the heartland of Bombay's cotton textile industry from the late 19th century until the Great Textile Strike of 1982–83, when over 200,000 millworkers walked out and the industry began its long decline. The abandoned mills have been converted into corporate offices, malls, and hotels, but the memory of the mill districts is preserved in the Girni Kamgar Museum (Mill Workers' Museum) and in the surviving architecture of the mill compounds.
The museum documents the lives and labour struggles of the textile workers whose strike fundamentally changed Bombay's social geography. The surrounding area still has several working-class residential enclaves (chawls) that give a tangible sense of the mill communities. A walking tour through the former industrial zone — taking in the surviving mill chimneys, converted buildings, and old chawls — is one of the most historically revealing ways to understand modern Mumbai.