- A restored 1939 photo shows Juhu Beach as a wide, clean, and uncrowded shoreline
- A vintage video from 50 years ago depicts calm waves and few visitors at Juhu Beach
- Mumbai Heritage shared the restored image highlighting the beach's historical appearance
A restored photograph from 1939 and a vintage video believed to be about 50 years old have gone viral on social media, offering a rare glimpse of Mumbai's Juhu Beach long before it became one of the city's busiest shorelines. The black-and-white photograph, shared by Mumbai Heritage on X, was digitally restored from damaged archival images. It features a remarkably different Juhu Beach, showing a wide, uncluttered stretch of sand with no food stalls, parked vehicles, plastic waste or dense crowds. The contrast with present-day Juhu is striking.
"Juhu Beach, Mumbai, 1939. Restored from damaged black-and-white photographs," the tweet read.
Adding to the nostalgia, an Instagram page posted a vintage video that appears to date back roughly five decades. The clip shows gentle waves rolling onto broad expanses of golden sand, with only a handful of visitors visible along the shore.
"Fifty years ago, Mumbai's Juhu Beach looked like this. Calm waves, clean shores, and vast stretches of golden sand defined one of the city's most iconic beaches," the video's caption read.
"While large-scale clean-up drives by volunteers, NGOs, and civic authorities have helped improve the beach in recent years, vintage photographs like this serve as a reminder of how different Mumbai's coastline once looked. A glimpse into the past—and a reminder that preserving our beaches is a shared responsibility," the caption added.
Watch the video here:
The posts have sparked a wave of nostalgia among Mumbai residents while also reviving a more serious debate about pollution, urbanisation and the future of the city's coastline.
Recent municipal clean-up drives have highlighted the scale of the problem at Juhu Beach, where large quantities of marine debris are routinely removed during the monsoon season. Many social media users blamed single-use plastics, rapid urban development, rising tourist footfall and inadequate waste disposal for the beach's deteriorating condition.
Others recalled childhood visits when the shoreline was cleaner and the sea appeared less polluted.
One user wrote, "Then came plastic revolution ... Severe single use plastic usage which is not recycled or doesn't degenrate .. people started using and became completely dependent on plastic."
Another commented, "Lived in Juhu when it was like this. Goa beaches slowly but surely heading the Juhu beach way." A third user added, "Population explosion is one of the main reasons."
