Mumbai (formerly Bombay) is a city on the Konkan coast of western India and India’s most populous city. It is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. The so-called Seven Islands of Bombay, which now constitute the southern part of the city of Mumbai, came under Portuguese rule in 1535, and in 1661 were part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza when she married Charles II. The English East India Company had a strong foothold in the city in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1782, the Hornby Vellard project began to reclaim the areas between the islands from the sea; the project was completed in 1845. Already an important port city, Mumbai became one of the largest seaports on the Arabian Sea following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. In the twentieth century, Mumbai was a strong base of Indian Independence.