History of Gujarat

The history of Gujarat began with Stone Age settlements followed by Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlements like Indus Valley civilisation.^[1] Gujarat's coastal cities, chiefly Bharuch, served as ports and trading centers in the Nanda, Maurya, Satavahana and Gupta empires as well as during the Western Kshatrapas period. After the fall of the Gupta empire in the 6th century, Gujarat flourished as an independent Hindu-Buddhist state. The Maitraka dynasty, descended from a Gupta general, ruled from the 6th to the 8th centuries from their capital at Vallabhi, although they were ruled briefly by Harsha during the 7th century. The Arab rulers of Sindh sacked Vallabhi in 770, bringing the Maitraka dynasty to an end. The Gurjara-Pratihara Empire ruled Gujarat after from the 8th to 10th centuries. While the region also came under the control of the Rashtrakuta Empire. In 775 the first Parsi (Zoroastrian) refugees arrived in Gujarat from Greater Iran.^[2]

During the 10th century, the native Chaulukya dynasty came to power. From 1297 to 1300, Alauddin Khalji, the Turkic Sultan of Delhi, destroyed Anhilwara and incorporated Gujarat into the Delhi Sultanate. After Timur's sacking of Delhi at the end of the 14th century weakened the Sultanate, Gujarat's governor Zafar Khan Muzaffar asserted his independence and established the Gujarat Sultanate; his son, Sultan Ahmad Shah I (ruled 1411 to 1442), restructured Ahmedabad as the capital. In the early 16th century the Rana Sanga invasion of Gujarat weakened the Sultanate's power as he annexed northern Gujarat and appointed his vassal to rule there, however after his death, the Sultan of Gujarat recovered the kingdom and even sacked Chittor Fort in 1535.^[3] The Sultanate of Gujarat remained independent until 1576, when the Mughal emperor Akbar conquered and annexed it to the Mughal Empire as a province. Surat had become the prominent and main port of India during Mughal rule.

Later in the 18th century, Gujarat came under control of the Maratha Empire who dominated the politics of India. The British East India Company wrested control of much of Gujarat from the Marathas during the Second Anglo-Maratha War. Many local rulers, notably the Gaekwads of Baroda, made a separate peace with the British and acknowledged British sovereignty in return for retaining local self-rule. Gujarat was placed under the political authority of the Bombay Presidency, with the exception of Baroda state, which had a direct relationship with the Governor-General of India. From 1818 to 1947, most of present-day Gujarat, including Kathiawar, Kutch, and northern and eastern Gujarat were divided into hundreds of princely states, but several districts in central and southern Gujarat were ruled directly by British officials. Mahatma Gandhi, considered India's "father of the nation", was a Gujarati who led the Indian Independence Movement against British colonial rule.^[4]

Gujarat was formed by splitting Bombay state in 1960 on linguistic lines. From 1960 to 1995, the Indian National Congress retained power in the Gujarat Legislative Assembly while other political parties ruled for incomplete terms in the 1970s and 1990. The Bharatiya Janata Party has been in power since 1998.