50 Fun Facts About Gujarat

Which big cat has its only remaining natural home in and around Gir National Park in Gujarat?

The Asiatic lion was down to about a dozen animals by the end of the 19th century, all of them in the Gir Forest, which was then a nawab's private hunting ground.

Which product has been banned from sale across Gujarat ever since the state was created in 1960?

Alcohol has been prohibited ever since Gujarat inherited the ban from the old Bombay State, though bootlegging networks smuggle liquor in from neighbouring states.

The Statue of Unity in Gujarat, the tallest statue in the world, depicts which leader nicknamed the Iron Man of India?

Vallabhbhai Patel earned the nickname for holding the newly independent country together as its first deputy prime minister and home minister. His statue stands 182 metres tall.

Which coastal Gujarat city is the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi and, by tradition, of Krishna's friend Sudama?

Porbandar honours both sons: the Kirti Mandir memorial marks Gandhi's birthplace near the main bazaar, and a temple in the city is one of the few in India dedicated to Sudama.

Which circle dance from Gujarat is performed around a lit earthen pot during the nine nights of Navratri?

Garba takes its name from the Sanskrit word for womb, and the flame glowing inside the pierced pot stands for the soul within it.

The Gujarat city of Surat cuts and polishes about 90 percent of the world's supply of which gemstone?

Diamonds earned Surat the nickname Diamond City of India, and most of the polishing workshops are packed into the city's Varachha area.

During Uttarayan each January, the skies over Ahmedabad and the rest of Gujarat fill with thousands of what?

Kites take over because the festival marks the sun's move into Capricorn, and many households start making or buying theirs several months ahead.

Which dairy cooperative brand, founded at Anand in Gujarat in 1946, drove India's White Revolution in milk production?

Amul is short for Anand Milk Union Limited, and under Verghese Kurien its cooperative model helped make India the world's largest producer of milk.

Which rock singer's family, the Bulsaras, took their surname from the Gujarat town of Bulsar, now called Valsad?

Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar to Indian parents, went to boarding school in India from the age of eight, and later changed his surname by law.

The Siddi community living around Gir in Gujarat descends mainly from people brought centuries ago from which region?

Southeast Africa's Zanj coast was home to the Bantu ancestors of most Siddis, and Gujarat's Siddis still keep a Bantu-rooted music and dance form called Goma or Dhamaal.

Which planned city north of Ahmedabad, laid out by Indian town planners, serves as the capital of Gujarat?

Gandhinagar means Gandhi's city, and it was kept a purely Indian project under planner H. K. Mewada, who had apprenticed with Le Corbusier at Chandigarh.

Mahatma Gandhi's 1930 Salt March from Ahmedabad ended at which coastal village in Gujarat after 24 days on foot?

Dandi lay at the end of a 387-kilometre walk, and when Gandhi broke the salt laws there on 6 April 1930, millions of Indians followed with civil disobedience of their own.

Which Indus Valley site in Gujarat has a rectangular basin often described as one of the world's earliest known docks?

Lothal's basin once held sea water, as marine microfossils and salt crystals found inside it show, though some archaeologists argue it was really an irrigation tank.

Which Gujarat temple, raided by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1026, ranks first among the twelve jyotirlinga shrines of Shiva?

Somnath was destroyed and rebuilt several times over the centuries, and the temple standing today was completed only in May 1951.

Which coastal Gujarat city, where legend says Krishna settled after leaving Mathura, is one of the four Char Dham sites?

Dwarka's Dwarkadhish Temple is dedicated to Krishna and marks the western corner of the Char Dham circuit that Adi Shankaracharya set at the four corners of the country.

On 1 May 1960 the old Bombay State was split along language lines into Gujarat and which other state?

Maharashtra took the Marathi-speaking population, while the Gujarati speakers, including the old princely lands of Baroda, went to the new northern state.

Which future prime minister, born and raised in Vadnagar, served as chief minister of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014?

Narendra Modi, by his own account, sometimes worked as a boy at his father's tea stall in Vadnagar railway station; he left the state's top job to lead the national government.

Ahmedabad's booming cotton textile mills earned Gujarat's largest city a nickname likening it to which English city?

Manchester of India became Ahmedabad's label as its textile industry grew, a nickname it shares with Kanpur.

Which Harappan city on an island in the Great Rann of Kutch became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021?

Dholavira is one of the five largest Harappan sites, and its people survived the desert with a system of channels and massive reservoirs, three of which are now exposed.

Which river rises in the Aravalli Range and flows past Ahmedabad, where Mahatma Gandhi set up an ashram on its bank?

The Sabarmati runs 371 kilometres to the Gulf of Khambhat, and all but 48 of them lie inside Gujarat.

Which river, the longest west-flowing river in India, is held back in Gujarat by the Sardar Sarovar Dam?

The Narmada is called the lifeline of both Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat; Jawaharlal Nehru laid the dam's foundation in 1961, but it was not inaugurated until 2017.

Which city on Gujarat's Gulf of Kutch coast is home to the world's largest oil refinery, owned by Reliance Industries?

Jamnagar was once the capital of the princely state of Nawanagar, and the refinery at nearby Motikhavdi opened in July 1999.

The mud flats of Alang on Gujarat's Gulf of Khambhat host the world's largest yard for which heavy industry?

Ship breaking at Alang takes apart more than a third of the world's retired cargo vessels, which are simply run aground on the flats at high tide.

Which city, the headquarters of Gujarat's Kutch district, lost many lives in the Republic Day earthquake of 2001?

Bhuj, a princely capital since 1549, lost much of its old fort wall in the quake, which killed at least 20,000 people and destroyed about 400,000 buildings.

Which rare animal, called khur in Gujarati, has its last natural refuge around the Little Rann of Kutch?

The Indian wild ass, a subspecies of the onager, has its last refuge in a sanctuary on the salt flats, though it has also been spotted right outside Ahmedabad.

Which spongy Gujarati snack is made by steaming a fermented batter of rice and chickpeas into a soft cake?

Dhokla batter ferments for at least four hours before about 15 minutes of steaming, and some versions swap the chickpeas for pigeon peas or urad beans.

Which Ahmedabad-born physicist is often called the father of India's space programme and helped found IIM Ahmedabad?

Vikram Sarabhai founded the Physical Research Laboratory in his home city in 1947, the place now known as the cradle of space sciences in India.

Diu, an island town off the Kathiawar coast of Gujarat, was held by which European power from 1535 until 1961?

Portugal won its foothold when the Sultan of Gujarat allowed a fort in return for an alliance against the Mughal emperor Humayun; the garrison finally gave in after 48 hours of Indian strikes.

Which other name is used for Kathiawar, the Gujarat peninsula between the Gulf of Kutch and the Gulf of Khambhat?

Saurashtra covers about 61,000 square kilometres and is nearly cut off from the mainland, since salt wastes reach inland from both gulfs and leave only one narrow neck of land.

Which princely state in Gujarat had a nawab who tried to join Pakistan in 1947 before a plebiscite chose India?

Junagadh had no land border with the country its ruler picked, and after he fled to Karachi about 99.95 percent of voters in the plebiscite chose India.

Which Maratha dynasty ruled the princely state of Baroda and built the vast Lakshmi Vilas Palace in Vadodara?

The Gaekwad palace sits in a complex of over 500 acres and counts as the world's largest private residence; Sayajirao III, who commissioned it in 1878, named it after his first wife.

Which community keeps its most sacred fire temple in India at Udvada in Gujarat, near its first settlement at Sanjan?

Parsis descend from Zoroastrian refugees who left Iran after the Arab conquest, and the flame at Udvada is the oldest continuously burning temple fire in India.

The hilltop complex of almost 900 temples and shrines at Palitana in Gujarat is a pilgrimage centre of which religion?

Jainism treats the hilltop as an abode for the divine, so nobody may stay there overnight, not even the priests, and pilgrims reach it by climbing around 3,500 stone steps.

Which sacred Gujarat mountain, where pilgrims climb some 10,000 steps, bears rock edicts of Emperor Ashoka?

Girnar's fourteen edicts, cut into a large boulder around 250 BCE, now sit inside a small building, and a ropeway 2,320 metres long spares visitors part of the climb.

Which Indian first-class championship is named after a ruler of Gujarat's Nawanagar who batted for England in the 1890s?

The Ranji Trophy was renamed in its second season after Ranjitsinhji, the first Indian to play at international level, at the suggestion of the Maharaja of Patiala, who donated the cup.

Which businessman, born in Chorwad in Gujarat, came home from Aden in 1958 and founded Reliance Industries?

Dhirubhai Ambani, a village schoolteacher's son, began in the textile market, and he is said to have once sold petrol at a gas station.

Which Gujarati winter dish of mixed vegetables takes its name from being cooked upside down in buried earthen pots?

Undhiyu comes from the Gujarati word undhu, meaning upside-down, because the pots are fired from above; it is a seasonal speciality of Surat.

Which prized double-ikat silk sari, its warp and weft both dyed before weaving, is made at Patan in Gujarat?

Patola weaving is believed to have reached Patan in the 12th century with Salvi silk weavers seeking the patronage of the Chaulukya kings, who wore the cloth on special occasions.

Which village in Gujarat's Mehsana district holds an 11th-century temple to the sun god Surya on the Pushpavati River?

Modhera's temple, raised in the reign of the Chaulukya king Bhima I, is no longer used for worship and is kept as a protected monument by the Archaeological Survey of India.

Which ruined 16th-century capital of Gujarat shares a UNESCO World Heritage park, listed in 2004, with Pavagadh hill?

Champaner's park also takes in Chalcolithic sites and the hill fortress of an early Hindu capital, along with monuments that are still part of living tradition.

Which 15th-century poet-saint, honoured as the first poet of Gujarati, composed Mahatma Gandhi's favourite hymn?

Narsinh Mehta wrote the hymn Vaishnava Jana To, which freedom fighters took up across India, and he stood out among the Nagar Brahmins of his day for mixing with people of every caste.

Which American architect designed the heritage campus of IIM Ahmedabad, built between 1962 and 1974?

Louis Kahn was brought in through the architect B. V. Doshi after the institute's founders sought a building on the scale of Le Corbusier's work elsewhere in the city.

Which low-priced car, launched at one lakh rupees, had its factory relocated from Singur to Sanand in Gujarat?

The Tata Nano never hit its sales targets, hurt by the delays of that move and by early cases of cars catching fire, and the Sanand plant went on to build other hatchbacks.

Which gateway did the Mughal emperor Akbar raise at his capital to celebrate conquering Gujarat in 1573?

Buland Darwaza, often described as one of the highest gateways in the world, was not in the original plan of the mosque it fronts, and a Persian inscription on it records the victory.

Raiyoli village near Balasinor in Gujarat is famous for a park preserving the fossils of which prehistoric animals?

Dinosaurs left eggs here as well as bones: in 1981 quarry workers handed geologists odd limestone lumps that proved to be eggs, and the site later yielded the predator Rajasaurus.

Gujarati script is a variant of which script, having dropped the horizontal line that runs above the letters?

Devanagari stayed the script of literature and scholarship until the 19th century, while its line-free offshoot was used mainly for writing letters and keeping accounts.

The Gulf of Kutch and the Gulf of Khambhat, the two great inlets of the Gujarat coast, both open into which sea?

The Arabian Sea made these shores rich: the island town of Diu, off the southern coast, was long an important port on its trade routes.

Which astronaut, whose father emigrated from Jhulasan in Gujarat, visited the ancestral village in September 2007?

Sunita Williams is the daughter of a neuroanatomist who left Gujarat for medical training in Ohio, and she made nine spacewalks for NASA.

Which port on the Gulf of Kutch hosts the first special economic zone set up in India and in Asia?

Kandla's zone covers more than 310 hectares and began as India's first export processing zone; the port is known as a hub for exporting grain and importing oil.

Which new business district near Gujarat's capital was set up as India's first International Financial Services Centre?

GIFT City stands for Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, and it also hosts two international stock exchanges and India's first international bullion exchange.