The-Polyester-Prince

and tigers. Massive double doors, twelve-paneled, with heavy iron studs, open
tantalisingly on to huge inner courtyards.
A blood-drenched history and complicated mythology are attached to the landmarks
and constructions of Kathiawar. On the coast to its west, at Dwarka, is the place
where Lord Krishna died. To the south, the temple of the moon at Somnath is a
centre for Hindu pilgrims from all over India. In the steep Girnar hills above the city
of Junagadh, long staircases take pilgrims to Jain temples dating back to the 3rd
century BC.
Looming over Junagadh city, the fortified rock-citadel of Uparkot has inscriptions and
cave-sculptures from the time of the 3rd century BC ruler Ashoka. The city was an
important centre for Hindu rulers of Gujarat in the first millennium. Then, starting
with the Afghan warlord Mahmud of Ghazni, who invaded in 1024 AD and pillaged
Somnath, Junagadh suffered four centuries of sackings. Mughal rule gave it some
stability with Muslim rulers controlling its largely Hindu population. Both its rulers
and its people were passive onlookers in the contest for India’s trade among the
English, Dutch and Portuguese, whose galleons fought vicious battles off the Gujarat
coast. A five-metre long cannon broods over the town from the ramparts, a relic of
an unsuccessful attack on the Portuguese trading post at Diu, on the coast southeast
of Junagadh, by the feet of Sultan Sulaiman the Magnificent of Turkey in the 15th
century.
At night, seen from the coastline at the south of Junagadh, processions of navigation
lights travel left and right along the horizon. The seaborne traffic between the west
coast of India and the Arabian ports goes on as it has for millennia, ever more
intense.
Gujarat was the trading hub of ancient India, where Indian cottons and silks were
traded to Arabs and later the first English East India Company in return for silver,
gold, incense and coffee from the Red Sea port of Mecca. Up until the early 15th
century, Chinese junks had also come to western India. Later India and India-based
European traders became the trade intermediaries between the Arab and Chinese
spheres. The Gujaratis were prominent in this pre-colonial Indian Ocean trading
network, with the wealth of India in its cloths, indigo, opium and spices merchandise.
The small ports of Kathiawar took part in this trade. Diu handled much of Gujarat’s
trade with Aden in the west and Malacca in the cast. Gold, silver, quicksilver,
vermilion, copper and woollen cloth would be exchanged for Indian gold and silver
embroideries and brocades and for cotton muslins of a fineness expressed by trade
terms such as abrawan (running water), baft hava (woven air) or shabnam (evening
dew).
Later of course the East India Company grabbed its monopolies in opium, tea, indigo
and spices in a three-way trade equation between China, India and Europe, topped
up later by the British Empire with gold bullion from Britain’s new colonies in South
Africa and Australia at the southern corners of the Indian Ocean. Indian
entrepreneurs-in Calcutta the Marwari traders and moneylenders originally from
Rajasthan, in Bombay the Parsis (Zoroastrians originally from Persia)-began moving
into large-scale industrial production late in the 19th century.
Smaller traders also took advantage of Pax Britannica by taking steamer passages to
all corners of the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia-no passports were needed-and
opening small stores and service stations. Most were from Gujarat; a large