The making of regional and national imaginaries in colonial South Asia and indigenous elites’ role in this process are well documented. Less clearly understood are the cultural and social elements that were subordinated to the regional formations that prevailed. By focusing on the travel writings of Jhaverchand Meghani (1896–1947), a prominent intellectual and litterateur from western India, this article illustrates the internal configurations and contestations that underpinned the imaginings of regions in South Asia. Notably, Meghani saw the cultural preservation of Saurashtra as his life's mission. This article is the first to engage in a close reading of his travelogues, situating them in the wider context of emergent ideas of Gujarat in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that by showcasing Saurashtra's particular folk and oral traditions, Meghani distinguished himself from the other regionalists and thus also sought to prevent Saurashtra's complete subsumption within the modern state of Gujarat.

This essay examines relations between eastern Africa and western India in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in respect to two related sets of problems: the changing regimes of commercial circulation, and more particularly the evolution of patterns of human movement, notably via the slave trade from Ethiopia and the Swahili coast to Gujarat and the Deccan. It argues that over the course of the sixteenth century, commercial relations between Deccan ports such as Goa and Chaul, and the Swahili coast, came to be strengthened through the intervention of the Portuguese and their military-commercial system. At the same time, large numbers of African slaves reached the Muslim states in India, especially in the period after 1530, where they played a significant role as military specialists, and eventually as elite political and cultural actors. The shifting geographical dimensions of the African presence in India are emphasized, beginning in western Gujarat and winding up in the Deccan Sultanates. This contrasts markedly with the African experience elsewhere, where the meaning and institutional context of slavery were quite different.

The opisthobranch gastropod Hydatina physis (Linnaeus, 1758) is recorded from the north-west coast of India, off Veraval, Gujarat. A literature review on the distribution of this species revealed that this is the first report of H. physis from Indian waters since 1877 when a specimen collected from Chennai along the east coast of India and deposited in the Australian Museum was later identified to be H. physis. A note on the morphological features of this specimen is detailed in the present paper.

Leptodius affinis (De Haan, 1835), belonging to the family Xanthidae, is reported for the first time from Gujarat on the western coast of India. The identification of this species is difficult as it is very morphologically similar to another closely related species, Leptodius exaratus (H. Milne Edwards, 1834). Leptodius exaratus is commonly observed in the rocky intertidal areas of the western coast of India. The carapace characters of both species are very similar; however, the morphology of the first male gonopod is the most important and reliable feature for distinguishing these two species. Recent work on these species indicated that Leptodius exaratus could be found in the western Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, whereas Leptodius affinis occurs in waters ranging from the eastern Indian Ocean to the central Pacific Ocean. The present study reports the occurrence of Leptodius affinis on the western side of the Indian Ocean.

Heteropanope glabra Stimpson, 1858 belonging to family Pilumnidae is reported for the first time from the mangrove mudflats of India. The identification of the species is difficult because the species shares similar morphological characters with other closely related species like Benthopanope indica (De Man, 1887). Studies in the past have reported the presence of H. glabra from coastal areas of Burma to Japan. The present study reports the presence of H. glabra on the western coast of India, which lies outside the old distribution range of the species.

The sandbar shark, Carcharhinus plumbeus, is a common coastal shark in the regions of the world where it occurs. Here, the first documented record of the sandbar shark is reported from north-western Indian waters, off the coast of Gujarat. Two specimens, one male and one female, were recorded and landed by a trawl vessel in Porbandar on 23 October 2014, measuring 610 and 760 mm in total length, respectively. This occurrence represents the first confirmed record of C. plumbeus in both western and eastern Indian waters.

One female specimen of blue-spotted stingray, Neotrygon kuhlii was collected from a single day trawl catch along with other species of rays from the Saurashtra coast of Gujarat, India. The present paper describes the first record of the blue-spotted stingray from the State of Gujarat, thereby adding another species to the total recorded species list from the area.

One female specimen of Torpedo sinuspersici was collected from the trawl catch along the Saurashtra coast of Junagadh district, Gujarat, India. Although a total 486 species of marine fish have been identified so far from the State, the present paper describes the first record of T. sinuspersici from the coast of Gujarat State of India.

Since the sack of Somnath by Maḥmūd of Ghazna in 1025–26, Somnath has been a byword for religious orthodoxy, intolerance and conflict between Muslims and Hindus. Yet looking further than Maḥmūd's greed for the temple's gold and later the Delhi sultans' appetite for territory, Somnath and most other towns of Saurashtra had long-established settlements of Muslims engaged in international maritime trade. The settlers, while adhering to their own values, respected their hosts and their traditions and enjoyed the support of the local rajas. It is only in recent years that Hindu nationalist parties have revived the story of Maḥmūd to evoke resentment against the era of Muslim domination, with the aim of inducing communal tensions and gaining political power. The inscriptions and many mosques and Muslim shrines in this Hindu holy city and its vicinity bear witness to the long history of harmonious co-existence between Hindus and Muslims. This paper explores the Muslim culture of Somnath by studying its major mosques. Through an analytic exploration of the typology of the mosques of Saurashtra, the paper demonstrates that while the old centres of power in Gujarat lay outside Saurashtra it is in Somnath and its neighbouring towns that numerous mosques dating from prior to the sultanate of Gujarat still stand. These monuments help illuminate our understanding of early Muslim architecture in Gujarat and its aesthetic evolution from the time of the peaceful maritime settlements to the establishment of the Gujarat Sultanate.

The authors report a reconstruction of the palaeogeography around the Harappan town of Lothal, major port of the Indus civilisation, using multispectral satellite imagery and environmental analysis. Key results include the identification of a broad tidally influenced palaeochannel adjoining the western part of Lothal and a former estuary towards the east. Micropalaeontological analyses show that Lothal developed over a tidal salt marsh and was subsequently left high and dry as the sea level dropped.