Varsha Patel

Memories, Royal Ports and Ruins of Sailing Boats: Sediments of Maritime Routes along the Bhāvnagar Coast, Western India, 1900-2015

Drawing upon fieldwork and archival research, my research chronicles the decline of maritime trade along the coast of the former Princely state of Bhāvnagar (1723 - 1948) in Western India between 1900 and 2015. In doing so, it argues that contrary to the assumption of an integrated Indian Ocean World, the Bhāvnagar coast is not entirely oriented towards the Indian Ocean. In contrast to scholars who show how smaller ports link up with the networks of larger ports, I demonstrate that coastal and trans-regional maritime routes were not always connected. An examination of the decline of maritime trade along the Bhāvnagar coast shows how ruination of port infrastructure, transformations in livelihoods, individual and collective identities, the legacy of ideas of modernity and geography contributed to the incorporation of port towns and littoral settlements into a society that is primarily connected by land since the 1960s. These findings from coastal Gujarāt that formed a central node in Indian Ocean trading networks (till at least 1780), enable me to challenge the assumption that the entire Indian Ocean rim is oriented towards the Ocean, forming a single, interconnected zone that was glued together by port cities. I suggest that constellations comprising of definite maritime routes, infrastructure, specific commodities, and littoral settlements together with the imaginations and perceptions of peoples who were involved in maritime trade and who adapted to its decline can form an alternative way for understanding the degree of a coast’s maritime orientation at a particular point of time.

For reconstructing the past, I examine sediments related to different distances of maritime routes that comprise of the memories of different groups of people associated with maritime trade and perceptions of ruins such as those of boats and jetties. I examine the meanings of these sediments that relate to the heritage of a princely past, modernity, infrastructure and belonging to a place etc., for the people of contemporary Bhāvnagar. Consequently, my research brings out the parameters of Indian Ocean studies and connected histories approaches that emphasize trans‐regional flows. It also raises questions about the comparative approach that contrasts bounded cultural wholes such as civilizations which are reflected in studies on Western India and asserts that neither approach is entirely suitable for an analysis of the Bhāvnagar coast. The work initiates a conversation between studies of the Indian Ocean, Gujarāt in Western India and Princely India.