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According to official Mughal records, Gujarat became a subah (province) of the Mughal empire in 1573 following Akbar’s conquest. Yet it would take two decades before the Mughals would establish a firm hold over the region. Akbar ultimately defeated a coalition of Rajput and Muslim chieftains—assembled around the Gujarati sultan, Muzzaffar III—on the plains of Bhuchar Mori in Kathiawad during the monsoon of 1591. This battle marked the decisive end of the Muzaffarid sultanate that had ruled Gujarat since c. 1407 and established the Mughal empire’s firm footing in the region. Though relatively obscure in mainstream historiography, Bhuchar Mori holds crucial significance in Gujarat’s history, having generated a rich body of retellings—including oral and written accounts as well as memorial sites—across centuries. How do these evolving narratives reflect broader patterns in the construction and mobilisation of historical memory in Gujarat, particularly during moments of political transition?
To address this question, this paper examines a nineteenth-century retelling of the battle. It focuses on how Vibhaji, the ruler of Nawanagar (Jamnagar), deployed Bhuchar Mori’s memory through his commissioned verse-history, Vibhāvilās, and related commemorative works. By analysing these materials alongside modern memorialisation efforts, this paper demonstrates how this historical event has become a malleable resource for negotiating regional identity and political legitimacy.
Aparna Kapadia is Associate Professor of History at Williams College. Her research focuses on early modern and modern South Asia, with particular emphasis on western Indian regional cultures, identities, and power structures. She is the author of In Praise of Kings: Rajputs, Sultans and Poets in Fifteenth-Century Gujarat (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and co-editor of The Idea of Gujarat: History, Ethnography and Text (Orient Blackswan, 2010). Her writing has also appeared in several academic journals including The Medieval History Journal and The Journal of Asian Studies, as well as in her column Off Centre for Scroll.in. She is currently working on a history of women’s leadership and political activism during India’s anticolonial freedom movement through the life and work of the political activist, Kasturba Gandhi (1869-1944), supported by a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award and an upcoming fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. This talk is part of her ongoing research into the evolution and emergence of the region we now think of as Gujarat.
