Porbandar State

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Porbandar State sits on the western edge of the Indian subcontinent, where the Kathiawar peninsula meets the Arabian Sea. It was one of the very few princely states in the British Raj that had its own coastline. That geographic fact shaped everything about it: its capital was a harbour town, its rulers commanded sea trade, and its railway eventually connected it to a wider world. But Porbandar is perhaps best known today for something else entirely. The grandfather, father, and uncle of Mahatma Gandhi all served as Dewan, the chief minister, to the rulers of this small state. The questions this documentary will explore are how Porbandar came to hold such a privileged rank among the dozens of principalities on the Kathiawar peninsula, how its ruling Jethwa dynasty shaped the land over centuries, and what became of it when India's independence ended the era of princely states for good.

• 2. The Jethwa Dynasty

  ›

  Before the harbour town of Porbandar became the capital, the Jethwa rulers held their seat at Shrinagar, and later at Ghumli. Ghumli was eventually lost to a rival clan, the Jadejas, and with it went direct political control over that territory. What the Jethwas could not take back was the stone. The architectural heritage the Jethwas built at Ghumli still stands today, a visible record of a dynasty that shaped the region long before the British Raj formalised its borders. When Porbandar became the centre of Jethwa power, the state earned a rank that set it apart from most of its neighbours. It was designated a First Class Princely State, accorded a thirteen-gun salute, and placed fourth in rank among all the principalities in the Kathiawar Agency. That number, thirteen guns, was not merely ceremonial. The gun-salute system was a precise British protocol for signalling the standing of a ruler, and Porbandar's position near the top of the Kathiawar hierarchy translated into real administrative and judicial autonomy.

• 3. British Protectorate and Agency Rule

  ›

  On the 5th of December 1809, Porbandar State became a British protectorate. That step placed it within a legal framework that preserved the Jethwa rulers on their thrones while bringing the state into Britain's orbit of influence and obligation. Between 1886 and the 15th of September 1900, the state was administered by the Bombay Presidency, one of the major British governing units on the subcontinent. After that period ended, Porbandar was made part of the Kathiawar Agency, the administrative body through which Britain managed the dense cluster of princely states on the Kathiawar peninsula. During the reign of Maharaja Bhavsinhji Madhavsinhji, which ran from 1900 to 1908, the state was formally restored to its position as a First Class state, with full judicial and administrative powers returned to the ruler. That restoration mattered. It was not automatic; it had to be earned back, and Bhavsinhji Madhavsinhji is credited with securing it.

• 4. Railways and Progress

  ›

  In 1888, during the reign of Vikramatji Khimojiraj, Porbandar State launched its own metre-gauge railway, known as the Porbandar State Railway. Building a railway in the late nineteenth century was a significant undertaking for a princely state, and the metre-gauge choice placed it within a common standard used across much of western India. The line eventually outlasted the state itself. After Indian independence, the Porbandar State Railway was absorbed into the Saurashtra Railway, folded into the national network that emerged from the patchwork of regional and princely lines. Natwarsinhji Bhavsinhji, who held the title Maharaja Sir and carried the honour of KCSI, ruled from 1908 to 1948 and was the last of the Jethwa rulers. The source describes him as a successor under whom the state progressed further, though the full story of his four-decade reign ends with an act of accession rather than conquest.

• 5. Gandhi's Family Roots

  ›

  Three generations of the Gandhi family held the post of Dewan to the Rana of Porbandar. Uttamchand Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi's grandfather, served first. Then came Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma's father, and alongside him Tulsidas Gandhi, the Mahatma's uncle. The Dewan was the chief minister of a princely state, managing the day-to-day administration of the ruler's domain. The fact that the post passed through the Gandhi family across multiple generations speaks to the trust the Jethwa rulers placed in them. Mahatma Gandhi himself was born in Porbandar in 1869, the son of a man whose professional life was bound up in the governance of this small coastal state. That origin did not define Gandhi's later path, but it rooted him in a world of Indian statecraft that predated and then coexisted with British rule, a world he would eventually work to transform.

• 6. Merger and Legacy

  ›

  When India gained independence in 1947, Porbandar State, like hundreds of other princely states, faced a fundamental choice about its future. It acceded to the dominion of India. Then, effective from the 15th of February 1948, it was merged into the United State of Kathiawar, a consolidation that gathered many of the peninsula's small states into a single administrative unit. That unit eventually became part of the present-day state of Gujarat. The harbour town that had been the Jethwa capital did not disappear; it remains a city on the Gujarat coast today. The metre-gauge railway built by Vikramatji Khimojiraj in 1888 fed into the national rail network. And the architectural remains the Jethwas left at Ghumli, the old capital they lost to the Jadejas centuries before, still stand as the most durable physical record of a dynasty that once held a thirteen-gun salute and a fourth-place rank among the principalities of Kathiawar.