Gujarat in the context of Alcohol prohibition in India

Islam is India's second-largest religion, with 14.2% of the country's population, or approximately 172.2 million people, identifying as adherents of Islam in a 2011 census. India has the third-largest number of Muslims in the world. Most of India's Muslims are Sunni, with Shia making up around 15% of the Muslim population.

Islam first spread in southern Indian communities along the Arab coastal trade routes in Gujarat and in Malabar Coast shortly after the religion emerged in the Arabian Peninsula. Later, Islam arrived in the northern inland of Indian subcontinent in the 7th century when the Arabs invaded and conquered Sindh. It arrived in Punjab and North India in the 12th century via the Ghaznavids and Ghurids conquest and has since become a part of India's religious and cultural heritage. The Barwada Mosque in Ghogha, Gujarat built before 623 CE, Cheraman Juma Mosque (629 CE) in Methala, Kerala and Palaiya Jumma Palli (or The Old Jumma Masjid, 628–630 CE) in Kilakarai, Tamil Nadu are three of the first mosques in India which were built by seafaring Arab merchants. According to the legend of Cheraman Perumals, the first Indian mosque was built in 624 CE at Kodungallur in present-day Kerala with the mandate of the last ruler (the Tajudeen Cheraman Perumal) of the Chera dynasty, who converted to Islam during the lifetime of the Islamic prophet Muhammad (c. 570–632). Similarly, Tamil Muslims on the eastern coasts also claim that they converted to Islam in Muhammad's lifetime. The local mosques date to the early 700s.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, thinker, anti-colonial activist, and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule. He inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (from Sanskrit, meaning great-souled, or venerable), first applied to him in South Africa in 1914, is used worldwide.

Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, Gandhi was trained in the law at the Inner Temple in London and was called to the bar at the age of 22. After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to live in South Africa for the next 21 years. Here, Gandhi raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against discrimination and excessive land tax.

Northwest India is a loosely defined region of India. In modern-day, it consists of north-western states of the Republic of India. In historical contexts, it refers to the northwestern Indian subcontinent (including modern-day Pakistan).

In contemporary definition, it generally includes the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan Uttarakhand, and often Uttar Pradesh, along with the union territories of Chandigarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, and the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Gujarat, a western coastal state, is occasionally included as well. The mountainous upper portion of Northwest India consists of the Western Himalayas, while the flat lower portion consists of the middle portion of the Indo-Gangetic plains and the Thar Desert.

Sir Creek (/sər ˈkrik/ sər KREEK), originally Ban Ganga, is a 96 km (60 mi) tidal estuary in the uninhabited marshlands of the Indus River Delta on the border between India and Pakistan. The creek flows into the Arabian Sea and separates Gujarat state in India from Sindh province in Pakistan. The long-standing India-Pakistan Sir Creek border dispute stems from the demarcation "from the mouth of Sir Creek to the top of Sir Creek, and from the top of Sir Creek eastward to a point on the line designated on the Western Terminus". From this point onward, the boundary is unambiguously fixed as defined by the Tribunal Award of 1968.

Modern Standard Hindi (आधुनिक मानक हिन्दी, Hunterian: Ādhunik Mānak Hindī), commonly referred to as Hindi, is an Indo-Aryan language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of the Government of India, and is the lingua franca of most of the country. It is also an official language in the Pacific nation of Fiji.

Hindi is an official language in ten states (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and six union territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir) and an additional official language in the state of West Bengal. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.

An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas and petroleum naphtha. Petrochemical feedstock like ethylene and propylene can also be produced directly by cracking crude oil without the need of using refined products of crude oil such as naphtha. The crude oil feedstock has typically been processed by an oil production plant. There is usually an oil depot at or near an oil refinery for the storage of incoming crude oil feedstock as well as bulk liquid products. In 2020, the total capacity of global refineries for crude oil was about 101.2 million barrels per day.

Oil refineries are typically large, sprawling industrial complexes with extensive piping running throughout, carrying streams of fluids between large chemical processing units, such as distillation columns. In many ways, oil refineries use many different technologies and can be thought of as types of chemical plants. Since December 2008, the world's largest oil refinery has been the Jamnagar Refinery owned by Reliance Industries, located in Gujarat, India, with a processing capacity of 1.24 million barrels (197,000 m) per day.

Chandragupta Maurya (reigned c. 320 BCE – c. 298 BCE) was the founder and the first emperor of the Maurya Empire, based in Magadha (present-day Bihar) in the Indian subcontinent.

His rise to power began in the period of unrest and local warfare that arose after Alexander the Great's Indian campaign and early death in 323 BCE, although the exact chronology and sequence of events remains subject to debate among historians. He started a war against the unpopular Nanda dynasty in Magadha on the Ganges Valley, defeated them and established his own dynasty. In addition, he raised an army to resist the Greeks, defeated them, and took control of the eastern Indus Valley. His conquest of Magadha is generally dated to c. 322–319 BCE, and his expansion to Punjab subsequently at c. 317–312 BCE, but some scholars have speculated that he might have initially consolidated his power base in Punjab, before conquering Magadha; an alternative chronology places these events all in the period c. 311–305 BCE. According to the play Mudrarakshasa, Chandragupta was assisted by his mentor Chanakya, who later became his minister. He expanded his reach subsequently into parts of the western Indus Valley and possibly eastern Afghanistan through a dynastic marriage alliance with Seleucus I Nicator c. 305–303 BCE. His empire also included Gujarat and a geographically extensive network of cities and trade-routes.

Apollodotus I (Greek: Ἀπολλόδοτος Α΄ ὁ Σωτήρ, Apollódotos ho Sōtḗr, "Apollodotus the Saviour"), known in Indian sources as Apaladata, was an Indo-Greek king from 180 BC to 160 BC, or between 174 and 165 BC (first dating by Osmund Bopearachchi and R. C. Senior, second dating by Boperachchi) who ruled the western and southern parts of the Indo-Greek kingdom, from Taxila in the Punjab region to the areas of Sindh and possibly Gujarat.

In Jainism, a Tirthankara (IAST: tīrthaṅkara; lit. 'ford-maker') is a saviour and supreme preacher of the dharma (righteous path). The word tirthankara signifies the founder of a tirtha, a fordable passage across saṃsāra, the sea of interminable birth and death. According to Jains, tirthankaras are the supreme preachers of dharma, who have conquered saṃsāra on their own and made a path for others to follow. After understanding the true nature of the self or soul, the Tīrthaṅkara attains kevala jnana (omniscience). A Tirthankara provides a bridge for others to follow them from saṃsāra to moksha (liberation).

In Jain cosmology, the wheel of time is divided into two halves, Utsarpiṇī, the ascending time cycle, and avasarpiṇī, the descending time cycle (said to be current now). In each half of the cycle, exactly 24 tirthankaras grace this part of the universe. There have been infinitely many tirthankaras in the past. The first tirthankara in the present cycle (Hunda Avsarpini) was Rishabhanatha, who is credited with formulating and organising humans to live in a society harmoniously. The 24th and last tirthankara of the present half-cycle was Mahavira (599 BC–527 BC). History records the existence of Mahavira and his predecessor, Parshvanatha, the 23rd tirthankara.

A Jain temple, Derasar (Gujarati: દેરાસર) or Basadi (Kannada: ಬಸದಿ), is the place of worship for Jains, the followers of Jainism. Jain architecture is essentially restricted to temples and monasteries, and Jain buildings generally reflect the prevailing style of the place and time they were built.

Jain temple architecture is generally close to Hindu temple architecture, and in ancient times Buddhist architecture. Normally the same builders and carvers worked for all religions, and regional and periodic styles are generally similar. For over 1,000 years, the basic layout of a Hindu or most Jain temples has consisted of a small garbhagriha or sanctuary for the main murti or idol, over which the high superstructure rises, then one or more larger mandapa halls.

The Parsis or Parsees (/ˈpɑːrsiz/) are a Zoroastrian ethnic group in the Indian subcontinent. They are descended from Persian refugees who migrated to the Indian subcontinent during and after the Arab-Islamic conquest of Iran in the 7th century, when Zoroastrians were persecuted by the early Muslims. Representing the elder of the Indian subcontinent's two Zoroastrian communities, the Parsi people are culturally, linguistically, and socially distinct from the Iranis, whose Zoroastrian ancestors migrated to British-ruled India from Qajar-era Iran. The word Parsi is derived from the Persian language, and literally translates to Persian (پارسی, Pārsi).

According to the 16th-century Parsi epic Qissa-i Sanjan, fleeing persecution, the Zarthushti (Zoroastrian) Persians, citizens of the Sassanian empire sought refuge in the Indian subcontinent. This migration from different parts of the Sassanian empire continued between the 8th century and the 10th century. The earliest of these migrants settled among the Hindus of present-day Gujarat after being granted refuge by Rajput King Jadhav Rana, the king of Sanjan.

A tribal chief, chieftain, or headman is a leader of a tribal society or chiefdom.

The Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent mainly took place between the 13th and the 18th centuries, establishing the Indo-Muslim period. Earlier Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent include the invasions which started in the northwestern Indian subcontinent (modern-day Pakistan), especially the Umayyad campaigns in India. Later during the 8th century, Mahmud of Ghazni, sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire, invaded vast parts of Punjab and Gujarat during the 11th century. After the capture of Lahore and the end of the Ghaznavids, the Ghurid ruler Muhammad of Ghor laid the foundation of Muslim rule in India in 1192. In 1202, Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji led the Muslim conquest of Bengal, marking the easternmost expansion of Islam at the time.

The Ghurid Empire soon evolved into the Delhi Sultanate in 1206, ruled by Qutb ud-Din Aibak, the founder of the Mamluk dynasty. With the Delhi Sultanate established, Islam was spread across most parts of the Indian subcontinent. In the 14th century, the Khalji dynasty under Alauddin Khalji, extended Muslim rule southwards to Gujarat, Rajasthan, and the Deccan. The successor Tughlaq dynasty temporarily expanded its territorial reach to Tamil Nadu. The disintegration of the Delhi Sultanate, capped by Timur's invasion in 1398, caused several Muslim sultanates and dynasties to emerge across the Indian subcontinent, such as the Gujarat Sultanate, Malwa Sultanate, Bahmani Sultanate, Jaunpur Sultanate, Madurai Sultanate, and the Bengal Sultanate. Some of these, however, were followed by Hindu reconquests and resistance from the native powers and states, such as the Telugu Nayakas, Vijayanagara, and Rajput states under the Kingdom of Mewar.

Sindh (/ˈsɪnd/ SIND; Sindhi: سِنْڌ‎; Urdu: سِنْدھ, pronounced [sɪndʱə]; abbr. SD, historically romanized as Sind or Scinde) is a province of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province by population after Punjab. It is bordered by the Pakistani provinces of Balochistan to the west and north-west and Punjab to the north. It shares an International border with the Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan to the east; it is also bounded by the Arabian Sea to the south. Sindh's landscape consists mostly of alluvial plains flanking the Indus River, the Thar Desert in the eastern portion of the province along the international border with India, and the Kirthar Mountains in the western portion of the province.

The economy of Sindh is the second largest in Pakistan after the province of Punjab; its provincial capital Karachi is the most populous city in the country as well as its main financial hub. Sindh is home to a large portion of Pakistan's industrial sector and contains two of the country's busiest commercial seaports: Port Qasim and the Port of Karachi. The remainder of Sindh consists of an agriculture-based economy and produces fruits, consumer items and vegetables for other parts of the country.

Ghogha is a census town in Bhavnagar district in the state of Gujarat, India. It is situated on the mid-western bank of the Gulf of Khambhat. It was an important historical commercial port on the Arabian Sea until the development of nearby Bhavnagar in the nineteenth century.

The Palaiya Jumma Palli (transl. Paḻaiya jum'mā paḷḷi – transl. Old Jumma Masjid), also known as the Meen Kadai Palli, is a mosque, located in Kilakarai, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Completed in 630 CE, it is believed to be one of the oldest mosques in the world and along with Cheraman Juma Masjid in Kodungallur, Kerala and Barwada Mosque in Ghogha, Gujarat, the first mosque in India.

The mosque is located in Kilakarai, an ancient port town in South India. It was built between 628–630 CE and was re-constructed in 1036 CE. The mosque, along with the others in the town, is one of the greatest examples of Tamil Islam architecture.

The India–Pakistan border is the international boundary that separates the nations of the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. At its northern end is the Line of Control, which separates Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir from Pakistani-administered Kashmir; and at its southern end is Sir Creek, a tidal estuary in the Rann of Kutch between the Indian state of Gujarat and the Pakistani province of Sindh.

Arising from the partition of India in 1947, the border covers the provincial boundaries of Gujarat and Rajasthan with Sindh, and the Radcliffe Line between the partitions of Punjab. It traverses a variety of terrain in the northwestern region of the subcontinent, ranging from major urban areas to inhospitable deserts. Since the beginning of the India–Pakistan conflict shortly after the two countries' conjoined independence, it has been the site of numerous cross-border military standoffs and full-scale wars. The border's total length is 3,323 kilometres (2,065 mi) according to figures given by PBS; it is also ranked as one of the most dangerous international boundaries in the world, based on an article written in Foreign Policy in 2011. During the nighttime, the India–Pakistan border is distinctly visible from outer space due to the 150,000 floodlights installed by India on approximately 50,000 poles.

A statue is a free-standing sculpture in which the realistic, full-length figures of persons or animals are carved or cast in a durable material such as wood, metal or stone. Typical statues are life-sized or close to life-size. A sculpture that represents persons or animals in full figure, but that is small enough to lift and carry is a statuette or figurine, whilst those that are more than twice life-size are regarded as colossal statues.

Statues have been produced in many cultures from prehistory to the present; the oldest-known statue dating to about 30,000 years ago. Statues represent many different people and animals, real and mythical. Many statues are placed in public places as public art. The world's tallest statue, Statue of Unity, is 182 metres (597 ft) tall and is located near the Narmada dam in Gujarat, India.