Ahmadabad
(2001 est. pop. 3.5 million). Ahmadabad, the gateway to Gujarat state in western India and its principal city, sprawls on the Sabarmati River about 450 kilometers (280 miles) north of Bombay. It is one of the busiest industrial centers in India, with cotton milling predominant. Ahmadabad wasfounded in 1411 by the Muslim ruler Sultan Ahmad Shah; it thrived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under the early Mughal kings and prospered again since the British annexation in 1818. Of particular interest are compact housing clusters of families linked by caste, profession, or religion, dating to 1714.
A woman carrying a load on her head in the market in Ahmadabad in c. 1982. (ADAM WOOLFITT/CORBIS)Many monuments of Hindu, Muslim, and Jain architecture in the walled city testify to its past glory and present prosperity. Kankaria Lake, built in 1451, offers promenades, boating, an aquarium, and a museum designed by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (called Le Corbusier; 1887–1965). The Sidi Bashir Mosque features the mysterious "shaking minarets." From the Satyagraha Ashram, in 1930, Mohandas K. Gandhi (called Mahatma; 1869–1948) began his march to the sea to protest the British salt tax. A memorial center and sound-and-light show highlight his life and the Indian Freedom Movement.
Further Reading
Gillion, Kenneth L. (1968) Ahmedabad: A Study in Indian Urban History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Patel, B. B. (1989) Workers of Closed Textile Mills: Patterns and Problems of Their Absorption in a Metropolitan Labour Market. Columbia, MO: South Asia Books.
Mehta, Meera, and Dinesh Mehta. (1990) Metropolitan Housing Market: A Study of Ahmedabad. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
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