Jamnagar

Jamnagar

• Jamnagar is a city located on the western coast of India in the state of Gujarat in Saurashtra region. It is the administrative headquarters of the Jamnagar District. Jamnagar is the largest city on the westernmost side of India and is the fifth largest city of Gujarat state after Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot.
• The modern look of the city was initially given by H.H. Jam Ranjitsinhji. He was instrumental in building the modern infrastructure of the city during his reign in the 1920s. Thereafter, the city was substantially developed by Jam Saheb Shri Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji in the 1940s, when it was part of the Princely state of Nawanagar. The city lies just to the south of the Gulf of Kutch, some 337 kilometres (209 mi) west of the state capital, Gandhinagar.
• India's largest private company, Reliance Industries, has established the world's largest Oil Refining and Petrochemicals Complex near the village of Moti Khavdi in Jamnagar district. The Nayara Energy refinerywhich is the second largest private refinery in India is located in the nearby town of Vadinar. The Nayara Energy (formerly Essar Oil) Refinery is supplemented by its own Thermal Power Plant and a private port for handling crude oil.

History

Main article: Nawanagar State

• Nawanagar was founded by Jam Rawal in 1540 as the capital of the eponymous Princely state. Jamnagar, historically known as Nawanagar (the new town), was one of the most important and the largest Princely states of the Jadejas in the Saurashtra region. It was a 13 gun salute state. According to Pauranik literature, Lord Krishna established his kingdom at Dwarka town in Jamnagar district, after migrating from Mathura, and accordingly, it is to the Yadava race that the Jams of Nawanagar trace their ancestry.
• According to historical records, Bahadurshah, the emperor of Gujarat, bestowed upon Jam Lakhaji twelve villages in recognition of his role in the siege of Pawagadh. Jam Lakhaji, however, was killed by his cousins, Tamachi Deda and Jam Hamirji Jadeja, after he took possession of the villages. His son, Jam Rawal, thereafter murdered his father's killers and became ruler of Cutch.

• Hamirji's two sons Khengarji and Sahibji fled to Delhi to pay obeisance to the Mughal Emperor Humayun. During a lion hunt, the two brothers saved the Emperor from being killed by a lion. As a reward for their valor, an army was sent with them to regain their kingdom. When Jam Sri Rawalji heard of the two princes coming back to the Kutch with the imperial army, he prepared for battle.
• One night, Goddess Ashapuraji, the supreme deity of the Jadeja Clan of Rajputs, came to Jam Sri Rawalji in a dream and told him that although he had broken an oath taken in her name not to kill Hamirji, even though he was the person responsible for his death, she had refrained from punishing him because he had at all other times honoured her, but he was no longer to dwell in Cutch.
• Jam Sri Rawalji and his entourage marched out of Cutch, attacked and killed Tamachi deda, the main conspirator in the killing of his father, and conquered the town of Amran and its dependencies. Jam Sri Rawalji bestowed the rule of Dhrol province on his younger brother Hardholji, who was later killed in battle at Mithoi near Khambhalia, whereupon the throne passed on to his eldest son, Jasoji. Jam hri Rawalji conquered parts of Saurashtra and formed his kingdom with 999 villages named it as Halar.
• Once on a hunting trip in present-day Jamnagar, a hare was found to be brave enough to turn on the hunting dogs and put them to flight. Deeply impressed by this, Jam Sri Rawalji thought that if this land could breed such hares, the men born here would be superior to other men, and accordingly he made this place his capital.
• On the seventh day of the bright half of the month of Shrawan, V.S. 1956 (August 1540) on the banks of the rivers Rangmati and Nagmati, he laid the foundation of his new capital and named it Nawanagar (new town), which after few centuries came to be known as Jamnagar, meaning the town of the JAM's.