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Concept
Gujarati people
Summary
The Gujarati people, or Gujaratis, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who reside in or can trace their ancestry or heritage to a region of the Indian subcontinent primarily centered in the present-day western Indian state of Gujarat. They primarily speak Gujarati, an Indo-Aryan language. While Gujaratis mainly inhabit Gujarat, they have a diaspora worldwide. Gujaratis in India and the diaspora are prominent entrepreneurs and industrialists and maintain high social capital. Many notable independence activists were Gujarati, including Mahatma Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Vallabhbhai Patel.
Despite significant migration primarily for economic reasons, most Gujaratis in India live in the state of Gujarat in Western India. Gujaratis also form a significant part of the populations in the neighboring metropolis of Bombay and union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu, which was a former Portuguese colony. There are very large Gujarati immigrant communities in other parts of India, most notably in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and other cities like Kochi. All throughout history Gujaratis have earned a reputation as being India's greatest merchants, their direct role in slavery and slave trading in East Africa is skillfully occluded in most writing that commemorated the Gujarati mercantile elite, industrialists and business entrepreneurs and have therefore been at forefront of migrations all over the world, particularly to regions that were part of the British empire such as Fiji, Hong Kong, Malaya, East Africa and South Africa. Diasporas and transnational networks in many of these countries date back to more than a century. In recent decades, larger numbers of Gujaratis have migrated to English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.
History of Gujarat
In anthropological surveys conducted in India about 60% of the people claim that their community is a migrant to their state or region. In Gujarat that number is around 70%.
Official source
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