Talk:Great Rann of Kutch

When became dry land?
Gujarat says: "The Rann of Kutchch covers a large portion of western Gujarat .... Only 500 years earlier, the area was the Arabian Sea."

Rann of Kutch says: "The area was a vast shallows of the Arabian Sea until continuing geological uplift closed off the connection with the sea, creating a vast lake that was still navigable during the time of Alexander the Great." (Alexander the Great 356 BC - 323 BC).

What are the facts here? When was this area actually part of the sea? -- Writtenonsand 21:07, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Little Rann of Kutch
Little Rann Of Kutch was once a part of Arabian Sea. Many signs can be seen of that at near by village Zinzuwada. It seems that the whole of Saurashtra region was first an island, clues can be find out from a strip of land from Bhavnagar to Maliya Miyana where one can find the strip of that land is stil salty. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.169.51.169 (talk) 09:53, 20 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I have separated the article for Little Rann of Kutch, please help develop both.

mrigthrishna (talk) 06:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Changing name (moving) to "Great Rann of Kutch"
More appropriate name: Changing name to "Great Rann of Kutch" as per old British India Maps: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bombay_Prov_north_1909.jpg ALSO SEE: Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 26, Atlas 1909 edition, "Bombay, p. 36. http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/gaz_atlas_1909/pager.html?object=42

mrigthrishna (talk) 04:19, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

a piece from Little Rann
The following sectionwas in article Little Rann of Kutch, obviously out of place. I am putting it here, for possible merging.

Please remove it when merge is completed. Yceren Loq (talk) 16:42, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

==Great Rann of Kutch==

The Great Rann of Kutch also called Great Rann of Kutch or just Rann of Kutch, is a seasonally marshy saline clay desert located in the Thar Desert biogeographic province in the Kutch District, state of Gujarat situated 8 km away from village Kharaghoda located in the Surendranagar District of northwestern India and the Sindh province of Pakistan.

history of the rann
I wonder about the history of the rann, especially about the story of it once being part of the Arabian Sea. As to my knowledge swamps, moors and fens come into being after the work of humans only. That is, solid ground is removed and fills with water and organic matter very slowly. A new ecosystem develops which is totally different from the one before, with flora and fauna as well as chirr battis.

The question is: Is the ground of the rann below sea level or below the surface level of the nearer environment? And has its water the same salt like the sea?

My suggestion is as follows: - early settlement; deforestation and mining activities; this led to extended 'wholes' in the ground taking whatever incoming water and matter; the shallow lake of a remote past turns into a permanent swamp.

A moor takes about 1000 years to develop after the human activities stopped (in Middle Europe, without the monsoon which perhaps has a larger effect on the processes).

Mining could have included ore (copper, silver, iron) and/or salt, and touched veins at or hardly below the surface of the ground.

The salty character of the marsh or fen could then result either from - a layer of salt in the ground which was not processed and is below the soil, or - the remains of the salt mining, creating a new soil together with the incoming organic matter - the mixture of different qualities of ground water from different ground levels, i.e. the confluence of light acidious and light base water which results in salty or brackish water.

A further raw material in the region could have been clay. Exploitation of clay fields leaves larger hollows in the ground as well, which, filling up, develop into a swamp, marsh or moor. The development of a thicker clay or loam layer in the ground needs a (natural) water basin already, with heavy clay/loam being the deposit of matter brought in by a river or stream. Another question is linked to that: Was the clay, if there was, mixed with salt and did this produce another type of bricks, perhaps harder bricks than pure clay bricks? (I remember a form of pastime or hobby material, a material called 'salt dough' (German: Salzteig), something like plasticine, which was burnable and much harder than the burnable plasticine or loam/clay. It further had a different colour, a whitish/greenish color with brown or grey spots after burning. The material was used for making things, decorations etc. with the hands by children. It could be formed very well, was heavy, one exemplar was twisted like a plait.)

Reports of a shippable lake where there is now the rann hint to the end of mining activities at least 2000 years ago. The intake of sweet water of the area in the past could have been considerably higher, filling the ground, while at the same time the flowing off stopped or was reduced.

I cannot see how the sea enters the area or how it shall be possible that it is lifted up as a whole. As little I cannot imagine mangrove forests in the interior.

There could be a historical link to the so-called Indus valley culture, a so-called outpost of which was determined at Lothal, which is near today's Khambat near Ahmedabad in Gujarat. A connection to Kalibangan can be assumed, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.115.115.88 (talk) 21:51, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

The possibility exists that a river took its course into the Arabian Sea through the area, then the rann would have developed along or around the banks of it. The satellite photograph shows a confluence, two riverbeds not far from the rann. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.115.115.88 (talk) 21:59, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

It is unbelievable that the whole of the subcontinent was or is lifted, though the continental drift results in the growth of the Himalaya mountains of 1 cm/year, thus 20m/2000years. Due to the nature of mountain formation in the Himalayas no effect of the processes can be felt in the rest of the subcontinent, with earthquakes happening along the contact zone of the two continental ledges.

Further a comparison with the Iran seems worthwile, a country which has a salty pan high up in the mountains. This pan is said to be the remains of a very ancient or very prehistoric ocean moved up in the course of time. It seems to be speculation that the ranns of Kutch of today once belonged to that ocean because the lift of the Iran mountains and the existence of the Indian subcontinental ledge do not seem to be the outcome of the same process. The Kutch hills resemble moraines.

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Territorial dispute?
The Rann of Kutch has been added to the List of territorial disputes as an active dispute by and the same has been mentioned in the lead of Rann of Kutch. Can you look into this. It is clear that the dispute is limited to Sir Creek (which is already on the list) not the Rann of Kutch which was settled way back in 1968 by an international tribunal, as mentioned in the source (Globalsecurity.org) cited by the user themselves.

Globalsecurity is talking about the 1965 war, when talking about the Kutch dispute, and not the disputes now (including the "Kanjarkot fort" which has been mentioned by the user in their edit summaries), even they make it clear in the later part of their article that the dispute is now limited to Sir Creek. And the "new maps" by the Government of Pakistan only mention and display Sir Creek as disputed. These seem to be clear egregious WP:OR edits with a poor or deliberate misunderstanding of the sources cited. Gotitbro (talk) 04:53, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Not to mention that the former dispute and its settlement are already mentioned in this article, Great Rann of Kutch (whose Talk page I was redirected for some reason). Gotitbro (talk) 05:09, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, it was settled by arbitration. It is not a dispute any more. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 10:44, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I will be reverting your edits per the above discussion and explanation unless you have something significant to add here. Gotitbro (talk) 06:05, 10 August 2020 (UTC)