Bharuch (formerly commonly known as Broach) in India, is a district in the southern part of the Kathiawar peninsula on the west coast of state of Gujarat with a size and population comparable to that of Greater Boston.

The Narmada River outlets into the Gulf of Khambat through its lands and that shipping artery gave inland access to the kingdoms and empires located in the central and northern parts of the sub-continent of India.

The city of Bharuch and its surrounds—today's district—has been settled far back into antiquity and was a major shipping building centre and sea port in the important pre-compass coastal trading routes to points West, perhaps as far back as the days of the Pharaohs, which used the regular and predictable Monsoon winds or galleys.

Many goods from the Far East (the famed Spice and Silk trade) were trans-shipped there for the annual monsoon winds making it a terminus for several key land-sea trade routes and Bharuch was definitely known to the Greeks, the various Persian Empires and in the Roman Republic and Empire and other Western centres of civilisation right on through the end of the European Middle Ages.

According to the 2011 census Bharuch district has a population of 1,551,019,[3] roughly equal to the nation of Gabon[4] or the US state of Hawaii.