A History of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Islands and their First Peoples: A Glimpse into Prehistory
• Chapter 2 Ancient Mariners and Mythical Lands: Early Accounts and Perceptions
• Chapter 3 The Chola Dynasty and Maritime Dominance in the Bay of Bengal
• Chapter 4 The Maratha Naval Expeditions: A Brief Encounter
• Chapter 5 European Eyes on the Islands: The Danish and Austrian Attempts at Colonization
• Chapter 6 The British Arrive: The First Penal Settlement at Port Cornwallis
• Chapter 7 "Kalapani": The Establishment of the Penal Colony at Port Blair
• Chapter 8 The Cellular Jail: A Bastion of Inhumanity and a Symbol of Resistance
• Chapter 9 The Great Andamanese and the Battle of Aberdeen: Indigenous Resistance to Colonial Rule
• Chapter 10 Life as a Convict: The Brutal Realities of the Penal Settlement
• Chapter 11 The Moplah Rebellion and its Andamanese Aftermath
• Chapter 12 The Japanese Occupation during World War II: A Change of Masters
• Chapter 13 Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and the Azad Hind Government
• Chapter 14 The End of the Penal Settlement and the Dawn of Independence
• Chapter 15 The Integration of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands into the Indian Union
• Chapter 16 Post-Independence Settlements: The Making of a New Society
• Chapter 17 The Jarawa and the Great Andaman Trunk Road: A Clash of Worlds
• Chapter 18 The Nicobarese and their Unique Cultural Heritage
• Chapter 19 The Shompen of Great Nicobar: An Isolated Existence
• Chapter 20 The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami: Devastation and Resilience
• Chapter 21 The Strategic Importance of the Islands in the 21st Century
• Chapter 22 From Forestry to Tourism: The Evolving Economy of the Islands
• Chapter 23 The Delicate Ecology: Conservation Efforts and Environmental Challenges
• Chapter 24 The Uncontacted Sentinelese: A Debate for the Modern Age
• Chapter 25 The Andaman and Nicobar Islands Today: A Mosaic of Cultures and a Vision for the Future

Far out in the Bay of Bengal, closer to the coasts of Myanmar and Indonesia than to the Indian mainland, lies an archipelago of islands shrouded in myth, legend, and a history as deep and turbulent as the waters surrounding it. These are the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a chain of 836 islands, islets, and rocks that form the peaks of a submerged mountain range, stretching like a string of emeralds for over 620 miles. For centuries, they were a whisper on ancient trade routes, a land of mystery on the maps of mariners, and a place where humanity existed in a state of isolation profound enough to feel like a different epoch. This book is a journey through that epoch and the tumultuous centuries that followed, tracing the story of these islands from their prehistoric origins to their complex and strategic role in the modern world. It is a history not of one people, but of many: of the world's most isolated indigenous communities, of convicts transported across the "black water," of colonial administrators, Japanese occupiers, and post-independence settlers who together forged the unique, multicultural society that exists today.

The very names of the islands are steeped in history and perception. "Andaman" is widely believed to be a derivation of "Handuman," the Malay name for the Hindu deity Hanuman, suggesting a long-standing awareness of the islands among mariners and traders in Southeast Asia. "Nicobar," in contrast, likely comes from the Tamil phrase Nakkavaram, meaning "land of the naked," a name recorded by the powerful Chola dynasty in the 11th century and echoed by travelers like Marco Polo. These names, one mythological and the other observational, perfectly encapsulate the dual identity of the islands throughout much of their history: a place of distant reverence and a source of profound curiosity, yet rarely a destination for settlement by outsiders. This was due not only to their remoteness but also to the dense, inhospitable jungles and the fierce defense of their territory by the indigenous inhabitants.

For millennia, the islands were the exclusive domain of some of the oldest human communities on Earth. The Andaman Islands are home to four Negrito tribes: the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa, and the Sentinelese. Having migrated from Africa perhaps as long as 60,000 years ago, they lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers, their isolation so complete that their languages and cultures developed in ways entirely distinct from the rest of the world. The Nicobar Islands, further south and separated by the Ten Degree Channel, were inhabited by two Mongoloid tribes, the Nicobarese and the Shompen, who likely arrived from the Malay-Burma coast thousands of years ago. For most of recorded history, these First Peoples were the sole protagonists of the islands' story. They lived in harmony with the rich but fragile ecosystem, their lives dictated by the rhythm of the monsoons and the bounty of the forest and the sea. Their encounters with the outside world were fleeting and often hostile, a dynamic that would tragically define their experience in the centuries to come.

While empires rose and fell across the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, the islands remained largely untouched, a footnote in the chronicles of maritime powers. The Cholas of South India used the Nicobars as a strategic naval base for their expeditions to Southeast Asia in the 11th century. Later, the Maratha Empire briefly established a naval presence in the 17th century. European powers, including the Danes and Austrians, made sporadic and ultimately failed attempts at colonization, thwarted by the challenging terrain, tropical diseases, and the resistance of the islanders. For the wider world, the Andamans and Nicobars were a navigational hazard, a place of cannibals and strange peoples as described in the sensational accounts of travelers like Marco Polo and Friar Odoric. They were a territory to be sailed around, not settled, a blank space on the map where myths and fears could be projected.

Everything changed in the mid-19th century. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 provided the British Empire with a pressing need: a remote and inescapable place to exile thousands of captured rebels and political prisoners. The Andaman Islands, with their history of isolation and forbidding reputation, were deemed the perfect location. In 1858, the British established a permanent penal settlement at Port Blair, and with that act, the islands were violently wrenched from their solitude and thrust into the heart of India's struggle for independence. The name "Andaman" became synonymous with Kalapani, the "Black Water," a term that signified not just the act of being transported across the sea but a profound social and spiritual death. To be sentenced to Kalapani was to be severed from one's community, caste, and country, with little hope of return.

The penal colony's dark heart was the Cellular Jail, an architectural marvel of cruelty constructed between 1896 and 1906. Its seven wings radiated from a central tower, a panopticon designed to enforce total isolation upon the political prisoners who were its primary occupants. Within its walls, India's freedom fighters endured unimaginable torture, forced labor, and the psychological torment of solitary confinement. Yet, far from crushing their spirit, the Cellular Jail became a university of revolution, a crucible where the dream of an independent India was forged in suffering and sacrifice. It transformed the islands from a forgotten periphery into a sacred geography in the nationalist imagination, a place of pilgrimage symbolizing the ultimate price of freedom. The story of Kalapani and the Cellular Jail is central to the history of the islands, a period that irrevocably altered their demographic, social, and political landscape.

This colonial chapter was violently interrupted during the Second World War. In March 1942, Japanese forces, advancing through Southeast Asia, occupied the islands, viewing them as a crucial strategic outpost in the Bay of Bengal. The British administration collapsed and fled, and for the next three and a half years, the islanders were subjected to a brutal new regime. This period also saw one of the most symbolic moments in India's freedom struggle. In December 1943, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, as the head of the Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind), visited Port Blair. On December 30, he hoisted the Indian tricolor for the first time on Indian soil, declaring the islands the first territory to be liberated from British rule. Before departing, he renamed Andaman as "Shaheed" (Martyr) Island and Nicobar as "Swaraj" (Self-Rule) Island. While the handover was largely nominal, with real power remaining in Japanese hands, the act held immense symbolic power and remains a celebrated chapter in the islands' history.

With the end of the war and Japan's defeat, the British briefly reoccupied the islands, but the era of empire was drawing to a close. Upon India's independence in 1947, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were seamlessly integrated into the new nation, becoming a Union Territory in 1956. The abolition of the penal settlement marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. The Indian government, seeking to develop the remote territory and relieve population pressure on the mainland, initiated large-scale settlement schemes. Refugees from the partition of India, former convicts who chose to stay, and migrants from across the country—Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andhra Pradesh—were settled here, creating a diverse and multicultural society. This "miniature India" brought new languages, religions, and customs to the islands, layering a new and complex identity over the pre-existing ones of the indigenous peoples and the descendants of the penal colony.

In the decades since independence, the islands have navigated a complex path toward modernity. Their strategic location, commanding the sea lanes of the Bay of Bengal and sitting astride the vital Malacca Strait, has transformed them into a critical military and surveillance outpost for India. The economy has shifted from one based on forestry and resource extraction to one increasingly dependent on tourism, with visitors drawn by the pristine beaches, vibrant coral reefs, and the historical allure of the Cellular Jail. This development has brought both opportunities and profound challenges. The construction of infrastructure, most notably the Great Andaman Trunk Road, has brought the modern world into direct and often devastating contact with previously isolated indigenous groups like the Jarawa, raising urgent questions about their survival and rights.

The islands today are a place of stark contrasts and pressing debates. They are a frontline in the battle for environmental conservation, home to a delicate and unique ecology threatened by climate change, development, and the pressures of a growing population. They are the location of one of the world's last uncontacted peoples, the Sentinelese, whose fierce rejection of the outside world poses a profound ethical dilemma for the modern age, forcing a global conversation about sovereignty, culture, and the very definition of progress. The devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 served as a brutal reminder of nature's power and the vulnerability of the island communities, even as their resilience in the face of such catastrophe told its own powerful story.

This book aims to weave these disparate threads into a single, comprehensive narrative. It will explore the silent, prehistoric world of the First Peoples, navigate the mythical accounts of ancient mariners, and document the harsh realities of the colonial penal settlement. It will march through the brutalities of the Japanese occupation, celebrate the dawn of independence, and map the creation of a new, complex society. Finally, it will confront the contemporary challenges and strategic imperatives that define the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the 21st century. The story of these islands is a microcosm of broader historical forces—of migration and settlement, of colonialism and resistance, of cultural conflict and synthesis, and of the enduring tension between humanity and the natural world. It is a story that begins in the deepest solitude and arrives at the bustling, interconnected crossroads of the modern world.

To understand the story of the people who first called the Andaman and Nicobar Islands home, one must first understand the islands themselves. They are not, like so many archipelagoes, the result of isolated volcanic eruptions or the slow accumulation of coral. Instead, they are the very peaks of a great, submerged mountain range, a geological extension of the Arakan Yoma mountains of Myanmar that arcs southwards before re-emerging in Sumatra. This dramatic origin story is written into the very landscape. The islands are the exposed segments of what geologists call an "accretionary wedge," a massive pile of sediment and oceanic crust scraped from the Indian Plate as it relentlessly slides beneath the Burma Plate. This immense tectonic pressure, which continues to this day, has lifted these peaks above the sea, creating a rugged and dramatic topography of steep hills and narrow valleys cloaked in some of the world's most ancient and dense tropical rainforests.

This long, curving chain of land divides the waters, creating the Bay of Bengal to the west and the Andaman Sea to the east. More importantly, it is itself divided by a crucial maritime passage. The Ten Degree Channel, so named because it lies along the 10-degree north latitude line, is a 150-kilometer-wide strait that separates the Andaman Islands from the Nicobar Islands. This channel is more than just a geographical feature; it is a profound biological and anthropological boundary. The flora, fauna, and, most significantly, the indigenous peoples to the north of this channel are markedly different from those to the south. This watery divide, carved by ancient sea levels and maintained by powerful currents, ensured that two entirely separate chapters of human prehistory would unfold in the archipelago, just a short distance from one another, yet worlds apart.

The story of the first peoples of the Andaman Islands is one of the most remarkable and enduring mysteries of human migration. Modern genetics provides a startling glimpse into their antiquity, suggesting that their ancestors were part of the earliest waves of modern humans to migrate out of Africa. According to the widely accepted "southern route" hypothesis, these early Homo sapiens did not trek north through the Levant but followed a coastal path, moving rapidly across the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent towards Southeast Asia and Australia tens of thousands of years ago. The ancestors of the Andamanese are believed to be a relic population from this great coastal migration. Genetic studies indicate that the islanders possess unique mitochondrial DNA lineages that share a deep ancestry with these initial Asian colonizers but have evolved in complete isolation for millennia. They are, in a very real sense, a direct window into the deep past of human expansion across the globe.

It is thought that they arrived on the islands during the Last Glacial Maximum, around 26,000 years ago, a time when sea levels were much lower and the distance from the coast of mainland Burma was significantly reduced. Even so, it would have required a sea crossing, an astonishing feat for Paleolithic people. Once there, the rising waters of the post-ice age world marooned them, cutting them off from the mainland and from the rest of humanity. For thousands of years, they lived in a world of their own making. Archaeological evidence for this long period of habitation is sparse, a consequence of the perishable nature of their material culture and the dense jungle environment. The oldest confirmed radiocarbon date from archaeological sites, such as kitchen middens composed of shells and animal bones, points to a settlement history of just over 2,200 years, but this is widely seen as only scratching the surface of a much deeper history that genetics has already illuminated.

Over these thousands of years of isolation, the original founding population diversified into distinct groups, their languages and customs evolving separately on different islands and in different parts of the main Great Andaman chain. When outsiders finally made sustained contact in the 18th century, these groups were classified into four main tribes: the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa, and the Sentinelese. They are collectively referred to as "Negritos" due to their diminutive stature and dark skin, a physical characteristic they share with other isolated populations in Southeast Asia, though their genetic makeup is unique.

The Great Andamanese were once the most numerous, a confederation of ten distinct sub-tribes spread across the islands of North, Middle, and South Andaman. They lived a semi-nomadic life in small communities, their movements dictated by the seasons and the availability of food. Their society was egalitarian, with decisions made by group consensus and elders holding a respected position. They built temporary oval-shaped huts, with a communal space at the center for dancing and ceremonies. Their diet was a rich bounty from the forest and the sea: wild pigs, monitor lizards, fish, turtles, and crabs, supplemented with gathered tubers, fruits, and honey. One of the most fascinating aspects of their prehistoric culture was their relationship with fire. Early accounts suggest they did not know how to make fire; instead, they meticulously preserved embers from lightning strikes within hollowed-out trees, a sacred task to ensure the fire never died.

To the south, on the island of Little Andaman, lived the Onge. Though sharing a common ancestry with the Great Andamanese, their language and culture were distinct. Like their northern cousins, they were expert hunter-gatherers, skilled in hunting wild boar and catching sea turtles from their dugout outrigger canoes. The Onge had a sophisticated understanding of their environment, with a rich cosmology and a belief system deeply intertwined with the natural world.

In the dense forests of South and Middle Andaman, another group, the Jarawa, lived a life of deliberate and often hostile isolation from their neighbors. For millennia, they had little or no peaceful contact even with the other Andamanese tribes, fiercely defending their territory. Their lifestyle was similar to the other groups, a nomadic existence based on hunting with bows and arrows and gathering what the forest provided. They moved in small bands of a few dozen people, their entire world contained within the jungle and the coastal waters they called home. Men hunted pig and turtle, while women fished in the shallow reefs with baskets and collected fruits and roots. They had no concept of individual property; all resources were shared, fostering a powerful sense of community.

Perhaps the most enigmatic of all are the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island. Separated from the other islands by a treacherous sea, they have remained in what is almost certainly the most complete state of isolation of any human group on the planet. Their language is unintelligible to other Andamanese peoples, suggesting a separation that dates back thousands of years. They have consistently rejected all attempts at contact, defending their small, forested island with a shower of arrows for any boat that comes too near. Their prehistory is entirely their own, a story to which the outside world has no access. What is known is gleaned from a distance: they are hunter-gatherers, living in small communal huts and using canoes in the calm waters of their lagoon. Their profound isolation makes them a living link to a past that has vanished everywhere else.

South of the Ten Degree Channel, the prehistory of the Nicobar Islands tells a completely different story. The first peoples here were not of the same ancient "Negrito" stock as the Andamanese. Instead, they were of Mongoloid origin, their ancestors likely arriving on the islands much more recently, perhaps only several thousand years ago. They did not come from the west, but from the east, part of the great seafaring migrations that populated much of Southeast Asia. This is evident in their languages, which belong to the Austroasiatic family, linking them to peoples in mainland Southeast Asia like the Mon of Myanmar and the Khmer of Cambodia.

Two distinct groups inhabit these islands: the Nicobarese and the Shompen. The Nicobarese, the more numerous of the two, settled primarily along the coasts of the various islands, with Car Nicobar being their principal center. Unlike the purely nomadic hunter-gatherers of the Andamans, the Nicobarese developed a more settled way of life. While they engaged in hunting and fishing, their society was built around horticulture. They cultivated large groves of coconut and pandanus palms, which formed the staples of their diet, and raised pigs, a central element of their feasting and ceremonial life. They lived in larger, more permanent villages, often characterized by distinctive beehive-shaped huts raised on stilts to protect against the elements and flooding. Their social structure was more complex, organized around kinship and clan loyalties.

In the dense, hilly interior of the largest island, Great Nicobar, lived the other Mongoloid group, the Shompen. While their neighbors, the Nicobarese, embraced a coastal, settled existence, the Shompen remained semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers of the inland rainforest. Their way of life, though not their ancestry, bore a closer resemblance to the Andamanese tribes. They lived in small, scattered groups, hunting forest animals, foraging for plants like the pandanus fruit, and cultivating some yams and tobacco in small clearings. The Shompen of the eastern and western parts of the island lived separately, referring to themselves by different names and maintaining a cautious distance from each other, as well as from the more numerous Nicobarese on the coast. Their language is related to the Nicobarese languages but distinct enough to suggest a long period of separation and internal isolation.

Thus, before the first ships of traders and colonizers began to appear on the horizon, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were home to a remarkable mosaic of human cultures. In the north, the Andamanese lived as they had for tens of thousands of years, a Paleolithic people who had never developed agriculture, their world defined by the hunt and the rhythm of the monsoon. They were the remnant of a lost wave of human expansion, their isolation so deep that their languages and their very genes were unique on Earth. In the south, the Nicobarese and Shompen represented a later, but still ancient, chapter of human migration, a splinter of the great Austroasiatic diaspora that had mastered the sea and brought a horticultural way of life to the islands' shores. These were the First Peoples, the original protagonists of this long history, living in a world of profound solitude, unaware that their isolation was about to be irrevocably shattered.