Andaman Islands

The Andaman Islands (Hindi: अण्डमान द्वीप समूह, Tamil: அந்தமான் தீவுகள்) are a group of archipelagic islands in the Bay of Bengal, and are part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territory of India. The Andaman Archipelago is an oceanic continuation of the Burmese Arakan Yoma range in the North and of the Indonesian Archipelago in the South. It includes some two hundred islands.

Port Blair is the chief community on the islands, and the administrative centre of the Union Territory. The Andaman Islands form a single administrative district within the Union Territory, the Andaman district (the Nicobar district was separated and established as a new district in 1974). The population of the Andamans was 314,084 in 2001.

Climate

The climate is typical of tropical islands of similar latitude. It is always warm, but with sea-breezes. Rainfall is irregular, but usually dry during the north-east, and very wet during the south-west, monsoons.

People

Main article: Andamanese

For information on the indigenous languages, see Andamanese languages

Of the slightly more than 300,000 people that live in the Andaman Islands, a small minority of about 1,000 are indigenous Adivasis of the Andamans. The rest are mainly divided between Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Punjabi speaking people from the mainland.

The Andamanese is a collective term to describe the peoples who are the aboriginal inhabitants of the Andaman Islands and Nicobar Islands, located in the Bay of Bengal. The term includes the Great Andamanese, Jarawa, Onge, Shompen, Sentinelese and the extinct Jangil. Anthropologically they are usually classified as Negritos, represented also by the Semang of Malaysia and the Aeta of the Philippines.

The Andamans are theorized to be a key stepping stone in a great coastal migration of humans from Africa via the Arabian peninsula, along the coastal regions of the Indian mainland and towards Southeast Asia, Japan and Oceania. Genetic analysis indicates that male Onges and Jarawas almost exclusively belong to Haplotype D, which is also found in Tibet and Japan, but is rare on the Indian mainland and elsewhere in Asia. However, this is a subclade of the D haplogroup not been seen outside of the Andamans, which marks the insularity of these tribes. The only other group that is known to predominantly belong to haplogroup D are the Ainu aboriginal people of Japan. Male Great Andamanese, unlike the Onge and the Jarawa, have a mixed presence of Y-chromosome haplogroups O, L, K and P, which places them between mainland Indian and Asian populations.

The mtDNA distribution, which indicates maternal descent, describes all the Onge and a heavy majority of the Great Andamanese as belonging to haplogroup M, found ubiquitously in India, where it represents 60% of all maternal lineages. Given the insularity of the Andamanese, this has led geneticists to believe that this haplogroup originated with the earliest settlers of India during the coastal migration that brought the ancestors of the Andamanese to the Indian mainland, the Andaman Islands and further afield to Southeast Asia. Some anthropologists postulate that Southern India and Southeast Asia was once populated largely by Negritos similar to those of the Andamans, and that some tribal populations in the south of India, such as the Irulas are remnants of that period.

History

The name "Andaman" first appears in the work of Arab geographers of the ninth century, though it is uncertain whether ancient geographers like Ptolemy also knew of the Andamans but referred to them by a different name. They were also described as being inhabited by fierce cannibalistic tribes by the Persian navigator Buzurg ibn Shahriyar of Ramhormuz in his tenth century book Ajaib al-Hind ( The wonders of India ), in which he also mentioned an island he called Andaman al-Kabir ( Great Andaman ). During the Chola dynasty period in South India (800-1200CE), which ruled an empire encompassing southeastern peninsular India, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Maldives, and large parts of current day Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia, the island group was referred to as Timaittivu (or impure islands ). Marco Polo briefly mentions the Andamans (calling them by the name "Angamanain"), although it is doubtful that he visited the islands himself because he also claimed that the human inhabitants had dogs' heads. Another Italian traveler, Niccolò Da Conti (c. 1440), mentioned the islands and said that the name means "Island of Gold". A theory that became prevalent in the late nineteenth century, and has since gained momentum, is that the name of the islands derives from the Sanskrit language, by way of Malay, and refers to the deity, Hanuman. In the Age of Exploration, travelers often noted the "ferocious hostility" of the Andamanese.

The Maratha admiral Kanhoji Angre used the Andamans as a base and "fought the British off these islands until his death in 1729."

British Occupation and Penal Colony

In 1789 the government of Bengal established a penal colony on Chatham Island in the southeast bay of Great Andaman, now known as Port Blair (after the British Army officer Col. Blair who founded it). After two years, the colony moved to the northeast part of Great Andaman and was named Port Cornwallis after Admiral William Cornwallis. However, there was much disease and death in the penal colony, and the government ceased operating it in May 1796.

In 1824 Port Cornwallis was the rendezvous of the fleet carrying the army to the First Burmese War. In the 1830s and 1840s, shipwrecked crews who landed on the Andamans were often attacked and killed by the natives, alarming the British government. In 1855, the government proposed another settlement on the islands, including a convict establishment, but the Indian Rebellion of 1857 forced a delay in its construction. However, since the rebellion gave the British so many prisoners, it made the new Andaman settlement and prison an urgent necessity. Construction began in November 1857 at Port Blair using inmates' labor, avoiding the vicinity of a salt swamp that seemed to have been the source of many of the earlier problems at Port Cornwallis.

In 1867, the ship Nineveh wrecked on the reef of North Sentinel Island. The 86 survivors reached the beach in the ship's boats. On the 3rd day, they were attacked with iron-tipped spears by naked islanders. One person from the ship escaped in a boat. (Goodheart)

For some time sickness and mortality were excessively high, but swamp reclamation and extensive forest clearance continued. The Andaman colony acquired notoriety following the murder of the Viceroy Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo on a visit to the settlement (8 February 1872) by a Muslim convict, a Pathan from Afghanistan, named Sher Ali. In the same year the two island groups, Andaman and Nicobar, were united under a chief commissioner residing at Port Blair.

The garrison consists of 140 British and 300 Indian troops, with a few local European volunteers. The police are organised as a military battalion 643 strong. The number of convicts has somewhat diminished of late years and in 1901 stood at 11,947. The total population of the settlement, consisting of convicts, their guards, the supervising, clerical and departmental staff, with the families of the latter, also a certain number of ex-convicts and trading settlers and their families, numbered 16,106. The labouring convicts are distributed among four jails and nineteen stations; the self-supporters in thirty-eight villages. The elementary education of the convicts' children is compulsory. There are four hospitals, each under a resident medical officer, under the general supervision of a senior officer of the Indian medical service, and medical aid is given free to the whole population. The net annual cost of the settlement to the government is about six pounds per convict. The harbour of Port Blair is well supplied with buoys and harbour lights, and is crossed by ferries at fixed intervals, while there are several launches for hauling local traffic. On Ross Island there is a lighthouse visible for 19 miles (31 km). A complete system of signaling by night and day on the Morse system is worked by the police. Local posts are frequent, but there is no telegraph and the mails are irregular.

The above accounts, written while Britain still controlled India, may leave the impression that these settlements were a model of progressive penal reform. Indian accounts, however, paint a different picture. From the time of its development in 1858 under the direction of James Pattison Walker, and in response to the mutiny and rebellion of the previous year,