There was no freedom movement in Lakshadweep, and saying so is more useful than assembling one. No Congress committee of consequence, no satyagraha, no revolutionary group, no armed rising, and no islander whose part in the national movement the record will support naming - which is why the list of individuals below is empty rather than filled out. The reasons are practical. Ten inhabited islands of thirty-two square kilometres, several days' sail from the coast in good weather and unreachable for months in the monsoon, under an administration that controlled entry and departure, produced no platform for organised politics. What the islands did have was a three-hundred-year argument about coir - the price the monopolist paid for it and the tribute levied on top - and the two documented acts of collective resistance in their history both come out of that argument. Political organisation of the mainland kind arrived here only after 1947.
The coir dispute and the transfer of the Amindivi group1780s
After long disputes with the Arakkal house over the price paid for coir and the tribute demanded on top of it, the islands of the northern Amindivi group transferred their allegiance from Arakkal to Mysore. It is the clearest documented case of collective political action by these islanders: lacking any means of armed resistance, they changed sovereign instead.
परिणाम: The group came under Mysore, and on its defeat passed to the East India Company; from 1799 it was administered from South Canara, separately from the southern islands, a division that outlasted every power involved.
The petitions against the Arakkal tribute19th century
Islanders of the Laccadive group petitioned the mainland administration repeatedly against the tribute levied by the Arakkal house and against the terms of the coir monopoly, and the tribute itself fell into arrears.
परिणाम: The administration took over the management of the islands from the Arakkal house between 1854 and 1875, and the house's rights were finally surrendered in 1909. The coir trade remained regulated rather than freed.