Lakshadweep · Island Realms
Lakshadweep also needs a different treatment, and for a reason that is nearly the opposite of the Nicobars'. Here there is plenty of external political history and no internal dynasty at all. No ruler ever sat on any of these islands. Sovereignty was always held from the mainland - by the Kolathiri of Chirakkal, then from the mid-sixteenth century by the Arakkal house of Cannanore, which held the islands as a jagir and drew tribute and a coir monopoly from them, then by Mysore for the northern group, and then by the East India Company and its successors. What actually governed daily life was a set of offices: the karanavar, senior member of the matrilineal tarwad, who held the house's land and coconut palms; the jamath, the island assembly attached to the Juma mosque, which settled disputes and regulated the palm and boat seasons; the amin, the island headman recognised first by the Arakkal house and afterwards by the Company; and on Minicoy, south of the Nine Degree Channel, the bodukaka of each avah village with its baemedu assembly, which is a working village government of a kind found nowhere else in the territory. The rulers list below carries those offices alongside the external sovereigns. The medieval period here begins with the jagir of the sixteenth century and the modern period in the 1780s, when the northern islands changed hands over a dispute about coir. The Ubaidullah and Cheraman Perumal accounts of the islands' settlement and conversion are island tradition, held and repeated locally, and are not documented history.
Periodisation is regional, not national — the medieval period does not begin in the same century here as it does elsewhere in India.
The islands are coral and hold almost nothing that survives burial, so the archaeological record is slight and the documentary record is other people's. Finds on Kalpeni have been read as indicating human presence well before the common era, and the atolls appear in Buddhist and Tamil literary references as a landfall on the Arabian Sea route. The island accounts of their own beginnings - a shipwrecked party sent after the last Cheraman Perumal, and the coming of Islam with Sheikh Ubaidullah, whose tomb is at Andrott - are tradition. They are held seriously here and repeated accurately, and they are not evidence of a date.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| c. 1500 BCE | Finds from Kalpeni have been read as indicating human presence on the atolls at an early date; the evidence is slight and not continuous. |
| 1st millennium CE | The islands appear in Buddhist and Tamil literary references as a landfall on the Arabian Sea route between the Malabar coast and Arabia. |
| by tradition, 661 CE | Island tradition attributes the coming of Islam to Sheikh Ubaidullah, and a tomb associated with him stands in the Juma mosque at Andrott. The account is tradition, not record, and no contemporary evidence for the date exists. |
| by tradition | A second tradition attributes the first settlement to a party sent out after the last Cheraman Perumal. It is a foundation story shared with the Malabar coast and is treated here as such. |
| 11th century | Chola authority is said to have extended over the islands in the reign of Rajendra Chola I, in the course of the same naval campaigns that reached the Bay of Bengal. |
From the twelfth century the islands were held from Kannur. The Kolathiri conferred them on the Arakkal house in the mid-sixteenth century as a jagir, and Arakkal's interest in them was almost entirely commercial: coir. Coconut fibre from these atolls rigged the ships of the Malabar coast, and the monopoly on buying it - at a price the monopolist set - was the central fact of island economic life for three hundred years and the standing grievance behind everything that followed. Inside each island the tarwad held the palms, the jamath ran the calendar and the disputes, and the amin answered to whoever was collecting.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| early 12th century | Authority over the islands passes to the Kolathiri, the ruling house of the Kannur country on the Malabar coast. |
| 1540s | Portuguese attempts to take the islands' coir supply by force end in their expulsion; the episode is remembered in the islands and recorded on the coast. |
| mid-16th century | The Kolathiri confers the inhabited islands as a jagir on the Arakkal house of Cannanore. The Ali Raja, or the Arakkal Beevi when the senior member of the house was a woman, thereafter collects tribute and holds the coir monopoly. |
| 17th-18th century | The coir monopoly is the islands' standing grievance. Islanders petition against the buying price and the tribute more than once, and on occasion refuse payment. |
The modern period opens with the islands doing the only thing a subject population without an army can do: changing sovereigns. In the 1780s the Amindivi group in the north transferred its allegiance from Arakkal to Mysore over the coir question, and when Mysore fell the group passed to the East India Company and was attached to South Canara. The southern islands stayed with Arakkal on tribute for another century, and the tribute fell into arrears; the administration took over their management between the 1850s and the 1870s and the Arakkal house formally surrendered its rights in the first decade of the twentieth century. Under British administration the islands were governed as an appendage of two mainland districts, entry was controlled, and the coir trade was regulated rather than freed. Nothing resembling mainland politics developed here before 1947.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1780s | After disputes over the coir monopoly the Amindivi group transfers allegiance from the Arakkal house to Mysore. Sources give the year as 1784 and as 1787. |
| 1792-1799 | After the defeat of Mysore the Amindivi islands pass to the East India Company and are attached in 1799 to the Kasaragod taluk of South Canara in the Madras Presidency. |
| 18 December 1790 | The Ali Raja surrenders his claim over Minicoy to the East India Company while continuing to administer it against tribute; the arrangement is recognised in writing in 1824. |
| 1847 | A cyclone strikes Kalpeni and throws up the coral boulder bank still lying along its eastern shore; relief and revenue remissions follow from the mainland administration. |
| 1854-1875 | With the tribute in arrears, the British administration takes over the management of the Laccadive group from the Arakkal house, first under sequestration and then permanently. |
| 1885 | The lighthouse at the southern end of Minicoy is built to mark the Nine Degree Channel for shipping between Europe and the East - a structure raised for somebody else's trade on an island with no power supply and no harbour. |
| 1905-1909 | The Arakkal house agrees to surrender its remaining rights in the islands; the transfer is completed on 9 February 1909 and the Laccadive group with Minicoy is attached to Malabar District, the Amindivi group remaining with South Canara. Some accounts date the annexation to 1908. |
Rulers and commanders
The office that held property. Land, house-right and coconut palms descend through women in the matrilineal tarwad, and the karanavar administers the holding on the family's behalf. Since the palms were the whole economy, this office decided more about an islander's life than any sovereign on the mainland did.
Seat: Every inhabited island
The body that governed in practice: it settled disputes, regulated the palm-climbing and boat seasons, managed the mosque and its endowments, and dealt collectively with whoever was collecting tribute. Authority here was assembled rather than inherited, which is why no king list exists for these islands.
Seat: Each island
The headman recognised by the external authority and answerable to it for tribute, for the coir account and for the island's register. The office sat between the jamath and the mainland and was only as strong as both allowed.
Seat: Each island
Minicoy alone is divided into avah villages, each with a village house, an acknowledged head assisted by a bodudatha and by officers holding internal and external portfolios, and a baemedu assembly whose decisions bind the village. It is a working village government of a kind the northern islands do not have, and it belongs with the Maldives rather than with Malabar.
Seat: The eleven avah villages of Minicoy
Held the islands from the Malabar coast and, in the mid-sixteenth century, conferred them as a jagir on the Arakkal house - the transfer that set the islands' political arrangements for the next three and a half centuries.
Dynasty: Kolaswaroopam. Seat: Chirakkal, near Kannur
Held the islands as jagirdar, collected tribute and held the monopoly on buying coir. Headship of the house passed to its eldest member of either sex, which is why the office carries both titles. Its rights in the islands were surrendered in stages and finally in 1909.
Dynasty: Arakkal Swaroopam. Seat: Kannur
Received the allegiance of the northern islands in the 1780s after their dispute with Arakkal over the coir monopoly. On the fall of Mysore the group passed to the East India Company.
Dynasty: Kingdom of Mysore. Seat: Srirangapatna
From 1799 the Amindivi group was administered from South Canara and from 1909 the Laccadives with Minicoy from Malabar - two mainland districts, several hundred kilometres of open sea away, running an archipelago through the amin and the jamath because there was no other machinery to run it with.
Seat: Kozhikode and Mangalore
The history of Lakshadweep from ancient through medieval to modern times, and the rulers, commanders and administrators who shaped it. (8)