Nicobar Islands · Island Realms

People

Name	Years	Field	Known for
John Richardson	1896–1978	Bishop and parliamentarian	A Nicobarese from Car Nicobar who became an Anglican bishop, translated the Bible into Nicobarese — published in 1970 — and was nominated to the first Lok Sabha in 1952 to represent the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. He was imprisoned and tortured under the Japanese occupation and lost two sons in it. Padma Shri in 1965, Padma Bhushan in 1975. No single person has shaped the modern Nicobarese record more.
The Nicobarese Tribal Councils	—	Community governance	The village and island councils through which customary land is held and represented, and the bodies that have publicly contested the Great Nicobar development project and the land consents attached to it. Listed collectively because that is how they act and how the record names them.
The Chowra potters	—	Craft	Named collectively because the record names them collectively. Chowra's monopoly on pot-making, and the standing it gave a small island inside the group's exchange system, is one of the most-cited features of Nicobarese social organisation in the anthropological literature.
Danish and Austrian expedition surgeons and naturalists	—	Early documentation	The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European attempts to settle the Nancowry harbour failed, mostly to malaria, but produced the first written vocabularies, sketches and descriptions of Nicobarese life. They are the earliest external record there is, and they were made by people whose settlements the islands outlasted.

People from Nicobar Islands who shaped its history, arts, science, sport and public life. (4)