Adrift in the Bay at Home in the Island

Abstract

Andaman Islands, located in the Bay of Bengal and straddling the margins of South and Southeast newline Asia, is separated from the Indian mainland by almost one thousand kms from the mouth of River newline Hooghly. The Islands are a central point of convergence of national-international waters, marking the newline liquid borderlands between South Asia and Southeast Asia, in the sea of islands connected by newline historic ties to the places and people in Southeast Asia and in the continental mainland, that is, South newline Asia, alike. This eastern division of the Indian Ocean has remained distinct from the Indian Ocean newline World with its volume of migration, both climate-driven as well as due to the need for labour, which newline saw especially increased numbers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The three prominent newline phases in the history of the archipelago, that is, the British colonial period, the Japanese occupation newline period, and the post-Independence period, are marked by a commonality of desire to create an island newline outpost in the Bay of Bengal. This strategically-located , hyper-masculine island-space, situated at newline the edge of the Indian nation, is the locus of the Indian nation-state s geopolitical anxieties and newline international powerplay. Post-colonial acts of integrating the nation-state s territory goes hand-in- newline hand with the androcentric imagery of pioneering, productive, and patriotic settlerhood, toiling for the newline development of the nation. newline The Islands have been the theatre of both colonial and post-colonial policies of colonisation and newline social engineering. In the aftermath of India s eastern Partition (1947), residual Bengali migrant newline population languishing in the refugee camps of mainland India were recruited for transportation to newline Neil Island (now Shaheed Dweep) under the postcolonial state s rehabilitation scheme (1967-69). newline They consisted almost exclusively of lower-caste Namasudra population proficient in agriculture, newline fishing and allied activities. Rehabilitation revolved around the male head of the heteronormative newline family unit, who was the eligible recipient of land and other facilities to settle themselves in the newline Island. The women who reached the Islands as part of the settler household units, however, were newline viewed merely as persons attached to the male head. The settler women s lifeworlds have not been newline adequately represented in existing discourse. Drawing from archival sources and juxtaposing these newline traces with oral narratives of the settler women , the thesis aims to address this oversight. The newline settler women s narratives of negotiating with the rehabilitation machinery; transportation and newline adaptation to the island ecology, establishment of settlements, and everyday struggle with scarcity; newline their claim-making as Islanders and settlers ; and finally, the close rooting of their identity with newline place, given the context of their Partition-consequent displacement(s) and altered ways of newline remembering, offer a rich framework for studying gendered accounts of migration, dislocation and newline formation of identities in post-Independence India. newline The archipelago, owing to its strategic location in the frontier zone , is at the centre of a series of newline ongoing development projects that raise grave concerns regarding the sustainability of the island newline habitats. The tectonically precarious position of the archipelago renders it vulnerable to natural newline calamities, and reckless expansion of tourism and allied industries pose a burgeoning threat to the newline island ecosystem. The contemporary sweep of changes is steadily shifting the Island s fluid newline geographies and with it the memories of the first-generation settlers. In the backdrop of these newline contemporary changes, the unofficial histories of statist non-actors are central to developing an newline island-centric framework of gendered histories of not only the Partition, but more significantly, the