DADRA AND NAGAR HAVELI

union territory, located between Gujarat and Maharashtra states, western India, 80 miles (130 km) north of Bombay. The capital is Silvassa. The union territory consists of two sections: Dadra, with 3 villages, and Nagar Haveli, with the town of Silvassa and 68 villages. It is administered by the central Indian government. Forests cover some 40 percent of the area, the rest being devoted to the cultivation of rice and other cereals and to the grazing of livestock. Industrial development is limited. Dadra and Nagar Haveli came under Portuguese control between 1783 and 1785, and in 1954 indigenous freedom movements forced the Portuguese to abandon it to India. It became a union territory in 1961. The population is predominantly Hindu, and nearly 80 percent are agricultural Adivasi tribal peoples. Silvassa is the commercial centre for the territory. Area 190 square miles (491 square km). Pop. (1991 prelim.) 138,401. union territory of India, located in the western part of the country between the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, some 15 miles (24 kilometres) from the Arabian Sea and 80 miles north of Bombay. It consists of two sections: Dadra, with three villages, and Nagar Haveli, with 69 villages. Occupying 190 square miles (491 square kilometres), it is administered by the governor of Goa. The capital is Silvassa. Additional reading Works dealing specifically with the west and west-central area prior to its annexation by India are mainly in Portuguese; see Henry Scholberg, Archana Ashok Kakodker, and Carmo Azevedo, Bibliography of Goa and the Portuguese in India (1982). See also M.N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: The Response to the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century (1976); and K.S. Mathew, Portuguese and the Sultanate of Gujarat, 15001573 (1986). Ganesh Dass, Socio-economic Profile of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, ed. by K.D. Ballal (1974); and P.S. Lele, Dadra and Nagar Haveli (1987), provide useful overviews. S.S. Desai, Goa, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli (1976), is a study of the three union territories. Deryck O. Lodrick Sudhir Vyankatesh Wanmali History The history of Dadra and Nagar Haveli before the medieval period remains obscure. In AD 1262, a Rajput invader defeated the local Koli chieftains of the area and became the ruler of Ramnagar, a small state that included Nagar Haveli in its territory. The region remained under Rajput rule until the mid-18th century, when the Marathas acquired Nagar Haveli. Dadra and Nagar Haveli came under Portuguese rule in the late 18th century. The Marathas ceded Nagar Haveli in 1783 as compensation for a Portuguese vessel that their navy had destroyed. Two years later Dadra was acquired, becoming a kind of fief. After India achieved independence in 1947, Goan nationalists sought to break away from Portugal; and their first successes were the seizure of Dadra on the night of July 21, 1954, and their capture of Nagar Haveli two weeks later. A pro-Indian administration was formed in these enclaves, and on June 1, 1961, it requested accession to the Indian Union. The Indian government had already acknowledged their incorporation into the union from the day of liberation but made it official on Aug. 11, 1961. Deryck O. Lodrick