LAKSHADWEEP

formerly (195673) Laccadive, Minicoy, and Amindivi Islands, union territory of India. It is a group of some two dozen islands with a total land area of 12 square miles (32 square kilometres) scattered over 30,000 square miles of the Arabian Sea. The easternmost island lies about 185 miles (300 kilometres) off the western coast of the state of Kerala. Ten of the islands are inhabited. The administrative centre is Kavaratti. The name Lakshadweep means Hundred Thousand Islands in the Malayalam language and also in Sanskrit. formerly (195673) Laccadive, Minicoy, And Amindivi Islands, union territory of India, comprising a group of islands in the Arabian Sea, about 185 miles (300 km) off the southwestern coast of the Indian mainland. The territory includes 27 islands (only 10 of which are inhabited), with a total land area of 12 square miles (32 square km). The capital is Kavaratti. Most of the islands came under the control of the mainland Hindu Kulasekhara dynasty and passed subsequently to the Cola (Kolathiri). When a Kolathiri princess married a Muslim convert in the 12th century, the islands became a part of the only Islamic dominion in the Kerala region. The Portuguese first visited the islands in May 1498 and built forts there, but about 1545 the inhabitants rose against them. The British obtained sovereignty over the islands about the end of the 18th century and assumed direct administration in 1908. Having passed to India upon its independence in 1947, the island groups were consolidated in 1956 into the nation's smallest union territory. Of the territorial group, Minicoy Island in the south is separated from the Amindivi (northernmost) and the Laccadives by the Nine Degree Channel. The islands are small, none exceeding about a mile in breadth, and the soil is light coral sand, beneath which, a few feet down, lies a stratum of coral stretching over the whole of the islands. The people are Moplahs (of mixed Indian and Arab descent), and the great majority are Muslim. Malayalam is by far the most commonly spoken language. Coconut fibre, copra, and fish are notable economic products. Pop. (1991) 51,707. Additional reading General introductions are offered in N.S. Mannadiar (ed.), Lakshadweep (1977), a gazetteer; M. Ramunny, Lakshadweep, 2nd ed. (1979); and T.K. Mukundan, Laksha Dweep: A Hundred Thousand Islands (1979). William A. Noble History Missionary activity in the 7th century AD and continued contact with Arab traders eventually led to the conversion of all the islanders to Islam. Sometime before 1100 a small Hindu kingdom on the Malabar Coast annexed the islands, and after the fall of the Kulasekhara dynasty of Kerala in 1102 they passed to the Kolathiris, another small Hindu dynasty. Later in the 12th century, after a Kolathiri princess married a Muslim convert, a separate kingdom (including the islands that eventually formed Lakshadweep) was set up in the Cannanore area in order to protect the Keralan tradition of matrilineal descent. Successive bibis (female rulers) and their husbands ruled the islands, until control of the Amindivis passed to Tipu Sultan in the 1780s. When Tipu was killed in battle with the British in 1799, the Amindivis came under British control. The bibi and her husband were permitted to retain the other islands and receive income from them in exchange for an annual payment. These payments repeatedly were in arrears, and in 1908 the bibi ceded to the British direct administration of these islands. Sovereignty was transferred to India upon Indian independence in 1947, and the islands were constituted a union territory in 1956. William A. Noble