This book highlights the significant, yet underestimated, place of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in socio-cultural and historical studies of the Indian Ocean region. British penal colonialism, Japanese occupation during the Second World War as well as the post-Independence migration of Partition refugees, repatriates and migrants from all over South Asia left a deep imprint on local society. These features render the islands an ideal sociological showcase for the study of historical manifestations. Multiple castes, classes, communities, religions, and languages reflect the social complexity of South Asia and reveal entanglements between the British Empire, the Indian nation-state, and destination countries of South Asian overseas migration. This volume brings together interdisciplinary theorizing rooted in historical theory and scholarship stemming from ethnographic observation, macro-level studies of South Asia nation-states and micro-level studies of local communities in vivid and meaningful dialogue with each other. It challenges the analytical usefulness of Euro-centric perceptions of time-structured historical models as the only valid means of explaining the present, and explores alternative analytical avenues opened by a spacebound concept of history.
This volume presents multidisciplinary perspectives on questions of ethnohistory, identity, spatiality, and migration on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and is a pertinent addition to scholarship on methodological praxes of such enquiry. It will be of lasting use to anthropologists, historians, sociologists, and administrators.