Which of the following groups of people of Andaman and Nicobar islands have…
2024
Which of the following groups of people of Andaman and Nicobar islands have migrated from Indian mainland, Myanmar and Sri Lanka?
Answer: A. Indians — Concept. Where an island population is described by ORIGIN — the classification conventionally used for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — two categories are…
- A.
Indians
- B.
Natives
- C.
Nagas
- D.
Marwaris
Attempted by 3 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Concept. Where an island population is described by ORIGIN — the classification conventionally used for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands — two categories are distinguished. The indigenous (aboriginal) category comprises the communities that have inhabited those islands since prehistoric times, and no external homeland is attributed to them. The settler category comprises the communities descended from people who reached the islands from elsewhere, so their source regions can be named. Consequently, when a question names specific regions of arrival, it is describing the settler category and not the aboriginal one.
Application. In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands the settler category is referred to collectively as the "Indians". It was formed by exactly the three migration streams the question names:
Source region | Settler stream it contributed |
|---|---|
Indian mainland | Convicts transported to the colonial penal settlement at Port Blair and their descendants, refugees resettled after the 1947 Partition, ex-servicemen and government settlers |
Myanmar (Burma) | Repatriates of Indian origin who returned to India from the 1960s onward |
Sri Lanka | Tamil repatriates settled in the islands under the Indo-Ceylon agreements |
These settlers and their descendants now form the large majority of the territory’s population. The group of Andaman and Nicobar people that migrated from the Indian mainland, Myanmar and Sri Lanka is therefore the "Indians".
Cross-check — why the other named groups do not fit:
"Natives" — the archipelago’s aboriginal tribes: the Negrito Great Andamanese, Onge, Jarawa and Sentinelese in the Andaman group, and the Mongoloid Nicobarese and Shompen in the Nicobar group. They have lived on these islands for thousands of years, so they are not a stream that arrived from the mainland, Myanmar or Sri Lanka.
"Nagas" — Tibeto-Burman tribal communities of Nagaland and the adjoining hills of north-east India. They are a mainland people and are not one of the recognised population groups of the island territory.
"Marwaris" — a trading and business community of the Marwar region of Rajasthan in north-western India. Individual traders may live anywhere in the country, but Marwaris are not a population category used to describe the islanders.
Result. The Andaman and Nicobar group that migrated from the Indian mainland, Myanmar and Sri Lanka is the "Indians" — the islands’ non-tribal settler population, as distinct from the aboriginal islanders.