History of Andaman and Nicobar Islands: From Ancient Tribes to Modern India

Introduction to the History of Andaman and Nicobar Islands

Most travellers come to the Andamans for the beaches, but they leave surprised by everything else. The history of Andaman and Nicobar Islands stretches back tens of thousands of years — far longer than almost any other inhabited place in India — and takes in Chola naval expeditions, Danish colonists defeated by malaria, a British prison that became a symbol of the freedom struggle, a Japanese occupation, and a tsunami that permanently redrew parts of the coastline.

Knowing that story changes how the islands feel. The ruins on Ross Island stop being a photo stop and become the wreckage of a town that once called itself the Paris of the East. The Cellular Jail stops being a monument and becomes a building where men were held alone for years. If you are planning a trip, choosing from Andaman Nicobar Tour Packages that keep a full day or two in Port Blair gives you the history alongside the beaches rather than instead of them.

Here is the whole story, in order.

Ancient History and Indigenous Tribes of Andaman and Nicobar Islands

Long before any empire took an interest, the Andamans were home to people who had arrived during one of humanity's earliest migrations out of Africa. Genetic studies suggest that the Andamanese have largely remained isolated from other populations for tens of thousands of years, making this one of the longest continuous separations recorded anywhere. The oldest archaeological evidence found in the islands is roughly 2,200 years old, which reflects what survives in a hot, wet, forested climate rather than when people actually arrived.

Four indigenous groups are native to the Andaman group:

• Great Andamanese — once the largest population, now reduced to a few dozen people
• Onge — of Little Andaman, numbering around a hundred
• Jarawa — of South and Middle Andaman, several hundred strong and in limited contact
• Sentinelese — of North Sentinel Island, who remain entirely uncontacted

The Nicobar group is home to two further peoples: the Nicobarese, around 30,000 in number, and the Shompen, a small inland community on Great Nicobar.

All are protected under the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Protection of Aboriginal Tribes) Regulation of 1956. Tourists cannot enter tribal reserves, photograph indigenous people or interact with them. It is worth knowing before you travel, because any operator promising a "tribal tour" is either misleading you or breaking the law — and contact has historically been lethal for communities with no immunity to common illnesses.

Also read: Best Time to Visit Andaman

Where the names came from. Both island groups carry names given by outsiders. Andaman is widely believed to come from Handuman or Andoman, a Malay rendering of Hanuman, linking the islands to the Ramayana. Nicobar has a clearer trail: a Tamil inscription from the reign of Rajendra Chola I, dated around 1050 CE at Thanjavur, calls the Nicobars Ma-Nakkavaram — "the great land of the naked". Centuries later, Marco Polo recorded them as Necuveran, a European mangling of the same Tamil name, which became Nicobar under the British. That same inscription calls the Andamans Timaittivu, "islands of impurity" — a reminder that early visitors found the archipelago hostile rather than idyllic.

In the early 11th century, Rajendra Chola I used the Nicobars as a staging post for his campaign against the Srivijaya empire in present-day Indonesia. It is the first documented case of an Indian power using the archipelago strategically — a thousand years before the Indian Navy established its Andaman and Nicobar Command at Port Blair. The Cholas never settled the islands. They used them as navies have used the Andamans ever since: a forward position in the middle of the Bay of Bengal, controlling the approaches to the Strait of Malacca.

Planning your first Andaman trip? The Andaman Coastal Crusade covers Port Blair, Havelock and Neil Island at a comfortable pace — enough time for the Cellular Jail and Ross Island without cutting into beach days.

European Exploration and Early Settlements

For several centuries after the Cholas, the islands appear only in passing — in Arab, Chinese and European sailors' accounts, usually as a place to avoid. Ships that wrecked there rarely sent survivors home, and the archipelago built a reputation among mariners that kept most of them well offshore.

The first sustained European attempt to settle came not from Britain but from Denmark.

Danish East India Company settlers reached the Nicobars in the mid-1750s and claimed the group, naming it Frederiksøerne — the Frederick Islands. What followed was two centuries of futility. Malaria killed settlers faster than ships could replace them. The colony was founded, abandoned, refounded and abandoned again across roughly a dozen attempts, with Moravian missionaries dying in similar numbers. Austria made its own brief attempt at Nancowry in the 1770s with equally little to show. Denmark finally relinquished its claim to Britain in 1868 without a single surviving settlement.

Also read: How to Reach Andaman by Flight

The British arrived in 1789, when the East India Company sent Lieutenant Archibald Blair to survey the Andamans and establish a base. He chose a harbour on the southeast coast at what is now Chatham Island, and the anchorage was named Port Blair after him. The settlement shifted north in 1792 to a site called Port Cornwallis, and by 1796 it was abandoned entirely — defeated by the same malaria and dysentery that had broken the Danes.

The British then left the archipelago alone for sixty years. They returned for reasons other than trade or strategy. It was the need for somewhere to put people.

British Rule and the Establishment of Penal Settlements

After the Revolt of 1857, the Company held thousands of captured rebels and had nowhere to put them. The answer was a penal settlement as far from the mainland as the Bay of Bengal allowed.

On 10 March 1858, a ship carrying 200 convicts reached Port Blair under Dr James Pattison Walker. The penal settlement had begun, and with it came the name that still resonates in Indian memory: Kala Pani, the black water. For a prisoner from the Gangetic plains, crossing the sea meant losing caste, community and any realistic hope of return. The journey was part of the sentence.

Conditions were brutal from the first month. Convicts cleared jungle by hand in a malarial climate, built their own barracks, and worked until the forest or the fever took them. Hundreds died within the first year. Viper Island, with its gallows and its prison for those who broke settlement rules, became the punishment within the punishment.

The indigenous population did not accept the occupation of their land. In 1859, Andamanese warriors fought British troops in what is remembered as the Battle of Aberdeen — a defeat for the islanders, marked today by a memorial near the Rajiv Gandhi Water Sports Complex in Port Blair.

In 1872, a convict named Sher Ali Afridi stabbed the viceroy, Lord Mayo, during an inspection at Hopetown. Mayo died of his wounds — the only Viceroy of India ever assassinated in office.

While convicts cleared forest on the main island, the administration built a small European town for itself on Ross Island, across Port Blair harbour. Ross had a church, a bakery, a swimming pool, a ballroom, tennis courts, printing presses and the Chief Commissioner's residence, powered and plumbed to a standard most mainland towns could not match. Officers called it the Paris of the East. It lasted barely eighty years: a severe earthquake in 1941 wrecked much of it, and the Japanese occupation finished the job the following year.

Most travellers spend a night or two in the capital at the start and end of a trip, and comparing Hotels in Port Blair near Aberdeen Bazaar puts you within a short drive of the jail, the Ross Island jetty and the museums.

Want the history without rushing the islands? The Andaman Tropical Paradise package pairs Port Blair's heritage sites with premium stays in Havelock, so the Cellular Jail and Radhanagar Beach both get the time they deserve.

Cellular Jail: The Story of India's Freedom Struggle

By the 1890s, the British wanted something more systematic than a mere settlement. What they built between 1896 and 1906 was an architectural instrument of isolation.

The Cellular Jail had seven wings radiating from a central watchtower, three storeys high, and contained 693 cells. Every cell held one prisoner. No cell faced another — the back of each wing faced the front of the next, so no inmate could see or signal another. Solitary confinement was not a punishment inside the jail. It was the design.

The prisoner list reads like a roll call of the independence movement. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his brother Ganesh Savarkar were both held here, as were Barindra Kumar Ghose and others convicted in the Alipore Bomb Case, and later Batukeshwar Dutt, Bhagat Singh's co-accused in the Assembly bombing. Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, transported after 1857, was among the earliest.

Also read: Things to do in Andaman with Kids

Prisoners were set to work on oil mills and coir pounding, with daily quotas that were almost impossible to meet, and they were flogged when they fell short. Hunger strikes in 1933 led to force-feeding and the deaths of three prisoners, including Mahavir Singh. News reached the mainland and caused enough public outrage that the government began winding the settlement down, with political prisoners repatriated by 1938.

Four of the seven wings were demolished after independence. Three survive, along with the central tower, and the complex is now a National Memorial. The evening light-and-sound show tells the prisoners' story in the courtyard itself, and it is the single most worthwhile hour you can spend in Port Blair. Time it early in your trip — it gives context to everything else you will see.

Japanese Occupation of Andaman and Nicobar Islands During World War II

On 23 March 1942, Japanese forces landed at Port Blair. The British garrison surrendered with little resistance, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands became the only part of India to fall under enemy occupation during the Second World War.

The three and a half years that followed were the hardest in the islands' modern history. Food imports stopped, and the population faced severe shortages. Islanders were conscripted for forced labour building airstrips and bunkers — squat concrete structures still standing at Corbyn's Cove, on Ross Island and elsewhere. Suspected spies were tortured and executed. In the Homfreyganj massacre of January 1944, 44 civilians were shot.

In December 1943, Japan transferred nominal authority over the islands to the Azad Hind government of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Netaji visited Port Blair on 29–30 December 1943 and raised the Indian tricolour — the first time the flag of a claimed Indian government had flown over Indian soil. He renamed the Andamans Swaraj Dweep (self-rule island) and the Nicobars Shaheed Dweep (martyrs' island).

It is worth being precise about what this event did and did not mean, because several accounts get it wrong. Netaji and the Indian National Army did not drive the Japanese out. Japanese military control continued throughout, and the Azad Hind administration never held real authority on the ground. The occupation ended when Japan surrendered, and British forces reoccupied the islands in October 1945. The flag-hoisting's significance is both symbolic and considerable, but the military history is clear.

Andaman and Nicobar Islands During India's Independence

India became independent in 1947, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands became part of the Indian Union.

The decades that followed reshaped the islands' population more than any colonial project had. Settlers arrived in waves:

• Bengali refugees displaced from East Pakistan after Partition, settled across South and Middle Andaman
• Tamil and Telugu repatriates from Sri Lanka and Burma
• Ranchi settlers from the Chotanagpur plateau, many descended from labourers brought during the colonial period
• Moplah (Mappila) families, descendants of those deported after the 1921 Malabar rebellion

This diversity is why the Andamans today are one of the most genuinely mixed places in India — a Bengali-speaking majority alongside Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Malayalam and Nicobarese communities. It is also why island food tastes nothing as you expect: fish cooked in mustard beside coconut-heavy Tamil preparations in the middle of the Bay of Bengal.

Travelling as a couple? The Honeymoon Sunset Escape builds a quieter itinerary around sunsets and beachfront stays, with a day in Port Blair for the Cellular Jail before you head out to the islands.

Formation of the Union Territory and Historical Milestones

On 1 November 1956, under the States Reorganisation Act, the islands were constituted as a Union Territory with Port Blair as the capital — administered directly from Delhi through a Lieutenant Governor rather than having a state government. The Protection of Aboriginal Tribes Regulation came into force the same year.

The 2004 tsunami. The most recent chapter is also the most destructive. The Indian Ocean earthquake of 26 December 2004 struck off Sumatra, close enough that the Nicobar group was hit within minutes — before any warning could be given. Around 3,500 people died or went missing across the territory, overwhelmingly in the Nicobars, where Car Nicobar, Katchal and Campbell Bay were devastated and entire villages erased. The land itself moved: parts of the Nicobars subsided by more than a metre, permanently flooding coastal areas, and Indira Point, the southernmost tip of India, dropped enough that its lighthouse base now stands in water. The Andaman group further north suffered far less, though the Neil Island jetty and stretches of the South Andaman coast sustained severe damage.

Explore packages: Andaman and Nicobar package for family

The indigenous communities came through with remarkably few deaths compared with the settler population. The Onge, Jarawa and Great Andamanese groups appear to have read the signs — the receding water, the animal behaviour — and moved inland in time. Knowledge accumulated over thirty thousand years of living with that sea did what no warning system could.

The renamings. On 30 December 2018, the 75th anniversary of Netaji's flag-hoisting, Ross Island became Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Dweep, Havelock Island became Swaraj Dweep and Neil Island became Shaheed Dweep — replacing British officers' names with the vocabulary of the freedom struggle. In September 2024, Port Blair itself was renamed Sri Vijaya Puram.

Both old and new names stay in everyday use. Ferry tickets, hotel listings, and local conversation still use Havelock and Neil far more often than Swaraj and Shaheed, so you will hear both throughout your trip. If you are choosing where to stay, Hotels in Havelock Island and Hotels in Neil Island are still listed under the names everyone uses.

Key dates to note:

Looking for a slower, more comfortable trip? The Andaman Oasis Escape spends longer on each island with luxury beachfront stays — the right pace if you want the museums and heritage sites without a packed schedule.

Famous Historical Places to Visit in Andaman and Nicobar Islands

Almost all of it is still standing, and almost all of it sits in or near Port Blair.

Cellular Jail National Memorial — the three surviving wings, the central tower, the gallows room and the evening light-and-sound show. Allow two to three hours, and book the show on your first evening.

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Dweep (Ross Island) — a 20-minute boat ride from Aberdeen Jetty. Colonial ruins swallowed by banyan roots, the church, the bakery, the Japanese bunkers, and deer and peacocks wandering through all of it.

Chatham Saw Mill — established in 1883 on the island where Archibald Blair first landed, and it remains one of the oldest working sawmills in Asia. The small forest museum next door is worth the stop.

Samudrika Naval Marine Museum and the Anthropological Museum — the best accessible introduction to the islands' indigenous communities and marine ecology, and the only responsible way to learn about the tribes.

Viper Island — the pre-Cellular Jail prison site and gallows, reached by a harbour cruise.

Japanese bunkers at Corbyn's Cove — wartime concrete sitting right beside a swimming beach, five kilometres from the city.

Two to three days based in the capital will comfortably cover all of it. A good spread of Hotels in Andaman Islands makes it easy to open with a historical stretch in Port Blair and move on to Havelock and Neil afterwards.

Here are a few practical notes if history is part of your reason for going. Give Port Blair more than a transit night — most itineraries treat the capital as an airport stop, and the heritage sites need a full day at minimum. Book island travel in advance, since Havelock and Neil are reachable only by sea; booking your ferry from Port Blair to Havelock early matters most between December and January, when sailings fill up weeks out. Pick your month deliberately — October to February gives the calmest seas and the most comfortable weather for walking around ruins and jetties.

 

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