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Developing Terra Nullius: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Indigeneity in the Andaman Islands

Sen, Uditi

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Abstract

Copyright © 2017 Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History. This article explores the legal structures and discursive framings informing the governance of one particular backward region of India, the Andaman Islands. I trace the shifting patterns of occupation and development of the islands in the colonial and postcolonial periods, with a focus on the changes wrought by independence in 1947 and the eventual history of planned development there. I demonstrate how intersecting discourses of indigenous savagery/primitivism and the geographical emptiness were repeatedly mobilized in colonial-era surveys and postcolonial policy documents. Postcolonial visions of developing the Andaman Islands ushered in a settler-colonial governmentality, infused with genocidal fantasies of the dying savage. Laws professing to protect aboriginal Jarawas actually worked to unilaterally extend Indian sovereignty over the lands and bodies of a community clearly hostile to such incorporation. I question the current exclusion of India from the global geographies of settler-colonialism and argue that the violent and continuing history of indigenous marginalization in the Andaman Islands represents a de facto operation of a logic of terra nullius.

Citation

Sen, U. (2017). Developing Terra Nullius: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Indigeneity in the Andaman Islands. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 59(4), 944-973. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417517000330

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 23, 2016
Online Publication Date Sep 29, 2017
Publication Date 2017-10
Deposit Date Mar 5, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Comparative Studies in Society and History
Print ISSN 0010-4175
Electronic ISSN 1475-2999
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 59
Issue 4
Pages 944-973
DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417517000330
Keywords Sociology and Political Science; History
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/884887
Publisher URL https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/developing-terra-nullius-colonialism-nationalism-and-indigeneity-in-the-andaman-islands/8F0B5F996A88F1DB8E8B5D7B54AD8E8F
Additional Information License: Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2017

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