Residents of India’s Lakshadweep islands resent gov’t’s new moves

Anger and fear in the islands whose administrator plans a slew of measures that threaten livelihood and ecology.

A series of regulations proposed by an administrator belonging to India’s governing party in a set of islands in the Arabian Sea has caused widespread resentment and fear among its residents. Lakshadweep is an idyllic archipelago of 36 islands – 10 of them inhabited – spread over a 32-square-kilometre area in the sea, about 200 km off the southwestern coast of the Indian Peninsula. Residents in the smallest among India’s eight “Union Territories” (UTs), with a population of 65,000 people – 97 percent of them Muslims – are fearful of a series of moves by its right-wing administrator appointed by the federal government.