Naming the empire: The legacy of the revolt of 1857 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands

The place names do not just indicate a location, but can also serve as a memory of political power, history, and evolving notions of identity.In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the colonial naming, the colonial power, and the colonial memory of resistance in South Asia is an important case study.After the Revolt of 1857, the British in 1858 established a penal settlement at Port Blair, the islands became an important place of Colonial punishment, surveillance, labour and exile.In this growing colonial environment, a number of areas were named after British officials and army soldiers.The colonial names of Havelock Island and Neil Island are important since they were linked to military officers involved in suppressing the Revolt of 1857.Concurrently, other names like Ross Island and Port Blair have an earlier history of British surveying and administration and are not only understood within the history of 1857.This article explores how colonial naming practices, imperial spatial control, the post-1857 penal settlement, and the reworking of the past impacted each other.It challenges the colonial naming of Havelock and Neil and Ross islands as well as the postcolonial claims to renaming them after Swaraj, martyrs and Subhas Chandra Bose, and the creation of a new geographical commemoration vocabulary.These names are therefore a testament to the ways in which geographical names can become a place where colonial power, resistance, and historical memory converge.