The sudden national focus on Lakshadweep as India’s answer to the Maldives has unwittingly re-foregrounded the complaints the archipelago’s Muslim-majority population has been voicing for months about an attack on its way of life by the government.
Local politicians on the archipelago accuse the authorities of targeting residents’ food habits, livelihood, social mores, even the language of instruction.
The publicity over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to Lakshadweep, the subsequent cyber war and the row over the derogatory comments by three Maldivian deputy ministers has led to many Indians cancelling their holiday bookings in the island nation.
Celebrities such as Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar and Sachin Tendulkar, as well as some BJP leaders, have joined hundreds of Indian social media users in plugging domestic tourist destinations, some of them portraying Lakshadweep as an alternative to the Maldives.
But non-BJP parties in Lakshadweep — an archipelago off the Kerala coast known for its coral reefs and pristine beaches — are not amused and want the rest of the country to take note of their problems first.
“People here are faced with serious issues such as interference in our livelihood, food habits, education system, religious practices and our very way of life,” Asif Ali, Kavaratti unit joint secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party and former panchayat member, told The Telegraph on Monday.
“We are all for development and revenue generation through responsible tourism, but we have been facing an unprecedented ordeal over the past three years since the current administrator took charge.”
Praful Khoda Patel, who assumed charge in December 2020, has ushered in several unpopular reforms.
These include excluding beef from school midday meals, banning cow slaughter, an anti-goonda law that is seen as a tactic against dissenters, a push for lifting prohibition, shutting down local dairy farms to allegedly favour Amul, and retrenching about 3,500 government employees.
Beef was restored to the midday meal menu following a Supreme Court order last May, while the liquor policy is awaiting implementation.
Lakshadweep’s directorate of education issued an order last month replacing the Kerala board syllabus in the archipelago’s schools with the CBSE curriculum.
“Our children will not be learning in the Malayalam medium from the next academic year although Malayalam is our main educational language here,” Ali rued.
These were some of the points raised in a memorandum that the NCP’s Lakshadweep state committee submitted to the Prime Minister during his recent visit to the islands.
Lakshadweep Lok Sabha member Mohammed Faizal P.P. had earlier written to Union home minister Amit Shah and education minister Dharmendra Pradhan for a relook at the curriculum change.
P.P. Rahim, a former CPM local committee member in Kavaratti, echoed Ali. “The scrapping of the Malayalam medium in the schools is a huge blow to our people, who have traditionally headed to Kerala for higher education,” he told this newspaper. The few undergraduate and master’s courses offered by Calicut University at three of its centres on the islands have been shifted to the University of Pondicherry.
“All this is being done to cut our umbilical cord with Kerala, which we call our mainland. We share so much with Kerala, including language; we have marital ties and depend on Kerala for higher education and healthcare,” Rahim said.
“The draft law (in August 2023) to lift prohibition on an archipelago where almost everyone is Muslim has the ulterior motive of disrupting our traditions. Why else is an administrator from Gujarat (a dry state) trying to pump liquor into Lakshadweep?”
