Building a “Sea Lexicon” for the Lakshadweep
by Lakshmi Pradeep
Since 2018, when I began my PhD at the NUS under the primary guidance of Dr. Annu Jalais, with Professor Itty Abraham and Dr. Chitra Venkataramani on my committee, I started exploring the unique coral atolls of the Lakshadweep islands, which lie at the intersection of the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, through complicating the concepts of ‘conservation’ and ‘protection’. My objective was to describe nature-society relations in Lakshadweep through the symbolic and environmental meanings of coral reefs. I decided to study these nature-society relations through the concepts of ‘care’, ‘conservation’ and ‘protection’ via an ethnographic study (in-depth interviews, participant observation, house-to-house surveys, genealogies, etc.) on the coastal communities of Lakshadweep. Since then, this work has led me to highlight the many meanings of island protection and its significance for both the islanders as well as the marine biologists who live and conduct research; it also led to an engagement with the changes in these islands because of the ways in which climate change, and more recently certain centrally imposed policies, have affected the lives of the islanders.
While conducting fieldwork more recently, I realised that there needed to be a “Sea Lexicon” of Lakshadweep. Words reveal worlds and it is not enough to know that the boat, in the Lakshadweep, is called an odam. What does an odam symbolically and culturally mean for the islanders of the Lakshadweep? Around this time, I also became a collaborator to the “Southern Collective”: a collect of researchers and practitioners with diverse disciplinary backgrounds working across the northern Indian Ocean region — started by Aarthi Sridhar, Alin Kadfak, Annu Jalais and Rapti Siriwardane, after they received an SSRC grant to develop a “Transregional Collaboratory on the Indian Ocean.” The Co-PIs came together to share common interests related to coastal and marine challenges in the Indian Ocean region, a desire to promote meaningful South-South collaborations, and to build and sustain collaborative partnerships aimed at democratizing knowledge production about marine worlds.
Aarthi Sridhar who started the Dakshin Foundation and who has long worked on coastal communities and Annu Jalais who pioneered human/nonhuman work on the Sundarbans were supportive of building the “Sea Lexicon” through the collaborative efforts of the “Southern Collective” and proposed that it be opened to allow other languages and researchers across the Indian Ocean to bring subjective meaning to some dozen pre-chosen words which might find resonances across the entire region. The project, a “Transregional Collaboration for the Co-creation a Lexicon of the sea in vernacular languages of the Northern Indian Ocean” was born and I decided to anchor the Lakshadweep islands into this digital space.
Our “Sea Lexicon” is a collaborative endeavour that aims to collect words related to the sea in order to co-create a lexicon. These words can lead us to understanding the cultural and social life surrounding the seas and coasts of the Indian Ocean. The uniqueness of these languages is their interconnectedness to histories of migration, navigation patterns, trade, acculturation, as well as co-existence with ecology. At the same time, we foster the importance of documenting the less discussed and unscripted languages of the Indian Ocean with an aim to promote them. I started to collect around a dozen words and the meanings, stories, poems, pictures, beliefs and symbols associated with them. Some examples are monsoon, boat, shell, tide and tuna. Inspired by water, we adopt a fluid approach to collecting these words and comparing them to share and learn from each region. Such a comparative perspective can help us trace the roots of these languages to the routes of the sea. In this sense, the project encourages to think beyond land and territories to the world of islands, lagoons, and seas.
This project is aimed at understanding the sea and ecology of the Northern Indian Ocean through a cultural and linguistic lens. Many of the languages of these regions have undergone creolization. For example, Jeseri, the language of Lakshadweep is a creole of Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam languages. Yet, it retains a unique character. The uniqueness of these languages is interconnected to histories of migration, navigation patterns, trade, acculturation, as well as co-existence with ecology. How do we co-create a lexicon for the sea and ecology-related terms in the vernacular languages across the Northern Indian Ocean? Through a relational and fluid approach to these “sea languages”, we aim to understand the complex relationship between ‘geography and history, insular and global, and routes and roots’ (DeLoughrey, 2007). We want this co-creation of a lexicon to, first, provide deeper insights into the ongoing question of the Anthropocene (Howe & Pandian, 2020; Schneider-Mayerson & Bellamy, 2019), second, highlight the importance of the vernacular, and, finally, to bring deterrestrial imaginations to debates of climate change.
We collaborate with our project partner researchers (consisting of natural and social scientists), NGO heads and activists, and local community members, to create a multi-authored lexicon that can be shared and circulated with a larger aim of promoting these languages in the form of an online interactive website. The project partners and community members will interact and co-labour in the making of the lexicon. Any member who can speak the native language can collaborate to the project without any discrimination based on age, gender or social status. This can ensure a democratic approach in knowledge production without the top-down approach of experts. In our online interactive space, community members can update the etymologies, histories and stories associated with these words. Our focus on the vernacular language and its significance brings a decolonial approach to challenge the Eurocentric domination in knowledge production and circulation.
I now offer a few examples from the sea-lexicon.
“Boat” or odam in the Jeseri language of the Lakshadweep. Odams are sewn boats that were used for navigation in the Lakshadweep Islands. The islanders (except residents of Minicoy) used these sailing vessels for the transport of people and goods until the 1970s. Today, the odam is replaced by passenger vessels and ships. However, the memory of running an odam remains vivid in the minds and stories of the islanders. They remember how they crossed the sea in the middle of rough weather to reach the mainland coasts of Kerala and Mangalore. They made sure that the odams returned by the onset of the monsoon and resumed their journeys only after the monsoons. The odams carried the copra, coir and shells that were traded with the mainland. Some oral accounts state that these sailing boats travelled from the Arabian Gulf to the Malacca Straits. The odam ensured travel to home islands, sometimes guided by dolphins! The Malmis or the social group of navigators were adept in sailing the odam drawing from the oral lessons of their ustads (masters). The islanders claim that their navigation mathematics called the malikanakku is on par with today’s GPS system. The odams were made in pandialas (shipyards) by expert carpenters called bandeyi. The islanders of Chetlat are well-known for their carpentry skills. The inauguration of a new odam is associated with elaborate on-shore rituals. The owners of the odam often undertook the journeys themselves. Sailing the odam is a collaborative activity with division of labour over tasks such as handling the pulleys, cooking for passengers, and determining the directions based on stars and the quadrant. Speed is referred to as thappu and is calculated by pulling sea water using a pulley. The maths (samaha) was performed with an instrument called kamanam (compass). A set of songs called kaumala were also popular among the navigators in their journeys. The odam even had a separate space for conducting Islamic prayers. Odams are classified based on their size and the number of people who are required to row them. Accordingly, there can be small odams which are two-oared, four oared, six oared or eight oared. The journeys out at sea are often recalled with overtones of courage, valour, and shared kinship.
“Coconut trees” or thengu are available in plenty and are the bounty of the Lakshadweep Islands. They are regarded as nature’s wealth for the islands. Coconut is central to island cuisine. For instance, the Kelanji made from rice flour and coconut milk or the dweep sharkara, a sweet dish, are popular dishes that hinge on the coconut as a central ingredient. The tender coconut or chulale is often used to break the fasts held during the holy month of Ramzan. Islanders claim that the rich taste of their coconuts is due to the absence of artificial fertilizers and pesticides. Leaves such as mad, ila, keerani are used instead as fertilizers. Thengu flourish on the organic waste on the island. Coconut trees were important in the construction of house roofs in earlier times. The coconut husks were used in the making of chunnambu or lime. It is a resource that is tied to the islanders’ way of life. The coconut coir was the main import-export item from the islands. Women too are part of this story and lend their labour to copra-making and coir processing. The traveller Al Beruni wrote about the islands as belonging to part of a coir producing group that he called Diva Kanbar. Some scholars suggest that coir was the reason for the Portuguese invasion of the islands. Coconut trees are also tied to traditional land laws and their distribution on the islands. The land-owning group called the Koyas also owned the coconut trees in uninhabited islands. They are said to have discriminated against the coconut tree climbers or the Melacheris. In other words, the story of the thengu is one of social hierarchy and control. However, this mighty thengu has a natural enemy — it is the humble rat!
“Tuna” or choora is the staple food of Lakshadweep Islands. A visitor to the island will be served a tuna curry, fry or the mas pickle that are made from dried skipjack tuna at least once a day. Fishers go tuna fishing early in the morning (not during nights) except on Fridays and during Ramzan. They carry live fish collected from the lagoons as bait for tuna. Tuna fishing on the Lakshadweep islands is based on the pole and line technique. It is said to be a sustainable mode of fishing as it targets only the abundant tuna and the fish is collected and distributed for daily consumption and not really stored. It sustains the livelihood of islanders. Tuna fishing was introduced to the rest of the Lakshadweep islands from Minicoy. This introduction happened during the time of an administrator who is said to have wanted the ‘lazy’ islanders to engage in income-generation work to alleviate their supposed “poverty”. But, as an islander friend pointed out, the administrators who introduced fishing had forgotten to introduce the customary laws from Minicoy onto the islands. In his opinion, all the conflicts regarding the use of fish and fishing grounds today is due to the absence of a robust customary law unlike that of Minicoy. Scientists point out that there is an increased competition today for live bait where fishers resort to the use of torches in the night. The demand for reef fishes in distant markets outside the islands are cited as another reason for this tension. Tuna is canned in the sole canning factory in Minicoy and exported to the mainland. The increasing market demand for canned tuna and reef fishes are poised to upset the delicate arrangements around the sustainable fishery of these fragile islands.
“Drinking water” or thanni, the mineral rich groundwater of the islands, has become a central concern on the Lakshadweep islands. Fresh water sources on the island were derived from ponds and wells where rainwater got trapped in creeks of crevices of rocks. It is the presence of drinking water that determines inhabitation on an island. R. H. Ellis, a British officer, stated in 1924 that the islanders had resisted the British attempt to colonize the uninhabited islands with people due to absence of fresh water (Ellis, 2010: 133). Elders pointed out to me that the presence of fresh water is Allah’s miracle. This water fills ponds and wells and becomes the sole drinking water source for the year. The presence of fresh water in some ponds are tied to the sacred landscape on the island as they are believed to be created by djinns (an invisible non-human spirit). In Kalpeni, pond water is considered to have healing qualities, especially for curing itches and rashes in children. The water is also collected during the holy month of Ramzan to break the fast in the evening. However, islanders now tell another story. With the dredging of corals on the island around the 1980s and with increased construction of buildings, the water on the islands has become polluted. Excessive pumping of groundwater has led to a scarcity of thanni and today, thanni tastes salty in many islands including the capital island of Kavaratti, and the islanders have to rely on the desalinated water derived from the desalination plants. There is real fear that fresh water ponds might soon completely disappear. The islanders believe that corals support freshwater sources and any change in reef ecology could translate into a severe water crisis. Thanni marks and sustains island life and survival in the Lakshadweep.
Through the Sea Lexicon, we hope to bring to prominence certain minority languages which are largely neglected in mainland discussions. We want to co-create a lexicon that can be circulated among the community as well as used for future reference. We also expect that research into the language and ecology of these seascapes, which, for me, is that of the Lakshadweep, can provide us newer insights into tackling the problems of climate change and ecological crises as they are variously experienced. The online interactive platform can foster awareness on these matters in future as well. This work is an exercise in participatory research based on meaningful sharing, firm ethics and with the aim of democratizing knowledge — its natural platform is therefore online. Any member of the community or researcher can share data and own copyright over their explanation of the words they provide from their communities as this is a creative commons arrangement. This “Sea Lexicon” facilitates my trying to make sense of notions of hope and despair that emanate from the care, conservation and protection of this archipelago in our quickly changing Anthropocene times that are directly threatened by both climate change as well as neoliberal unsustainable imaginations of development.
Further reading and resources
DeLoughrey, E. M. (2007). Routes and roots: Navigating Carribean and Pacific island literatures. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.
Howe, C; & Pandian, A. (Eds). (2020). Anthropocene unseen: A Lexicon. punctum books
Schneider-Mayerson, M., & Bellamy, B. R. (Eds.). (2019). An ecotopian lexicon. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Lakshmi Pradeep is a PhD Candidate at National University of Singapore with training in Anthropology. Her research interests include ecology, science and island studies.
Email: rpradeep.lakshmi@gmail.com
