Rutland Island is an island of the
Andaman Islands
The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between th ...
. It belongs to the
South Andaman
South Andaman Island is the southernmost island of the Great Andaman and is home to the majority of the population of the Andaman Islands.
It belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman an ...
administrative
district
A district is a type of administrative division that, in some countries, is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or counties, several municipalities, subdivisions o ...
, part of the
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n
union territory of
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India consisting of 572 islands, of which 37 are inhabited, at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The territory is about north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated f ...
.
The island is located south from
Port Blair
Port Blair () is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division (''tehsil'') of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South An ...
.
History
The island used to be home to the
Jangil
The Jangil (also Rutland Jarawa) were one of the Andamanese indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, located in the Bay of Bengal. They were distributed through the interior of Rutland Island, and were given the name Rutland Jarawa because i ...
, one of the indigenous
Andamanese
The Andamanese are the indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, part of India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands union territory in the southeastern part of the Bay of Bengal in Southeast Asia. The Andamanese peoples are among the various groups ...
groups. The Jangil (also called "Rutland Jarawa" since they were thought to have been related to the
Jarawa Jarawa may refer to:
* Jarawas (Andaman Islands), one of the indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands
** Jarawa language (Andaman Islands)
* Jarawa (Berber tribe), a Berber tribal confederacy that flourished in northwest Africa during the seventh ...
of South Andaman) occupied much of the interior of the island according to mid-19th century
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
accounts; however, their interactions with outsiders were few and far between. Up to the early 20th century there are only a handful of documented encounters with Jangil individuals. The last documented encounter was in 1907, and when in the 1920s a more extensive expedition to the island's interior was conducted, no traces of their active habitation were found; the Jangil had become extinct.
From time to time other indigenous Andamanese, such as the
Onge
The Onge (also Önge, Ongee, and Öñge) are an Andamanese ethnic group, indigenous to the Andaman Islands in Southeast Asia at the Bay of Bengal, currently administered by India. They are traditionally hunter-gatherers and fishers, but al ...
from Little Andaman Island to the south and
Great Andamanese
The Great Andamanese are an indigenous people of the Great Andaman archipelago in the Andaman Islands. Historically, the Great Andamanese lived throughout the archipelago, and were divided into ten major tribes. Their distinct but closely relate ...
tribes to the north had also set up fishing communities on Rutland. However, with the great reduction in numbers of these peoples, and their (enforced) relocation to more restricted areas, the island no longer has any permanent indigenous settlement.
There is a
lighthouse
A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid, for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways.
Lighthouses mar ...
at the slopes of the hill on the north of the island, about 2 km from the landing point.
Geography
The island belongs to the
Rutland Archipelago and is located across the
Macpherson Strait from
South Andaman Island
South Andaman Island is the southernmost island of the Great Andaman and is home to the majority of the population of the Andaman Islands.
It belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, part of the Indian union territory of Andaman and ...
.
It is separated from
Little Andaman
Little Andaman Island (Onge: ''Gaubolambe'') is the fourth largest of the Andaman Islands of India with an area of 707 km2, lying at the southern end of the archipelago. It belongs to the South Andaman administrative district, part of the I ...
by the
Duncan Passage
Duncan Passage is a strait in the Bay of Bengal. It is about wide; it separates Rutland Island (part of Great Andaman and South Andaman administrative division) to the north, and Little Andaman to the south. West of Duncan Passage is the Bay of ...
, and from
North Clinque Island by
Manner Strait.
Mount Ford, 433m high, lies in the N part of the island; Mount Mayo, 227m high, lies in the S part.
Administration
Politically, Rutland Island, along neighboring
Rutland Archipelago, are part of
Port Blair
Port Blair () is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division (''tehsil'') of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South An ...
Taluk
A tehsil (, also known as tahsil, taluka, or taluk) is a local unit of administrative division in some countries of South Asia. It is a subdistrict of the area within a district including the designated populated place that serves as its administr ...
.
Demographics
There are 6 villages on the island: Rutland village,
[Geolysis (2012]
Rutland
Unknown census. Accessed on 2012-07-16. R.M.Point village,
[Geolysis (2012]
R M Point
Unknown census. Accessed on 2012-07-16. Bamboo Nallaha,
[Geolysis (2012]
Bamboo Nallaha incl Kichad Nalla
Unknown census. Accessed on 2012-07-16. Kichad Nallaha,
Bada Khari
[Geolysis (2012]
Bada Khari
Unknown census. Accessed on 2012-07-16. and east jetty (Dani Nallah).
According to the
2011 census of India
The 2011 Census of India or the 15th Indian Census was conducted in two phases, house listing and population enumeration. The House listing phase began on 1 April 2010 and involved the collection of information about all buildings. Information ...
, the Island has 119 households, with 347 inhabitants, speaking
Hindi
Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
,
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
,
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
.
[Government of India (2008), ]
Rutland Island
' In Island Wise Statistical Outline, Accessed on 2012-07-16. The effective literacy rate (i.e. the literacy rate of population excluding children aged 6 and below) is 64%.
The island has 53
hectare
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...
s of cultivated land, 237
cattle
Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult mal ...
heads, 157
goat
The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the a ...
s.
Flora and fauna
Rutland Island is rich in marine life with the shallow waters near the island having a good representation of smaller fish and coral.
The vegetation of Rutland Island is similar to that of
North Sentinel Island
North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands, an Indian archipelago in the Bay of Bengal which also includes South Sentinel Island. It is home to the Sentinelese, an indigenous people in voluntary isolation who have defended, often by ...
with dry sandy soils. Although hilly, the island is overgrown with fairly open jungle and brush.
Tourism
Rutland Island offers an ideal base for training
open water divers.
Prominent tourist spots on the island include Jahaji Beach, Bada Balu,
Manner Strait, Photo Nallah and Dani Nallah.
Rutland Water Project
As of 2012, the
Andaman Public Works Department was planning to bring water from Rutland Island to
Port Blair
Port Blair () is the capital city of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a union territory of India in the Bay of Bengal. It is also the local administrative sub-division (''tehsil'') of the islands, the headquarters for the district of South An ...
by underwater
pipeline
Pipeline may refer to:
Electronics, computers and computing
* Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on
** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...
across
Mac Pherson Strait, from R. M. Point to
Phongibalu in South Andaman. The pipeline would be about 1.2 km long; the maximum depth of the strait at the planned location is 55 m. The pipeline was estimated to cost about 140 million
rupee
Rupee is the common name for the currencies of
India, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka, and of former currencies of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (as the Gulf rupee), British East Africa, B ...
s.
[Kriti De (2012), ]
Rutland Water Project - APWD bats on ‘BOOT’ pitch
'. Accessed on 2012-07-16.
Image gallery
File:Rutland I locale.png, Outline map of the Andaman Islands
The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between th ...
, with the location of Rutland Island highlighted.
References
*
*
Andaman Association on the Jangil
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rutland Island
Islands of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands