Port Blair

About Port Blair:

• It is the capital city and the entry point of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• It was named after Archibald Blair, a naval surveyor and lieutenant in the Bombay Marine. Blair was the first officer to carry out a thorough survey of the Andaman Islands.
• It is located on the east coast of the South Andaman Island.
• It is also the place that hosted the first unfurling of our Tiranga by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
• Port Blair’s connection with the imperial Cholas and Srivijaya
  • Some historical records suggest that the Andaman Islands were used as a strategic naval base by the 11th-century Chola emperor, Rajendra Ito attack Srivijaya, which is in present-day Indonesia.
  • As per an inscription found at Thanjavur dated to 1050 CE, the Cholas referred to the island as Ma-Nakkavaram land (great open/ naked land), which possibly led to the modern name of Nicobar under the British.
  • As noted by historian Herman Kulke in his co-edited edited book, Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on the Chola Naval Expeditions to Southeast Asia (2010), the Chola invasion of Srivijaya was a unique event in the history of India and “its otherwise peaceful relations with the states of Southeast Asia which had come under India’s strong cultural influence for about a millennium.”
  • Others like the American historian G W Spencer interpret the Srivijaya expedition as to be part of the Chola expansionism which had been ongoing for decades culminating in wars with other empires of South India and Sri Lanka.