THE BROCHURE writes itself: Lakshadweep is India at its best. These 36 islands with a total area of ​​only 32 square kilometers are populated by a matrilineal, mostly Muslim society, whose families live from seafaring and the coconut harvest.

In the past fortnight, this drop in the Indian bucket, only 70,000 people out of 1.4 billion people, is an example of some kind of controversy that is becoming incessant. The national government of Narendra Modi and his first Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is using little-tried executive muscles to push through a reform package for the distant islands. They would open the archipelago to development, especially tourism. Locals are dismayed.

In theory, “Union territories” like Lakshadweep are protected from some vagaries of electoral politics because they do not belong to any state. But that leaves the central government with extensive power over them, which they are increasingly using, as Delhi and Jammu & Kashmir recently discovered. Lakshadweep has an administrator – practically chosen by the prime minister – who can rule regardless of local opinion. Nowadays he does just that.

Before the final administrator, Praful K. Patel, arrived in December, the position had been filled by career bureaucrats. Mr. Patel is a politician, a BJP man from Mr. Modi’s home state of Gujarat, where he was Minister of the Interior. As the administrator of Daman, a former Portuguese enclave north of Mumbai, he enraged indigenous fishermen by demolishing 90 homes on a stretch of beach that was confiscated for development. Lakshadweep is even more mature for such plans.

Earlier this year, Mr. Patel published a number of sweeping bills that would give the administrator the right to purchase any land for “public use”. Other changes are notable as 97% of Lakshadweep’s population is Muslim. Mr Patel would ban the sale of beef and expand liquor permits to attract tourists from the rest of India. An anti-social activity prevention law modeled after a similar law in Gujarat would allow locals to be detained for up to a year without a hearing – allegedly necessary because smugglers were caught in the waters of Lakshadweep. Various rules would displace a traditional port, replace local dairy products with imports (from Gujarat) and exclude politicians with more than two children from participating in local elections.

Some of the proposed changes are worth discussing. Many in Lakshadweep are interested in promoting tourism. Few, however, seem to like Mr. Patel’s plans. Lakshadweep’s only MP, Mohammed Faizal, says the most inflammatory proposals around alcohol and beef are distractions. Land seizure is the power the government really wants to wield, he says.

In mainland India, the Lakshadweep debate has tended to bypass the question of what locals want. A BJP spokeswoman explained how “If properly planned, Lakshadweep can flourish and become the jewel in India’s crown!” This is a strange language to be heard 74 years after India freed itself from the crown of another country. ■

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the heading “Run the Jewels”

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