Qualla: Indira Point

Indira Point: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By the 2011 census, four households remained. That single statistic tells the story of Indira Point more starkly than any geographic superlative. This is India's southernmost point, a village on the tip of Great Nicobar Island where a lighthouse beam sweeps across the strait separating Indian territory from Indonesia's Rondo Island, just 145 kilometers to the south. Before the morning of 26 December 2004, Indira Point was a small but living community -- families, scientists studying leatherback sea turtles, a lighthouse keeper. After the Indian Ocean tsunami, it was something closer to a monument.

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Indira Point: The Edge of a Subcontinent

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Great Nicobar sits at the bottom of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, a chain of over 500 islands stretching southward from Myanmar through the Bay of Bengal. Indira Point occupies the very tip of Great Nicobar, closer to Sumatra than to mainland India. Port Blair, the territo...

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Indira Point: Names on a Map

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The point has carried three names, each reflecting a different era. British surveyors called it Parsons Point. Later cartographers labeled it Pygmalion Point, after the promontory's shape. The current name arrived in the mid-1980s, honoring Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who visit...

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Indira Point: December 26, 2004

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The epicenter of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake lay approximately 500 kilometers to the south, off the coast of northern Sumatra. Great Nicobar, the closest significant landmass in the Indian chain, absorbed the full force of the resulting tsunami. At Indira Point, the ground i...

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Indira Point: Persistence at the Periphery

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Despite the devastation, Indira Point has not been abandoned by the Indian state. The Indian Coast Guard patrols these waters, and the government has been constructing a 21-kilometer road from Shashtri Nagar to Indira Point, including a bridge over the Galathea River -- part of a...

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