In Malayalam, the official language of the southwestern Indian state of Kerala, as well as in Sanskrit, the word lakshadweep means "hundred thousand islands". In fact, there are but 36 in the remote Indian archipelago of that name, which spreads across 32 sq km of the Arabian Sea, about 300km off Kerala's coast. Ten of those islands are inhabited by a total population of about 65,000, and none is wider than 1.6km. All of them, though, are under...