The Andaman islands
1. The Andamanese
Contact
by George Weber
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Table of Contents
The Islands
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The islands
The land area and total population of the Andaman island was and still is far too small for the territory to have qualified as a State of the Union of India. So, in 1947 when India became independent, the islands, together with the neighbouring Nicobar islands were made a Union Territory, directly under the Prime Minister of India. The territory elects one Member of Parliament to the Union Parliament in New Delhi. In theory this is a most reasonable arrangement. In practice it has not worked quite as well, particularly not for the aboriginal population of the islands, the Andamanese Negrito.
The Prime Minister of India is the Head of Government of one of the world's largest nations, an atomic power and a country almost completely surrounded by rather unfriendly neighbours and with several major border disputes. The Prime Minister of such a country has a great many tasks and duties to attend to apart from his responsibility for a remote Union Territory. The result was that the Prime Minister appointed the Lt. Governors for the islands every few years and then left him and the islands to look after themselves. Most of the Lt.Governors appointed until 2004 were military men or bureaucrats preparing for retirement. They were given the sinecure at Port Blair to boost their pension in a quiet place where they could do no serious harm. The local bureaucracy, under the very slack rule of such ancient worthies, was virtually unsupervised. Corruption and malpractices of all kinds flourished. Only in 2004 did this situation change a little with the arrival of a more energetic Lt.Governor. It was also a new and shocking experience for the local bureaucracy to have its rampant incompetence, corruption and inefficiency exposed to the world in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami of 26 December 2004. The shock was such that there is a now good chance that there will not be a return to the bad old ways. The new situation also renews hope for the survival of the Negrito tribes in the islands.
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The Andaman islands |
Few in number, little-known, barely understood, unpredictable and extinct or difficult to approach, why should the Andamanese tribes be of more than passing interest in a world where tribes on the verge of cultural and physical extinction number in their thousands. Here is why.
The Andamanese Negrito are among the most unusual people alive today. No other living human population has experienced such long-lasting isolation from contact with other groups, an isolation that has lasted on genetic evidence from between 30,000 to as much as 60,000 years (see chapter 6). It is worth to remember that 30,000 years ago the world was still in the grip of the last ice age, mammoths roamed in Eurasia and Neanderthal man was still living. It is highly likely that the Negrito represent the least changed survivors of the first migration of homo sapiens into Asia. Theirs is the most ancient surviving way of life on earth today.
The Andaman archipelago today is part of the Indian Union and the Andamanese Negrito are Indian citizens, even if they do not know it. The Indian government is their guardian and it is one that has not taken its responsibility very seriously until now (apart from ringing statements to the contrary). Many reasonable Indians, including judges of the Supreme Court of India, have realized that this point of view is not "anti-Indian" (as indeed it is not). With the Supreme Court decisions of 2001 and 2002 (see Appendix N), it may still be time to save some Andamanese groups from being brought into the "mainstream Indian civilization" and the nationalist groups prefer to call their aim. Assimilation would mean cultural and physical extinction for the the Andamanese Negrito who have little immunity to modern diseases after their extended isolation from mainstream humanity. There are less than 500 Andamanese Negrito today while the population of India has reached one billion recently. Indian civilisation will survive even if the 500 are left outside its mainstream civilization.
The Andamanese Negrito represent a period of Indian prehistory so ancient that it makes even the earliest Indian epics look recent. They and their way of life are as much part of India as those of other Indian citizens. The UN has monuments of cultural and natural world heritage. There are no monuments of human heritage but if there were, the Andamanese Negrito would have to be at the top of that list. The Andamanese are Indian citizens, in fact, The Senior Citizens of the world. As such they are not the concern of the Indian government alone but of the entire world. The Negritos in general and the Andamanese Negrito in particular represent major evidence in the scientific search of the origins of modern humanity.
There are four living groups of Andamanese Negrito today . For a detailed description of each group see Chapter 8 Tribes and Chapter 7 Numbers.
The Great Andamanese of all the Andamanese Negrito came first in close contact with the outside world from 1858 when the British set up a penal colony on the islands. The last remnants of what 150 years ago were around 3,500 people split into 10 related tribes living on most of the Great Andaman islands, have today shrunk to a little more than 30 people living in a reservation on tiny Straits island. During the Tsunami of 26 December 2004 the tribe managed to escaper without loss thanks to the courageous and timely action of their chief, Raja Jirake (see below).
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A great Andamanese couple |
A great Andamanese young lady in the characteristic |
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Raja Jirake (ca. 1940-2005), chief of the Great
Andamanese and his family, shortly before his death on 17
April 2005 It was Raja Jirake and his quick and correct reaction who saved the members of his tribe from the tsunami of 26 December 2005 |
The Onge on Little Andaman had, apart from the occasional British punitive expedition and short "friendly contacts", been left largely in peace until after Indian independence 1947. In 1950 they numbered around 150 and today they are about 100 persons. Their birth rate is alarmingly low and they are just about holding their numbers. Alcohol and other drugs (supplied by the Indian "welfare" staff on a "private basis") are a major problem, especially of the males. In 1858 they were estimated to have numbered 700 but this early figure could be no more than a wild guess since the British had no contact with groups living inland and very little contact with those on the coast until "pacification" by M.V. Portman in the 1890s. The number of Onges has shrunk but nowhere as dramatically as that of the Great Andamanese.
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Onge couple. 1970s. The woman's dress is entirely traditional while the man's is a concession to outsiders' prudery |
Onges in the early 2000s. |
The Jarawa in the interior and west coasts of southern and middle Great Andaman. Until October 1997 they were hostile and "friendly" contact was rarely possible. The British fought the Jarawa with "punitive expeditions" for decades after the first "incident" in 1872. The anti-Jarawa warfare sometimes came close to attempts at extermination of the tribe, especially after 1900. After Indian independence 1947, the tribe was first left alone, but it was severely disturbed when the Andaman Trunk Road was built right through their jungles beginning in the late 1960s. The Jarawa hardly responded but in October 1997 they suddenly emerged from their jungles and began a period of "gift taking" from the Indian settlers. This, incidentally, revealed that the administration had no plans whatever for the Jarawa apart from "bringing them into the mainstream of Indian civilization", meaning the Jarawa would be used as unskilled labour in plantations and fields. This has not happened - the Jarawa after around 2004 have returned to their old way of life but maintain a distant but not hostile (as long as they are not pressed) attitude to the Indian population outside their reservation.
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Jarawa girl in traditional dress. 1980s. |
Classic governmental "friendship visit" to the Jarawa (here in the 1980s). Coconuts are handed out as gifts. |
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En-mai, the Jarawa boy who was found in July 1996 in Middle Andaman with a broken leg, having fallen off a coconut palm. He was brought to hospital in Kadamtala by the Indian official who had found him. The local population (very few of which had ever laid eyes on a Jarawa before) came in large numbers to crowd around the terrified boy in his bed and stare at him. En-mai recovered and was returned to the jungle on his recovery, laden with gifts. He then disappeared for a while. He must have been talking to his friends, for on 21st October 1997 a first group of Jarawa materialized in front of terrified Indian settlers to demand food and gifts. They were given bananas and coconuts and left. More and more often larger and larger such "hunting-gathering" groups appeared with rising demands. The groups consisted of young males, no girls or older Jarawa have been reported. Prim Indian housewives were terrified at finding completely naked male strangers on their doorsteps, menacingly demanding gifts and food and helping themselves if not given something at once. The Jarawa clearly had learnt during governmental "friendship visits" that the fruits of civilization were free and for the taking.
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Not all Jarawa visits ended peacefully: a group of 30 attacked a police station in March 1998 for unknown reasons. On that occasion it is said that 600 blank shot were fired at them and one police officer remained paralysed after receiving an arrow shot. A horribly embarrassed administration was trying to keep the lid on this story, especially to the foreign media.
In December 1999 En-mai brought his sick wife Jalla into Kadamtala hospital for treatment. She recovered. Between 1999 and 2004 the Jarawa and the Indian population clearly began to get used to each other and incidents became rarer.
En-mai was often seen among the Jarawa visitors. He became the pet of the Bush police who allowed him to be photographed and even interviewed by visitors for substantial gifts to themselves. En-mai also began to wear western teenage-style clothing, right down to the reversed baseball cap.
One astute observer noted that after En-mai had returned for a while to his parents in the jungle he seemed to be sad and disturbed, although he would not say why. Later reports claimed that the older people did not approve of the youngsters' shopping trips to town and that there were tensions between the generations.
After 2000, En-mai briefly became the centre of a cargo-cult like "movement" - he could produce the "friendship goods" that the Port Blair government was providing for the Jarawa. En-mai also was accused of having murdered the man he suspected to be the lover of his wife but nothing came of it. Clearly, contact with the often quoted "civilized mainstream society of India" had not been good for poor En-mai, nor for the Jarawa people as a whole. The Jarawas seem to have realized this sometime in 2003 or 2004.
En-mai clearly is a born leader. He had been leading the "going to town" movement - and he seems to have been a major influence behind stopping it. It was rumoured that being a married man had made him "conservative". In 2004 En-mai was among those behind a new movement among the Jarawa: back to the jungle, self-sufficiency and little contact with the outside world. Interviews with Jarawas after the tsunami did not do much to clarify what was going on among them. Only one thing was clear: they had decided not to talk with outsiders anymore and to have as little contact with them as possible. They also refused point-blank to explain how they all survived the tsunami. There were no Jarawa victims - but plenty among the Indian settlers. This display of self-confidence, political and social maturity on the part of the Jarawa is nothing short of astonishing. So much for "primitive savages" against "advanced civilization"!
The Sentineli on North Sentinel island are said to number around 100 although this figure is more than a little suspect since nobody has been able to approach these people closely , let alone count them. The official figures wobble wildly from census to census, illustrating the uncertainty. Nobody has been able to establish more than brief and usually distant contact with any of the Sentineli tribe and they remain today the world's most isolated and least-known people. Attempts at "friendship visits" complete with gift giving (coconuts thrown at them or onto their beaches from boats) have lead nowhere over the years. The Sentineli remain self-confidently, self-sufficiently unapproachable.
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A Sentineli man has had enough of the government "friendship visit" and signals all too clearly that they should, erh, go away (Photo courtesy KAS Film 1993) |
After the tsunami of 26 December 2004 it took 3 days and international pressure (including an interview by the "Times of India" of 29 December 2004 in Lucknow, India, with Dr. Simron Jit Singh and George Weber, see Times of India) before the local government at Port Blair sent a helicopter to check whether the Sentineli tribe had survived. Most people thought they had probably been wiped out.
Vice Admiral Arun Kumar Singh, director-general of the Coast Guard, which is involved in rescue operations, told reporters that "there have been several media reports talking about a threat to the aborigines, indigenous people and tribals of the islands. I have personally verified the extent of this claim and let me tell you that it is absolutely rubbish. Our helicopter pilot who flew over the island told me that he has seen several groups of Sentineli on the beach and that when he dropped food packets they threw stones at the helicopter."
Editor's note:
Is the intrepid vice-admiral who here labels fears about the
survival of the Andamanese "absolute rubbish" by any chance
related to an official of the same name and rank who is said
to have refused to waste helicopters on the tribals "because
they are all dead anyway"? Even if the vice admiral hasn't
said that, why should those fears be "rubbish" in an event
that has killed 300,000 or more people?
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Sentineli warrior shoots with bow and arrows at the helicopter sent to find out if any of the isolated tribe there had survived. They had - and they made it very clear that they did not want any visitors or help. The healthy self-confidence of the islanders had survived, too. A less happy message is given by the ground on which this warrior stands: exposed coral reef, lifted out of the sea. The giant earthquake that caused the tsunami also tilted part of North Sentinel island, drowning some reefs and exposing others. The protected fishing ground within the Sentineli reefs has been severely disturbed and it remains to be seen how soon the local environment recovers and whether the hunting and gathering economy. For tectonic changes observed on North Sentinel island see Tsunami |
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Last change 1 August 2005
