COMMENTARY
Andaman Tribes
Oscillating between Isolation and Doles
Zubair Ahmed
The lack of a comprehensive
policy on the tribes of Andaman
and Nicobar Islands, hasty
developmental projects, lack
of sensitisation among the
authorities and the settler
population, depletion of the
resource base, and escalating
tourism are the concerns needing
urgent attention.
Zubair Ahmed (zubairpbl@gmail.com) is
a researcher and journalist based in the
Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
16
O
scillating between isolation and
doles, the tribals of Andaman
and Nicobar Islands face an
imperious policy vacuum in the face of
an onslaught from a gratuitous develop-
ment paradigm, the aspirations of the
settler population and the demands of
the escalating tourism industry. Lack of
a comprehensive policy on the tribes,
hasty developmental projects, lack of
sensitisation among the administrators
and the settler population, and depletion
of the resource base of the tribes are issues
that need serious attention.
The Andaman Home was established
in 1863 through the efforts of Reverend
H Corbyn, chaplain at Port Blair, to esta-
blish friendly relationships with and, civi-
lise the Andamanese. Corbyn attempted
to teach them English and, to use his own
words, “daily employed them in work
with the native convicts cleaning sites,
etc” (Bonington 1932). The immediate re-
sults were that illness broke out among
the Andamanese and many escaped.
Those remaining were put under restraint
with convict guards in attendance. The
impossibility of striving to keep “primitive”
nomadic people to civilised and settled
life, a measure solely attainable under
conditions of restraint akin to slavery, was
all too clear (Bonington 1932).
There are sufficient recorded experi-
ences of the colonising powers who
FEBRUARY 9, 2019
attempted friendly missions for civilis-
ing the “primitive islanders” with the
aim of reducing hostile conflicts. These
failed miserably, with the remnants of
the tribes becoming dependent on exter-
nal assistance to survive in a modern so-
ciety that enveloped their ancestral
home (Chandi 2010). It is evident that
the Indian government failed to learn
much from experiences of the pre-
independence foreign forces in their
engagement with the tribals during the
150 years of colonial ingressions. It has
continued with the “friendly contact
missions.” Following the recent incident
where the American missionary John
Allen Chau was killed on the North Sen-
tinel Island, many reports in newspapers
and magazines claimed that the Senti-
nelese were not an uncontacted tribe.
The common theme was the glorification
of the contact missions of the govern-
ment agencies and anthropologists of
yore. However, when we look at both the
colonial and postcolonial policy inter-
ventions among different tribes in the
Islands, a bewildering picture emerges.
The Great Andamanese
In 1911, the Great Andamanese tribe
had dwindled to 209, owing to syphilis
introduced by the British and the penal
settlers, and the birth rate had become
excessively low. A few healthy half-bred
children, the result of the unions between
Andamanese women and the convicts,
survived as well. The opening up of the
forest camps at Stewart Sound Islands
certainly hastened the extinction of the
Andamanese in those parts by introduc-
ing contagious diseases, especially influ-
enza. Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt, a
vol lIV no 6 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

German anthropologist who visited these
islands in the 1920s, had mentioned the
Andaman Home to be the door of death
for the Andamanese race. As Bonington
(1932) accepts in his report, it seemed
unavoidable that individuals should get
infected by diseases such as syphilis,
measles and influenza, and once the in-
fection started, it overran the whole tribe
because those infected could not be seg-
regated or brought in for treatment ow-
ing to their nomadic habits and natural
dislike of any “civilised” treatment.
Post-independence, with no palpable
change in the approach of the govern-
ment, the remainder of the tribe, which
had been almost decimated, was stricken
with substance abuse. The government
drew tribal welfare policies to “develop”
and provide autonomy to indigenous
groups in the islands (Chandi 2010). On
the advice of the Anthropological Survey
of India (AnSI), in the 1950s, the Great
Andamanese were settled on the Strait
Island. They survive today on govern-
ment rations that are supplied through the
Department of Tribal Welfare. As the poli-
cy was to assimilate the community and
provide assistance, they were recipients of
various altruistic measures that they
welcomed, but ultimately became de-
pendent upon. The chance of their surviv-
al in the absence of these doles is now
questionable. They are only able to fish,
hunt a few spotted deer on the island, and
forage for money and rice beer/alcohol
from the settlements of other colonised
communities (Chandi 2010).
The Onges
The story repeats itself in the case of the
Onges. The community that had the
whole of Little Andaman Island to them-
selves as recently as the 1960s, has been
pushed to a little corner, Dugong Creek.
The tribe that once defended their land
and resources from outside invasion has
been cowed down today. The early history
of the relations with the Onges of Little
Andaman presents a series of fruitless
attempts at conciliation. For many years
the Onges proved a source of much worry
to the British settlement, owing to the pre-
carious position in which any visiting or
shipwrecked crews were placed after land-
ing on Little Andamans (Bonington 1932).
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 9, 2019
In 1873, when General Stewart visited
the Island, the Onges kept out of sight.
On his return to Port Blair, however,
he discovered that five of the crew of
the ship Quangoon, trading between
Moulmein and the Straits, had been att-
acked and murdered while searching for
water. A party sent out as a punitive expe-
dition discovered their remains, and drove
the Onges off causing great loss to them.
The party also burnt down a few com-
munal huts and several canoes. One Onge
was captured and taken to Port Blair, but
he died soon of reasons unknown. In most
cases, any attempt to conciliate by captur-
ing them and loading them with gifts and
presents proved unsuccessful. At the first
chance they got, the Onge would escape
captivity. From an estimated 672 indi-
viduals in 1901, the numbers came down
to 250 in 1931, a decrease of 63% in 30
years. Experience in the colonial era
shows that Onges died out whenever
they came in contact with civilisation.
The gift-giving, which started in the
1890s, continued and for the past many
years, the Onges are being supplied gov-
ernmental rations. After the island was
settled with refugees during the 1960s, the
tropical forest, the primary resource base
of the Onges, saw a large-scale clearing,
pushing them to a corner and forcing
them to lead a sedentary lifestyle with
welfare measures doled out to them.
Today, they face intense competition
from the settlers in their hunt for pigs.
Moreover, in 1972, the Andaman admin-
istration in its wisdom thought of creat-
ing a Nicobari settlement very close to the
Onge settlement, without the two having
any separate resource base. Schooling for
the Onge children has also been initiated,
but what is taught lacks any understand-
ing of their time and space.
The Jarawas
The Jarawas, one of the last remaining
tribal group in the islands that contin-
ued to live in the forest without being
assimilated to any degree within the
larger society, are confined to around
1,100 square kilometres of Jarawa Re-
serve Forest in the South and Middle
Andaman Islands. According to Pandya
(2010), they are perhaps unaware of the
area set aside for their protection and use
vol lIV no 6
COMMENTARY
within a boundary. From the point of
view of the authorities, both colonial and
postcolonial, the Jarawas have a desig-
nated and demarcated place which pro-
vides them with access to the seashore,
the east side of one island and the ever-
green tropical forest that covers the lon-
gitudinal continuation of the Tirur Hill
tracts. This forest blends into the settle-
ment areas and small fields worked by
farmers. The designated area is where the
authorities believe the Jarawas should
be confined, observed and accessed by
only authorised persons (Pandya 2010).
Contact with the Jarawas was first
made in 1790, during the foundation of
the first settlement. On the second
arrival of the British to set up the penal
colony in 1858, the Jarawas, owing to
their decimation by disease introduced
by Lieutenant Blair’s men, had been ousted
from the vicinity of the harbour by the
Great Andamanese. The partiality shown
by the British administration to the Great
Andamanese provoked the Jarawas, who
grew to fear the settlement as much as
they did the Great Andamanese. The year
1872 marks the first recorded Jarawa raid
on the settlement and from then onwards,
scarcely a year passed without raids
being made on the settlement to obtain
iron implements (Bonington 1932). There
were many punitive expeditions against
the Jarawas by the colonial forces, killing
hundreds of them. Captain West, who led
many expeditions against the Jarawas,
claimed that the most effective strategy
against the Jarawas was “organising and
keeping in action a number of small mobile
parties of practised game trackers and
hunters” (Bonington 1932).
The mutual hostilities carried on after
independence. There were many cases
of exploitation of the Jarawas through
friendly contact expeditions as well as by
poachers, on both the east and west side
of the reserve. Jarawas have also shown
friendliness according to their conveni-
ence when the friendly moonlight con-
tact missions were conducted by the
“chosen” few. And, there are also stories
that settlers used to boast of about killing
and wounding the Jarawas, and damag-
ing their huts, and plundering exploits.
The Great Andaman Trunk Road, which
cuts across the Jarawa Tribal Reserve has
17
COMMENTARY
seen conflicts of a different nature. While
on the one hand, it opened a properly
organised and controlled convoy-based
human safari, on the other, it also helped
the Jarawas in their movement. After
the Jarawas shed the so-called “hostili-
ty” and came out without their tradi-
tional bows and arrows, there has been
a policy impasse. Tourism, however,
flourishes on the road. On the west
coast, interactions with fisherfolk and
poachers increased. And on the fringes
of villages, illegal barter of contraband
continues between the poachers and the
Jarawas, which is nearly impossible to
check with the present mechanism. There
has been no change in the Jarawa policy
which was framed in 2004, though the
ground realities have changed much.
The intervention of Andaman Nicobar
Tribal Research Institute (ANTRI) headed
by its honorary director, Vishwajit Pan-
dya had initiated a few steps to empower
the tribe to make them self-sufficient in
protecting their culture, land, and res-
ources. Some of the initiatives had started
to show results, but these were abruptly
slowed down by the administration for
reasons unknown.
The Sentinelese and Shompens
The Sentinelese tribe on the North Sentinel
Island remained isolated from the main-
stream due to its geographical distance.
Their hostile resistance was similar to
that shown by the other tribes. After the
John Chau incident, there had been a
rush to prove who first contacted the tribe.
However, the Sentinelese have resisted
any attempts by the authorities, poachers
or fishermen from approaching the is-
land. Had the policy of “eyes on, hands
off” implemented in its true spirit, the
incident that killed Chau could have been
averted. After the incident and the glob-
al focus on the tribe, the surveillance
has increased, as per the claims of the
Andaman administration.
The Shompen tribe, located on the Great
Nicobar Island, has two septs: one that
stays close to the coast, and another in the
deep forests. Shy in nature, the Shompens
have been in touch with the settlers and
do visit the settlement frequently. The
major contention is the strategic location
of the Island, which is the southern-most
18
tip of India, close to the sea lane, the
Strait of Malacca. Presence of defence
forces and construction of a road cross-
ing through the Shompen habitat to con-
nect the western coast are issues of con-
tention. This tribe has also started show-
ing dependency on the welfare meas-
ures doled out to them.
In Conclusion
One clear challenge before the tribes of
the Andamans is the island development
plans, over which the indigenous tribes
have no control, but are caught up with-
in this conflict of power with the non-in-
digenes. Another major issue is the flour-
ishing tourism without a proper plan or
place for the tribes in the whole scheme of
things. There had been proposals to
have tribal tourism in Nicobar. However,
lack of any consultation with the tribes
has been resented and the proposal not
welcomed by the Nicobari population. The
role of ANTRI, which was set up in 2014,
has potential due to its research-based
interventions among the tribes and has
shown results especially in the case of
the Jarawas, who are stuck at crossroads
between isolation and illicit contact
with the settlers.
A comprehensive policy for the tribes
with sufficient attention to its implementa-
tion, and wide sensitisation about their
history, culture and lifestyle among the
settlers has been due for a long time. The
settlers as well as the tourists, need to be
sensitised about the vulnerability they
face, and the resource depletion needs to
be addressed through proper research-
based interventions. The proposal to set
up a museum by ANTRI has also been put
on the back-burner. It could have helped
in checking the human safari to a large
extent by providing sufficient knowl-
edge-based exposure on the culture, na-
ture, and history of the tribes to the vis-
iting tourists as well as the settlers, who
remain totally ignorant about the tribes
that live around them.
The only museum on the islands, run by
the AnSI, which deals with the tribal and
non-tribal cultures of the islands remains
mired in the old static mode of display.
The museum is built around the display
of a selection of collected visual and
material artefacts without a connecting
FEBRUARY 9, 2019
narrative. This is in spite of the long-
standing engagement with the cultural
groups on the island. Though the museum
has become a major tourist attraction,
unfortunately, it has not been a major
learning and interpretive resource centre.
From the concept of “dying cultures,”
it is imperative to not just preserve but
also manifest the tribal culture of the
islands as “continuing cultures” through
such a museum as proposed by ANTRI,
for which land has been already allotted
by the Andaman administration. The
ANTRI museum has plans to depict the
communities not as de-historicised, or as
a people about to die. Instead, the crux of
the curatorial effort would be to design and
represent the Andamanese tribal commu-
nities as continuing cultures. ANTRI has
also deputed a tribal welfare officer well
versed with the tribes of the islands to
study museology for its own museum. All
this, however, still remains only on paper.
Whereas the protection of the tribes
from external dangers is important, the
larger issue is that of their empowerment
through research-based interventions. The
ill-informed decisions taken at higher
levels do more harm than good. There is
a need to build bridges of understanding
and mutual respect among the tribal and
non-tribal communities of the islands,
which would be of great importance for
the younger generation of the islands in
the long run.
References
Bonington, M C C (1932): Census of India, 1931: The
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Calcutta: Cen-
tral Publication Branch.
Chandi, Manish (2010): “Colonisation and Conflict
Resolution in the Andaman Islands: Learning
from Reconstruction of Conflict between Indi-
genous and Non-indigenous Islander,” The
Jarawa Tribal Reserve Dossier: Cultural and
Biological Diversities in the Andaman Islands,
Pankaj Sekhsaria and Vishvajit Pandya (eds),
Paris: UNESCO, pp 12–17.
Pandya, Vishwajit (2010): “Hostile Borders on His-
torical Landscapes: The Placeless Place of
Andamanese Culture,” The Jarawa Tribal Reserve
Dossier: Cultural & Biological Diversities in the
Andaman Islands, Pankaj Sekhsaria and Vishvajit
Pandya (eds), Paris: UNESCO, pp 18–29.
available at
Churchgate Book Stall
Churchgate Station
Opp: Indian Merchant Chamber
Mumbai 400 020
vol lIV no 6 EPW Economic & Political Weekly