Were Are We Came From? – India –

Match of Unequal

Days after Tsunami of December 2004, a muscular, naked man on one of tiny island of Andamans, threatened a helicopter hovering above with drawn bow and arrow. For millions of people who watched him on TV, the threat perhaps looked comical.
But for this indigenous man of North sentinel Island, however, and for hundreds of other man, women and children hiding from civilization in deep jungles and remote islands around the world, hostility to other humans is necessary for survival itself. When a tribe has long live is isolation, contact with a dominant culture usually means decline – and somehow the invisible people know it.
Many such indigenous tribes are found in Andaman and Nicobar islands. The sole inhabitants of North sentinel Island, the sentinelese, are one of the most isolated and least known human tribes in the world today. They are a true hunting – gathering society with considerable reliance on sea resources. The estimates of the population of these tribes is between 80 to 100. they have rejected outsiders for centuries. Until recently they didn’t even know the use of fire.

Various aboriginals have occupied these islands for an upward of 60.000 years. They killed almost everyone who landed on their shores, apparently in the belief that ‘sea spirit’ – sailor – savored human flesh. But for them problems began in 1857. The British colonized the islands, effortlessly defeated “10 tribes of savages” and pacified them by fostering craving for tobacco and alcohol. Because the islander had no immunity to the killer germs that breed in close – packed society, they began to fall prey immediately to epidemics. Of the perhaps 8.000 members of the original 10 tribes, only 45 or so individual still survive. Most of the man alcoholic, while the women have affairs with outsiders, whose lighter skin and straighter hair they hope to bestow their offspring.

Dispossessed by civilization: Isolated people are particularly vulnerable to dispossession. Consider the Jarawa, another Andaman tribe whose enmity with all other had spared it the 19th Century epidemics. Because the Jarawa resisted the felling of their forests, armed police hunted and shot them throughout the first half of the 20th Century. In the 1950s, after the Andaman Island had passed to India, authorities settled thousands of people near Jarawa jungle, and, when clashes ensued, revived the century old participation strategy. Every month, for decade, officials and anthropologists left gift on Jarawa beaches, eventually managing to create a taste for thing such as red cloth and rice.
The Jarawa who had been free of even the common cold began to die of pneumonia, bronchitis, measles, mumps and malaria. Jarawa now number around 300. Poachers have overrun their territory, while others have introduced addictions to force the nomads to barter jungle produce.

III-Conceived plans: The Onge community is one of the four Negrito tribal communities that still survive in the Andaman Islands. Its population today is around a hundreds individuals; the 732 sq km of the thickly forested island of little Andaman is the only area they inhabit.
The community is on the brink of extinction. The Onge community had flourished in the Andaman Islands for centuries. Not much is known about the community, but whatever is known is proof enough of the astonishing depth and diversity of its knowledge. The story of the Onge people’s alienation started in the late 1960s, when the government of India planned a massive development and colonization programme. Thousands of outsiders were settled in Little Andaman. The settler population grew rapidly; from a few hundreds in the 1960s to 7.000 in 1984 and over 12.000 in 1991, displacing Onges from some of their most preferred habitats.
Attempts were made to introduce a cash economy in the community, which did not have even a barter system. III-conceived schemes, such as the raising of coconut plantation (in which Onge people were made workers), cattle-rearing (the community does not consume milk) and pig-breeding, were introduced. All of them failed.
It is clear now that the survival of the indigenous can only be ensured if the present policies vis-à-vis development and the tribal people are reviewed with sensitivity. Serious attention must be paid to what the tribal people have to say and an honest attempt made, to find out what they want.



Sunday, Vijay Times – Bangalore. 02 July 2006