After the completion of the road in 1989, public buses travelled through the reserve with all their windows shut and an armed policeman on board. Jarawa men protested this aggression by killing road workers. In mid-1980s, the government started building the Andaman Trunk Road, cutting through the reserve. Even as the gift-giving generated a truce on the western beach of the Middle Andaman, conflict on the eastern front escalated. If the goal of these contact missions was to establish a friendly relationship with the Jarawa, there is no evidence they succeeded. After all, cynics would say, there were settlers to protect and massive trees to fell. The Jarawa continued to be engaged, though. Two, the island had nothing the administration wanted – there was no easy way to bring out timber logs. For one, their home was farther than that of the Jarawa. However, further contact with the Sentinelese was called off. In 1991, they took gifts from the visitors’ hands and even boarded their ship. In 1988, Pandit writes, the Sentinelese picked up gifts within 10 yards of the visiting boat.
Such efforts to befriend the Sentinelese started only in 1967. By 1974, the Jarawa seemed to like these encounters, frequently boarding the visiting ships, even posing for photographs. It sent boatloads of doctors, photographers, anthropologists, zoologists, botanists and police bearing gifts to the west coast of the Middle Andaman, essentially Jarawa waters. To improve the fraught relationship, the government also embarked on a mission to befriend the indigenous people. In 1957, the government demarcated the Jarawa Tribal Reserve along the length of the South Andaman and Middle Andaman islands. (The Sentinelese dodged the bullet since they lived on their own island.) Frequent skirmishes occurred along the boundary between the Jarawa and the settlers. Independent India sought to develop the Andamans by settling refugees from East Pakistan there, some very close to the unfriendly Jarawa. The Onge, the other indigenous group in the Andamans, had made peace with the outside world in the late 19th century. Punitive missions sent by the British rulers and aerial bombing by the occupying Japanese forces had not improved the Jarawa’s dim view of interlopers. Besides, they were quicker to draw their bows than ask questions. The Sentinelese and another Andamanese indigenous community the Jarawa did not hear of India’s independence since they knew no language spoken by any outsider.
While there was outrage that Chau might have endangered the community by exposing them to germs to which they may not be resistant, media reports glorified the anthropological contact.ĭid the anthropologists not pose a threat to the Sentinelese? Did their missions, led by the Andaman and Nicobar Islands administration, not compromise the indigenous people they contacted? The making of a conflict They were both part of official contact missions to befriend the indigenous people. TN Pandit was the first anthropologist to make contact with the Sentinelese while Madhumala Chattopadhyay was the first to have a friendly encounter with them. In subsequent talk about the community’s hostility towards outsiders, stories of two anthropologists stood out. It was no surprise they killed the American missionary John Chau for trespassing last month. The Sentinelese, an indigenous community inhabiting the North Sentinel Island in the Andamans, fiercely protect their sovereignty, even repulsing approach by the Indian government, which nominally owns the territory. WTC Final: As India take on Australia, a look at the key talking points for Rohit Sharma and Co.All AAP councillors in Chandigarh suspended from House after argument with MP Kirron Kher.A new book offers detailed historical accounts of the Sultans of Oman in the 19th century.BBC underreported about Rs 40 crore income in tax returns: IT officials.
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