Tsunami-Surviving Tribe Threatened by Land Invasion

Pallava Bagla in the Andaman Islands
for National Geographic News

August 8, 2005

Indian Ocean islanders who used ancient lore to escape last year's
tsunami are facing a new threat that could extinguish their traditional
way of life: modernization.

The Jarawa, thought to number less than 300, live on the isolated islands of Andaman and Nicobar in the Bay of Bengal. It was this coral island chain that took the brunt of the tsunami that traveled westward from Sumatra on December 26, 2004.

More than 7,000 islanders perished in the disaster. But it is believed that the Jarawa, using tribal knowledge to read nature's warning signs, fled to high ground and saved themselves. The Jarawa "get wind of impending danger from biological warning signals, like the cry of birds and change in the behavioral patterns of marine animals," said V.R. Rao, director of the Anthropological Survey of India, based in Kolkata.

(Read the news feature about how the Jarawa escaped the tsunami.)

But as canny as the islanders are in the face of the forces of nature, they are seemingly powerless in the face of an even more insidious threat: encroaching modernization brought on by outsiders invading their territory.

The Jarawa still live mainly by hunting and gathering in the dense tropical rain forests of the islands. They are one of four Andaman tribes—the Great Andamanese, Onge, Jarawa, and Sentinelese—known as the Negrito tribes and are of African descent.

Land Invasion

The Jarawa have had peaceful contact with the outside world since only a few decades ago. But pressure from settlers from the India subcontinent has gradually reduced tribal territory to the present 270-square-mile (700-square-kilometer) "Jarawa Reserve."

According to Survival International, a London based non-governmental organization, "these settlers are invading their land, stealing animals; plying them with alcohol and tobacco, sexually abusing Jarawa women, and using them as cheap labor in return for a few bananas."

The Indian government is making efforts to protect the tribe, which still uses bows and arrows for self-defense. Some experts feel the government action offers too little, too late.

Three months ago a hostile standoff erupted between settlers and Jarawas. According to Anup Kumar Mondal, tribal welfare officer of the Andaman Islands government, Jarawas raided the houses of settlers of the Forester Valley and took away clothes, household items, and silver jewelry. Armed police had to be called in to control the situation.

Samir Acharya, chief of the nonprofit Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology (SANE), in Port Blair, said the Jarawas were retaliating for a theft perpetrated by settlers.

Acharya's inquiry into the incident revealed that the settlers had plundered a much valued honey store of the Jarawa. For hunter-gatherers such as the Jarawa, honey is a prized commodity and source of energy in lean months.

"Angered by [theft of the honey] the tribe decided to teach the settlers a lesson or two," Acharya said. He believes efforts to try to bring the Jarawa into the mainstream will only wipe out the unique Negrito tribe.

While there have been many unconfirmed reports of sexual exploitation of Jarawa women, according to police records the last recorded alleged rape of a Jarawa woman happened on August 16, 2002. The case still languishes in the courts and the alleged rapists have not been punished.

Gifts of Fruit

Starting in 1974, government officials started leaving "gifts" for the tribe, including banana, cocnut, and other fruits.

A report of the islands' Department of Tribal Welfare noted, "With the passage of time, the behavioral pattern of Jarawas has changed. Till the beginning of 1998, they remained hostile, but now they are coming out of the jungle quite often and are becoming friendlier."

Rao, the director of the Anthropological Survey of India, has cautioned against attempts to modernize the Jarawa. But he does say that a "comprehensive health program needs to be undertaken to bring down the high mortality rate among the Jarawas."

Sita Venkateswar, a social anthropologist at Massey University, in Auckland, New Zealand, is one of a handful of scientists to have lived with the Jarawa. "If we fail to protect the forest in which the Jarawa live, the forest they have kept intact for thousands of years, we destroy not only the forest but also destroy a people," she said.

Last December, after prodding by the Indian courts, the local Andaman Islands administration came out with a groundbreaking policy to protect the rights of the Jarawa. A key protection included making the Jarawa Reserve "inviolate." The policy included measures to prevent further encroachment of Jarawa lands and ways to curtail poaching by settlers.

Survival International's director Stephen Corry said, "On paper, India's policy on the Jarawa is one of the most advanced on isolated peoples anywhere in the world. But if the authorities do not act now to change the situation on the ground, the Jarawa will not survive."

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