Against time & tide

When the recent tsunami wreaked havoc in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, media attention shifted to the region that had been only viewed as an idyllic getaway. The indigenous tribes which escaped with only a few casualities also came into the spotlight. 
Sridhar K. Chari gives an account of the lesser-known aspects of the life of tribes inhabiting the emerald isles.

The tribesmen of many indigenous island peoples in the Asia Pacific region have an interesting philosophy—"Never rush anywhere at full speed," the wise old elder of a hamlet might say. "Slow down occasionally, stop a while, so that your soul can catch up with you. They can’t travel as fast as your bodies!"

On the morning of December 26, when the people of the Andaman and Nicobar islands looked out into the seas and saw 80-foot-high tsunami waves coming at them at a speed of 400 km an hour, the only groups which seem to have escaped with soul and body intact, are the five primitive tribes of the emerald isles. A full accounting-for has yet to be completed, but government officials and relief workers believe that they may have indeed escaped with hardly any casualty. They attribute this to their hardiness, their close ties with nature and the possibility that like animals and birds, their instincts may have made them move to higher ground without having to actually battle surging mountains of water.

There is a danger here—of glamourising with our jaded, "modern" eyes, what is essentially a tough, need-based existence, with low life expectancies, low reproductive rates, susceptibility to disease and skewed sex ratios.

That legendary hardiness is surprisingly vulnerable to being felled by an odd injury or sickness. Of course, this vulnerability may be a result of the inroads that modern societies have made into traditional tribal grounds. It is the same vulnerability that causes anthropologists to be cautious about sounding the all-is-well signal as far as the tribes are concerned. "With the kind of need-based existence many tribal groups lead, the tsunami waves may have compromised their habitat and way of life, something that was already under threat," says one resident tribal worker. "They are of course truly integrated with nature."

There are five `primitive’ tribes in the A & N islands, not counting the large Nicobari population, who are fairly well integrated into mainstream Indian society. They are no longer a homogenous group. The five are: The Jarawas, who live in the reserves in the South and Middle Andaman Islands (Port Blair is in South Andaman), numbering about 240; The Onges, who live in reserved pockets in Dugong Creek and South Bay of Little Andaman Island, numbering 96; The Great Andamanese living in the Strait Islands numbering 43; the Sentenalese, who live in the North Sentinel Island to the West of South Andaman, numbering between 40-200; The Shompens, in the forests in the Southern most island of Great Nicobar, numbering 398.

The Onges and the Great Andamanese are "welfare dependent" in the language of the administration. Government assistance with food and medical assistance regularly reaches them. They also gather fish and shell food from the ocean, anthropologists say. The Jarawas however subsist largely on their own, eating turtle, fish, forest vegetables, fruits and wild pigs, and are no longer as hostile as they once used to be. There have been no reported cases of assaults on neighbouring villagers by Jarawas in the last few years. Frequent contact and interaction has been established. The Sentinalese continue to remain extremely hostile, and have resisted most attempts to reach them on their island. Stones and poisoned darts and arrows make their intentions clear. The Shompens (who have had one or two hostile sub-groups even ending up in internecine assaults) are also fairly shy, but some interaction with them has been established of late.

All the 96 Onges have been accounted for, according to administration officials. The Jarawas live in the Middle and South Andaman islands, which largely escaped the fury of the tsunami waves. The Jarawa reserves are also on the relatively sheltered Western coast line, and several of their groups have been routinely spotted. The Sentinalese have been spotted by Airforce, Navy and Coast Guard helicopters, including one with the Director General of the Coastguard Vice-Admiral A.K. Singh. All beat a hasty retreat under a hail of stones or arrows directed at the low flying choppers. Their hostility explains the large variation in their population estimates.

As for the Shompens, while no deaths have been reported so far, no contact has been made either. The Commander-in-Chief of the Andaman and Nicobar Triservices Command, Lt. Gen. B.S. Thakur (soon to be Vice-Chief of Army Staff) also the Operational Head of the Cabinet-constituted Integrated Relief Command (IRC) in the islands, even winched down army commandos into the forests of Great Nicobar, wherever smoke trails were spotted, in the hope of making contact with the Shompens. "We have not been successful. The Shompens, spotting our personnel, may even be just running away." A similar attempt to reach the Sentinalese by a well-known resident anthropoligist Anstice Justine, who has reached them before, failed on December 30. He is to try again.

Behavioral change in the Jarawas has actually been causing concern. Much of the anthropological and sociological debate about whether such tribes should be integrated and assimilated, or sustained in relative isolation, has centred around the Jarawas. In 2004, following a directive from the High Court of Calcutta, two seminars were held in Calcutta and Port Blair, and an expert committee was formed which submitted a report. A policy has been drawn up with the objectives of "protecting the Jarawas from harmful effects of exposure and contact with the outside world, preserving their cultural identity, their social organisation and mode of sustenance, conserving the ecology and environment of their reserve territory and sensitising settler communities around the reserve towards these goals."

The large Nicobari population, living on islands like Car Nicobar (2001 census - 20,292) has taken a lot of casualties. But doctors attending on them are full of praise for their toughness. Says Surgeon Lt. Commander Samir Kapoor at INS Utkrosh, the main take-off point for relief operations via air: "The injuries sustained were thigh and skull fractures and spinal injuries. But they are really tough. They hardly wince even when the pain must be intense." Even a few days old child with bad facial injuries was reportedly crying very little at the G.B. Pant Hospital at Port Blair.

Relief workers are also full of praise for the Nicobaris’ non-aggressive nature, and pleasant demeanour. Ready smiles on the faces of men, women and children at the relief camps can vouch for that. Said a Naval officer on-board INS Magar, the first ship to reach Chowra island and later evacuate 1283 persons from there to neighbouring Teressa island: "They were all waiting patiently for us to reach them. They must have been really hungry for two three days, but there was no scrambling for the food we were distributing. Even during evacuation, they would patiently wait their turn, suppressing any natural fear they may have had about whether we would come back."

Recent photographs of tribes taken by a section of the media in the prohibited reserve areas has justly drawn a sharp reaction from the local administration and anthropologists, as turning the aborigines into commodities. This almost voyeuristic focus on the tribes has been evident particularly in the reporting of the international media, which has a `third world reporting’ complex anyway, but the national media cannot be absolved entirely.

Many anthropologists themselves are responsible for this commodification however, as they tend to perpetuate a desi version of the facile `noble savage’ ethos.

In any case, it is a serious mistake to essentialise the tragedy that hit the Andaman and Nicobar islands into something about the indigenous tribes. That is an affront to not only the multi-spectral population of the islands, but to the tribal peoples as well, as it somehow marginalizes their human existence.

At the last official count, in the A&N islands as a whole, 1903 bodies have been cremated or buried, and the number of missing is at 5553. At least 102 officers, men, women and children died at the Car Nicobar Air Force base. The total missing are largely to be presumed dead, though the IRC is not taking that stance, for legalistic reasons. As many as 1514 persons have been injured. As many as 42,161 persons are staying in various camps in Port Blair, Car Nicobar, Teressa, Great Nicobar and other islands. This would put the final death toll (including the long missing) in the region of 8,000, while many unofficial estimates put it higher at 10,000 and above. In any case, these numbers speak of a tragedy of enormous proportions, which will take the total Indian death toll including Tamil Nadu to the region of 18,000 to above 20,000.

Many Bengalis, Tamilians, Keralites, Telugus, and Punjabis along with the Nicobarese have made the islands their home. There is representation from almost all of the Indian mainland in its population of 3.56 lakh, giving the place an attractive pan-Indian feel, which is further bolstered by the presence of the three services of the armed forces and the coast guard, in a unified command structure. All have suffered losses and trauma. No big picture sketch or microcosmic human interest story can adequately convey the overwhelming shock and pain of what happened there on December 26, in a setting of breathtaking natural beauty. Individual tales of courage, loss, sorrow, the call of duty prevailing over personal suffering, and the sheer determination to survive, will linger.

Take this story: The pilots of the Mi-8 helicopters stationed in Car Nicobar were in the air 10 minutes after the waves hit. "They watched their families die in the quarters below them on the shoreline, and couldn’t do anything about it," says a Naval commander grimly. The crews of the choppers had to be replaced, so that those who had suffered trauma could go home. (The media were initially being told that the choppers had suffered sea water damage, and therefore were not flying for a few days).

Or take that of 12 year-old Meghna who survived in the water for 48 hours before being rescued. Or countless others who lost wives, husbands, children, siblings and are spending endless hours searching for them. Of broken homes, and the despair of having to rebuild their lives from scratch.

Says a young woman: "Sir, my brother was in Pilomillow island. They tell me he might be in a camp. Can you help me find him?" A naval officer and a journalist check their records. The tiny island of Pilomillow was completely devastated. The 2001 census figure is 145. The number of dead bodies found there is 163. The officer tells her that, but promises to send out an enquiry on a satellite phone. She stares at us, tears forming in her eyes.

The smell of death will not leave the islands easily, even after all the dead bodies are disposed off and the broken rubble cleared. After relief and rehabilitation proceed as best as they can, and officers are shuffled and rotated, new rules are put in place and broken, new tsunami warning systems and disaster management plans are established, and when the earth there finally stops shuddering, there is only one thing to do. Pause a while, and wait for your soul to catch up with you.

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