Andaman exhibit

Originally published in Himal Southasian, September '09

As word has spread through the middle class dinning rooms of Europe and America, tourism in one of Southasia’s foremost paradises – the Andaman Islands – has been rising steadily. To stoke this trend, tour agencies have begun to up their game. Although visited mostly for its natural attractions – pristine beaches; world-class snorkelling; untouched, monkey-filled forest – there is a wealth of human culture just waiting to be exploited. Which brings us to the latest exhibit: the Jarawa, one of the original tribes of the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

Tour companies are now offering day trips to ‘observe’ the Jarawa in their natural habitat – by which read a carefully demarcated reservation. Tourists can take pictures of the ebony-skinned, scantily clad people; some even chuck biscuits and sweets at them. A fun day at the zoo, no less. Moreover, Barefoot India, a major Indian travel company, has just won a high court case permitting it to develop an eco-resort at Collipur, right near the designated Jarawa reserve. Other companies are expected to follow, and the likes of Barefoot have big plans for luring thousands of tourists a year.

It’s not long since the Jarawa started wondering out of the jungle. In 1997, they began to be seen standing around the roads that thread through their territory, stopping vehicles to beg for food. Most of the Jarawa – said to number around 250 – still lurk somewhere in the forests. But some have picked up a little Hindi and choose to hang around the port, becoming a regular sight in the market place. A handful of Jarawa children have even rocked up at schools and asked for an education. Integration into the Andaman mainstream is well underway, and largely by the Jarawa’s own volition.

Anthropologists have begun making loud, angry noises. As have Human Right groups like Survival International. Some even predict complete extinction, both cultural and physical. Jawara culture will undergo repeated humiliation in the tourist bus trips, which may well lead to a new consciousness among the Jarawa of being a ‘primitive tribe’ – a precursor to abandonment. And, more pressingly, contact with tourists will expose the tribe to new diseases they may be unable to cope with. There are myriad examples worldwide of formerly isolated tribes having little or no immunity to otherwise common diseases like measles and flu. Partial or complete annihilation has been known to follow, and single epidemics have led to chronic depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and suicide across communities. And the greater the tourist contact, the greater the risk.

Arguments that evoke cultural Armageddon tend to present the Jarawa as vulnerable little creatures, in need of the same conservation schemes provided for endangered pandas – in an ironic twist, it brings us right back to the zoo analogy it attempts to criticise. Any outside influence it considered fatal to Jarawa culture, as if it were some static entity incapable of adapting to changing conditions. There is common assumption that indigenous cultures are somehow primordial, that they have been untouched by history; in fact, they have all undergone changes through the centuries, and are ‘modern’ cultures in their own right – albeit not in the industrialised model of development. Jarawa integration is inevitable, but a distinct Jarawa identity will not be chucked away like a worn loincloth. Yet potential vulnerability to alien diseases remains a pertinent point. On this, the onus lies with Andaman medical facilities; vaccination programmes and increased health awareness could well avert large-scale decimation.