A few weeks back an incident disappeared from the news space as mysteriously and suddenly as it had appeared. The affair in question was that of a Jarawa woman being made to dance naked for the amusement of tourists in the Andamans. A video clip appeared on the website of a British newspaper and set the word “Jarawa” trending on Twitter for a couple of days. And then the concern, outrage and all traces of the news vanished into thin air.
In a 24/7 era of news bombardment, that’s bound to happen. The issue here is not about what’s right or wrong, but that of the tragedy of a people who stand in the imminent danger of being wiped off from the face of this earth – the endangered Jarawa lot. There are few who know of them and their plight; fewer give a damn about them. The Jarawas are only biding their time.
The human safaris of the Andamans have been happening for a while. Activists and anthropologists have been writing out their concerns too. But this is the first time that an audio-visual evidence has emerged of the reprehensible exploitation the Jarawas are subjected to.
We know there are some 1,909 tigers remaining in this country. The number of Jarawas left is about one-sixth of this number – estimated 365. You probably have more Facebook friends. In other words, the number of Jarawas is so small that if you knew all of them, you could even remember them by name and face. You even don’t need an astrolger to tell their future.
The threats to the Jarawas come from various quarters. The revulsive human safaris are only one of them. The video mentioned earlier was dismissed as something that was shot a few years ago, and authorities asserted that no such thing happens now. These same people had parroted an identical denial two years ago following the release of a similar video. On that occasion, the refrain was that the clip had been shot 10 years earlier. The veracity of the date of these two videos, however, can in no way undermine the threat to the Jarawas.
This revolting incident comes two years after the death of the last member of the Bo tribe of the Andaman Islands. When Boa Sr, an 85-year-old woman, died, her tribe too became extinct.
The Bos, Jarawas and other tribes have lived in the Andamans for about 55,000 years, making them the descendants of some of the oldest human cultures. The Bos were one of ten tribes now collectively known as the Great Andamanese. Most of the Great Andamanese were killed or died of diseases brought by the British, who colonised the islands in 1858. The British tried to “civilise” them by capturing and keeping them in an ‘Andaman Home’, where many died.
The threat to the Jarawas’ existence comes from encroachment onto their land, which was sparked by the building of the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) through their forest. The road brings settlers, poachers and loggers into the heart of their land. This risks exposing the Jarawas to diseases to which they have no immunity, and creating a dependency on outsiders. Poachers steal the game the Jarawa rely on, and there are reports of sexual exploitation of Jarawa women.
The MP for the Andaman Islands, who wants to keep the road open, repeatedly talks in the forked tongue of the British, exhorting the Indian government to “civilise” the Jarawas.
Tourism is arguably the biggest menace for the Jarawas, with tour operators driving tourists along the road through the reserve every day in the hope of “spotting” members of the tribe. Despite prohibitions, tourists often stop to make contact with the Jarawas.
In July 2010, a report published by UNESCO called for the immediate closure of the ATR. Its recommendations also included protection of the Jarawas’ territory from violation by poachers and other outsiders, and education of local Indian settlers and government officials about the Jarawas and their rights. It concluded that self-determination “has to be the ultimate aim of any process that will involve the Jarawas – to help them negotiate with a rapidly changing, predatory world that exists around them.”
The Jarawas, for their bit, have been a tad luckier than the Bo. That’s because of the official Indian policy of reservation. No, that’s geo-physical reservation that one is talking about – not about seats in Parliament or jobs in the government. Their luck, however, has stood in the danger of running out since the late 1990s when bigtime tourism hit the islands. Twice – in 1999 and 2006 – they were hit by measles. Their numbers went down. It wasn’t the rate of decline that was so alarming; it was their eventual population count that was disconcerting.
The Jarawas are perfectly capable of deciding their own future, as long as the forest they rely on is protected and they are not forced to live in the way someone else thinks best. Trying to save the Jarawas may well be a lost cause; but it is certainly worth a try.
And the best way to do it would be to keep them out of our sight.
