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© Salomé/Survival |
The recently-contacted Jarawa tribe of the Andaman Islands in the Indian
Ocean was given new hope in 2002. In a courageous and unprecedented ruling, the
supreme court of India ordered that the Andaman trunk road' cutting through
their reserve be closed, and all settlers living on their land be removed. One
year later, the administration of the islands (which belong to India) has made
significant progress in removing encroaching colonists from Jarawa land. The
road, however, remains open, leaving the Jarawa at risk of disease and
exploitation.
The Jarawa are nomadic hunter-gatherers, who have resisted contact with
settlers on the Andaman Islands for nearly 150 years. They are one of four
surviving tribes living in the islands. Two of these, the Great Andamanese' and
the Onge, were forcibly settled by the colonial British and Indian authorities,
and were so weakened by contact with new diseases and the change in their way of
life that they were nearly wiped out. The Onge fell from 670 people in 1900 to
around 100 today, while the Great Andamanese, who numbered 5,000 in 1848, now
number only 41. The Jarawa, who number 250-300, live in the rainforest. They
hunt pigs and monitor lizards, and catch fish, turtles and dugong (a marine
animal) with bows and arrows. They also collect berries, roots and honey from
the forest. The Jarawa remained hostile to outsiders until very recently, when
small groups of them started to appear by the road. It is thought that this
change may be a result of pressure from poachers along the coast of the reserve.
The other Andaman tribe, the Sentinelese, are protected by living on their own
island, and maintain their isolation to an even greater degree than the Jarawa.
Yet they too are put at risk by visits to their island by poachers and
government employees.
Since 1948, thousands of Indians have settled in the islands and they, along
with poachers coming by sea, have encroached on the Jarawa reserve, depriving
the tribe of vital forest resources and bringing diseases to which it has no
immunity. The dangers posed to the Jarawa by unwanted contact with outsiders
increased when the Andaman trunk road' was built illegally though their land in
the 1970s. The road brings the Jarawa into daily contact with travellers on
buses and lorries, and has opened the way for new settlement inside the reserve.
The danger of disease is very real: an unknown number of Jarawa died in the
forest during a measles epidemic in 1999.
The work of Survival and local organisations has been very effective.
Firstly, the high court issued a temporary order putting plans on hold to settle
the Jarawa forcibly. Survival had warned that forcible settlement would wipe the
Jarawa out, and testimonies gathered by Survival on the effects of similar
policies on nomadic tribal peoples were quoted at length in the order. Survival
had also argued for the closure of the road and the removal of settlers from the
Jarawa's land, both of which were then ordered by India's supreme court.
The supreme court's deadline for the closure of the road was August 2002, but
the road remains open. Comments made by the Lieutenant Governor of the islands
suggest the administration is reluctant to implement the order. There has also
been major construction work during 2003 on a part of the road due to be closed,
and the local member of parliament has proposed that the road be widened rather
than closed. If delays in implementing the order continue, the administration of
the Andaman Islands could be charged with contempt of court. More importantly,
it risks repeating the past mistakes of the British and Indian governments by
destroying one of the last remaining tribes of the Andaman Islands.
