Sunday book pick: We do not need to know everything about the Andamanese, says ‘The Last Island’

“Epochs of history rarely come to a sudden end, seldom announce their passing with anything so dramatic as the death of a king or the dismantling of a wall. More often, they withdraw slowly and imperceptibly (or at least unperceived), like the ebbing tide on a deserted beach

That is how the Age of Discovery is ending.”

In 2018, my family and I made a trip to the Andamans. Like many other tourists, we too undertook the excruciatingly long journey to the Baratang lime caves from Port Blair in the dead of night. The possibility of spotting the Jarawas – the most populous tribe on the island – was quite high. On our way back from the caves, in the middle of the afternoon when the sun beat down mercilessly even in the cool winter month of February, we saw the Jarawas being ferried by Indian government vehicles to schools and medical centres. The tribals – who otherwise don’t bother with clothes – were appropriately covered as per the decorum of the mainlanders. Men wore ill-fitting shorts, women, nighties, and children, frocks and knickers. They cut an odd figure.

Then, all of a sudden, our car was stopped by a Jarawa man – his age was impossible to deduce. He knocked on the driver’s window. The government mandate says that no tourists should interact with the indigenous peoples and no car should be driven with windows down. Nevertheless, our driver rolled down his as the Jarawa man made frantic gestures asking for something. The driver politely shook his head and we drove on. He was most likely asking for betel nuts or tobacco, the driver told us. From behind the window, cell phones clutched in our hands, and in a temperature-controlled car, we, a family of three from Kolkata, had made our first “contact” with the elusive Jarawas of the Andamans.

Here we come

In his book The Last Island, Adam Goodheart informs us that the Jarawas and Onges of the Andamans have been regularly supplied with alcohol, tobacco, and other intoxicants since the British Raj to keep them under control and make them dependent on the mainlanders for survival. What this has resulted in is not just widespread alcoholism in the tribes but a host of other illnesses related to the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts.

While we (still) know very little about the tribes of Andamans and most contacts with civilisations have ended in death or grievous injuries, the tribals have not been able to escape us despite their resolute will to isolate themselves. Though not a single Andamanese has ever made their way to the Indian mainland for food, employment opportunities, or the desire to be more “advanced”, India has still found its way to them. And so has the rest of the world.

Our diseases (STIs, mumps, smallpox etc), poisonous waters and gasses, plastic debris and oil leaks have all ended up on the virgin beaches of the Andamans. Like virtually everything that can be done remotely these days, it appears that we have found a way to affix ourselves to the Andamanese soil with our planet-unfriendly lifestyles.

Goodheart has always been fascinated – obsessed – by the archipelagos. He made the first journey in the 1990s and the latest in 2020 to research the tribes and learn how they have acclimatised themselves to the perennial curiosity of the outside world. Goodheart takes a sympathetic stand about the whole business of “discovering” new lands and peoples and the stories that emerge from such first contacts.

Goodheart asks why the white-skinned explorer’s experience is more important than that of those whose homes have been trespassed into. He quotes racist remarks about Indigenous peoples – the Andamanese are freely referred to as “savages”, “cannibals” – and the absolute “need” to induct them into civilised society and save them from the dirty grips of “Satan.” The Last Island often asks if we have ever stopped to consider what the same sequence of events might have looked like for the islanders. Their attitudes towards these strangers – confoundingly dressed, speaking several strange tongues, competing against the mighty forces of nature itself, might have told us much more than the self-important tourist / coloniser / self-appointed saviour’s accounts of bravado.

The fascination is not at all new. Europeans have been curious about the Andamanese ever since they started their colonisation project. Goodheart checks into the British Library and Anthropological Survey of India to collect journal entries, photographs, and reports to the Crown about some of the earliest information about the Andamanese. He also gets in touch with anthropologists in independent India who were posted on the island as part of their civil service duties. What emerges from this is a rich history of abuse, neglect and uncivil curiosity that has done more good than harm to the unsuspecting tribals.

One such institution was Andaman House, set up by the colonisers in Port Blair where the Jarawas were routinely brought for “study”. Maurice Vidal Portman, a young British officer who was in charge of the Andamans in the late 19th century, developed a close relationship with many of them. The reports to the Crown offered dry accounts of the tribals’ well-being and growing friendliness. However, Portman’s private journal entries told a different story. Sexual exploitation, venereal diseases, negligence and death were common occurrences in the House. There is also evidence of Portman having sexual relations with the tribal men who might not have entirely known what they were being made to do.

Another story that made my heart heavy was that of Jack Andaman’s. A tribal man who somehow ended up on a British ship and was sailed into Port Blair. He was made to dress as a gentleman and the first viceroy of India, Lord Canning and his wife took a special interest in him. Jack had even started to understand some English words and learnt to identify his reflection in the mirror. However, the change of air did not suit him well. He was inflicted with cholera soon after and English physicians lost interest in nursing him back to health. Jack was loaded into a boat, given some gifts and dropped off at the beach he was picked up from. Naked again, he was no longer required to be in a gentleman’s clothing.

And off we go

Goodheart continuously refers to history and weaves in his own travels to give a more definitive picture of the progress that both sides have made. He also keeps coming back to 26-year-old American missionary John Allen Chau’s adventures on the North Sentinel Island. Chau was convinced he was sent on a mission by Christ to make the Sentinelese see the light of Christianity. He was killed by the tribesmen, most likely with poisoned arrows, on his third attempt to establish contact.

Tourists are strictly prohibited from coming anywhere near the Sentinelese – who, by the way, are probably one of the most highly isolated communities in the world – but as Goodheart’s experiences show, everything is possible with a little persuasion and exchange of cash. Like Chau, he too made this treacherous journey to the North Sentinel Island in the late 1990s as a twenty-something-year-old, albeit in the dark of the night. He had no ulterior motive – spiritual or otherwise – and all he wanted was to see these mysterious people that the world could not seem to get enough of. The ensuing chaos of sailing on choppy waters and seeing the Sentinelese in their natural habitat can give Joseph Conrad and Henry Melville’s adventure novels a run for their money. “It was the greatest experience of my life”, says Goodheart when someone asks about him later. From the comfort of my room, I imagine the author’s pride and satisfaction of having experienced something so extraordinary in the truest sense of the word.

As the world closes in on us and we collide increasingly frequently with other people’s thoughts and existence, perhaps it is necessary for us to believe in the invincibility of the Sentinelese and laud their military reclusiveness. As Goodheart reasons, for the rest of the world, the existence of the Sentinelese in a perfect time-space harmony serves as a “self-consoling fantasy” for the rest of us instead of a genuine concern to keep the planet hospitable for every animal and human being that inhabits it. When serious tragedies such as global warming, climate change, and pollution have signalled the impending death of a habitable planet, the iron-willed people and land of North Sentinel Island convince us that perhaps some of it is still “inviolate”, however small the degree might be.

There is great heart in Goodheart’s narration of the Andaman and its people. The book doesn’t ever regress into the gaze of a spectator and instead offers a parallel history of people who have long been treated as objects of curiosity by those who do not understand them. As beautifully written as a novel and as inquisitive as poetry, Goodheart’s simultaneous tellings of “discovery” and “being discovered” create a framework that compels the reader to rethink the project of colonisation itself – and consequently, the whole hullaballoo of civilisation and technological progress. I often found myself overwhelmed and tearing up by what I was reading – for isn’t it a joy to share this planet with such wondrous beings and be alive at a time when not every mystery of human life has yielded itself to the destructive forces of human advancement?

The Last Island: A Story of the Andamans and the Most Elusive Tribe in the World, Adam Goodheart, Juggernaut.