![]() ![]() ![]() “In any case, tribes in Andamans have recently shunned efforts to be converted. In a 13-page journal that Chau, the American tourist, handed over to the fishermen who accompanied him to the island, he details his last few hours with the Sentinelese, saying that when he tried to speak their language and sing Christian “worship songs” to them, they reacted angrily. They made it very clear he wasn’t wanted there,” says Pandit. ![]() The man (Chau) should have backed off when they asked him to. That led to the brief interaction where they were ready to touch us. We spent years just dropping gifts and presenting ourselves to each other. But we also have to understand that friendship has its stages and nuances. Should the government have continued to make efforts to reach out to the Sentinelese? “I think that if interaction would have continued, the young man would not have been killed. While there is no definitive way to say how many Sentinelese still live on the island, Pandit’s guess is between 80 and 90. The Onge men only told us that the men were very dangerous,” he said. To this day, I don’t know what they said. But then the Sentinelese said something to the Onge men that got them to hide inside the boat and ask us to leave immediately. “We took two Onge men, who were like our friends, to the island. Now 83, Pandit says closer contact with the tribe may do them more harm than good. The Sentinelese made it clear that we were not welcome and we kept our distance,” he says.ĭuring another trip, Pandit and his team sought the help of Onge tribesmen, hoping they would help communicate with the Sentinelese. “After that trip, we went back in smaller teams of seven or eight. The fire was protected by a ring of twigs around it. The team found 18 slanted-roof huts, all facing each other, and small fires outside each hut. That visit in 1967 remains the only documented look into the Sentinelese settlements. Before leaving, we kept a coconut in each hut as a goodwill gesture,” he says. We had not gone with the intention of occupying only studying. I believe they are aware of the power of a firearm and did not want a confrontation. A 20-member team, including armed local security officials, landed on the island and managed to make it to their settlement. Once, a team member of mine was hit with an arrow on the thigh because our boat got too close to their island,” recalls Pandit.ĭuring their first trip to the island, however, Pandit and his team were not aware of what they might encounter. If we didn’t pay heed and stop, they would shoot arrows as a last resort. If we tried to venture into their territory without respecting their wishes or got too close for comfort, they would turn their backs on us and sit down on their haunches, as it to defecate. This is also the case with the Sentinelese. When we forged friendship with them in the 1970s and 80s, they would welcome us with song and dance. “Until teams of anthropologists and forest officials developed friendship with the Jarawas, they were called dangerous and hostile. Of the tribes in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, some have been called hostile at different points. We never took back another, sticking to coconuts,” Pandit recalls.Īlso read: Bigger catch, foreign tourists: Why Andaman fishermen still go near protected islands We found that they had killed the pig and buried it. Curious, we decided to take a risk and inspect the mound since there was no one on the shore. The next day, we saw a small mound on the beach. Three-four of them looked at the pig intently and finally one speared it. That day, as soon as the team left the pig on the island and reached their boats, the Sentinelese came out of the jungle to inspect the offering. We would wade through the water with the offerings, drop them on the shore and rush back to observe what happens,” Pandit says. We would stop our boats at a safe distance from the islands so that even if the Sentinelese were to shoot arrows at us, we wouldn’t be hit. In the early days itself, we chalked out a method to drop gifts. “We were trying to communicate to the members of the tribe that we were there just to extend a hand of friendship and wanted nothing from them. Now 83, Pandit says their team worked hard to win the trust of the Sentinelese islanders. T N Pandit says their team worked hard to win the trust of the Sentinelese islanders. The son of a professor in Kashmir, Pandit lived in Port Blair for 25 years, retiring as director of the Anthropological Survey in 1992.
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