5. THE TRIBES

5.2 The Onge-Jarawa Group

Unlike their northern cousins on Great Andaman, the other major grouping among Andamanese does not form a close linguistic, cultural and geographic unit. Its members differ widely in many respects and are (or were) separated by varying expanses of sea. Geographical separation over long periods seems to be responsible for this state of affairs. The only thing that can be said with a reasonable degree of certainty about the relationship between the Great Andamanese and the Onge-Jarawa on the one hand and among the Onge-Jarawa groups on the other is that they must have been living apart for many millennia.

With the Great Andamanese culturally extinct, it is among the Onge-Jarawa that we find the only surviving representatives of the Andamanese culture and race today.

5.3 The Onge

The Onge are the only friendly and easily accessible tribe of the group. For this reason they are relatively well-studied and documented and well on their way to extinction. Sadly, friendliness in the Andamans has not been helpful trait in the battle for survival.

The Onge were the sole occupants of Little Andaman where they maintained, until as late as the 1950s, a largely undisturbed traditional way of life. They alone among Andamanese had acquired (or perhaps not lost) certain minimal skills of seamanship and with it the ability to travel short distances across the open sea. Onges fished and hunted regularly on and around the uninhabited islands between Little Andaman and Rutland Island. For a few decades during the turn of the 19th to the 20th century they even maintained a sort of outlying colony on the shores of Rutland Island. The colonists replaced the fading Aka-Bea who, weakened with disease, no longer had the strength to keep up their claim to the Rut-land fishing grounds. The Onge have always been less inward-looking and more adventurous than other Andamanese groups. Their flexibility may have had something to do with their long-term contacts to the outside world, with occasional visits from outsiders for commercial purposes. There may even have been some intermarriage with outsiders long before the British arrived.

As we have seen in an earlier chapter, the Onge were thoroughly hostile towards intruders when the British first tried to establish relations with them. Although this must remain speculative, their hostility seems to have had somewhat different roots from that of other Andamanese. It is possible that Chinese, Malay and other outsiders - partners of long standing and trusted by the Onge - stoked up hostility against the newcomers. When the British gradually took control of the seas surrounding the Andamans and Nicobars after the 1870s, the influence of the old traders waned and Onge hostility eventually faded, a development helped greatly by patient British diplomacy. A wise British diplomacy no doubt deserves much of the credit. Murderously hostile until 1885, the Onge briefly maintained a watchful neutrality until 1886 after which time, despite a few lapses and despite some historical upsets like World War II, they have remained friendly and accessible to outsiders until today. The peaceful attitude towards outsiders no doubt was made easier by the fact that visits from outsiders on Little Andaman between 1900 and 1947 were few and far between and of short duration.

The British were not concerned with "civilizing" the Onge nor were they greatly interested in the island itself, apart from keeping it out of the hands of other colonial powers. All that was required of the Onge was to refrain from attacking ship-wrecked sailors and to allow passing ships to take on wood, food or water in safety. When the Onge finally understood this and ceased to interfere with shipping, they were left in peace. The Japanese occupied the island 1942-1945 but Little Andaman remained a backwater with no notable military. The Japanese did not regard the Onge as fully human, but as harmless "monkeys" to be left in peace as long as they did not get in the way or caused trouble.

There were no settlers or any other permanent outsiders in residence on Little Andaman until Indian independence 1947. The new Indian administration that took over in the first flush of independence in 1947 meant well. Its bureaucratic do-gooding, complete with social workers, powdered milk, coconut plantations, unsuitable prefabricated housing, government issued clothing, action plans and "acculturization" it did little towards the survival of the Onge. Still more disastrous was the settlement of many Indian refugee populations and the cutting down (still continuing today) of the native jungle by government as well as local farmers to make room for an ever expanding Indian population. Among the Onge, infertility and child mortality remain serious problems today with the reasons for them as obscure today as they ever were during British days. Indian efforts to bring modern medicine to the island have not made much of a dent in the declining numbers. The Onge are now settled in two separate reservations while the rest of them have been taken over by Indian and Nicobarese settlers. Although the Indian administration has corrected many of the early mistakes, it is now probably too late to save the Onge as a distinct people. A culture as primitive and alien as theirs can only survive in complete isolation, an isolation that is no longer feasible even if it was seriously attempted.

Because of their friendliness and relative accessibility, more is known today about the Onge than about any other living Andamanese group. Most of the research was done and published after 1950 by scientists working for the Indian Anthropological Survey. No more need be said about the Onge here since information about them is given in the relevant chapters throughout this book.

5.4 The Jarawa

Jarawa (also sometimes spelt Jarwa, closer to the original pronunciation) means "stranger" in the Aka-Bea language. They call themselves ya-eng-nga (which, inevitably, means "human being"). Without the characteristic Jarawa prefix ya- this is very close to what the Onge call themselves: en-nge, and which in Onge also has the same meaning as in Jarawa, confirming the long-suspected close relationship between the two groups.

While the friendliness of the Onge has stripped them of their protective isolation, until very recently the Jarawa have taken an entirely different course. This ferocious tribe had been fighting the Aka-Bea for centuries when the British arrived to stay in 1858. It hardly made a difference to them whether they fought against the Aka-Bea, the British, escaped Indian convicts, the Japanese, the Indian authorities or Indian settlers. Quite unnoticed by the outside world, the ongoing war shows every sign of having finally ended in 1998.

Since the 1970s, the Indian authorities have been trying to woo the Jarawa with gifts and "friendship." Unfortunately, an Indian bush police, ostensibly there to keep Jarawa and settlers apart, inevitably has to be recruited from the Indian population. Having far more in common with the Indian farmers than with the Jarawa, the force is not always as helpful as it could be. Government visiting parties (against the advice of the Anthropological Survey) have established friendly relations with initially two Jarawa local groups and since 1998 with what appears to be the entire Jarawa tribe. For the resulting problems see Chapter 1 of this book.

In 1858, Aka-Bea and Jarawa were hereditary enemies that had been fighting each other for a long time, probably centuries. It is an odd fact that when the British in 1790 made contact with natives in the region of Port Blair they found one group hostile and another friendly without realizing that they dealt with two entirely different tribes. Lt. Colebrooke even took some friendly natives with him to Calcutta and to the Nicobars. More than a century later M.V. Portman realized that these early "friendlies" had been Jarawa:

On reading Lieutenant Colebrooke's account... it became evident to me that the aborigines with whom the people in Lieutenant Blair's settlement on the South Andaman in 1790 et seq., were friendly... were members of the South Andaman Jarawa tribe. The description of their habits, weapons and utensils, and the vocabulary given, leaves no room for doubt on this point.

The "hostiles" of those early days must have been the Aka-Bea who 70 years later would become the first and closest allies of the British. The colonizing power could not win the friendship of both groups:

From the Aka-Bea-da I [Portman] have learnt that in former times the Jarawas were more numerous and powerful than they are now, and they inhabited the Southern part of the Harbour of Port Blair, the Western part, and much of the neighbouring interior. Many "Kitchen-Middens" on the shores of the Harbour have been pointed out to me as the sites of Jarawa villages, and the Aka-Bea-da further prove their contention by showing that these shell-heaps contain the refuse of articles which the Jarawa eat, but which the Aka-Bea-da will not touch.

The disappearance of the Jarawa from the Port Blair region after the 1790s almost certainly is connected with their early contacts to the British. The diseases that a century later would extinguish their hereditary enemies quite possibly reduced the number of Jarawa and allowed the Aka-Bea to gain the upper hand. As one British administrator wrote:

... how swift the disastrous effects of our relations with the Andamanese have been to them.

Indeed, the same will also be said in a few years about the newly blossoming friendship between Indians and Jarawa.

The British landing party that established itself at Port Blair in 1858 knew nothing of all this. However, they soon heard from their new Aka-Bea allies that there was a ferocious tribe in the interior of South Great Andaman. They paid little attention, being wholly preoccupied with the difficult task of establishing a new penal colony in a hostile climate. After things had settled down, time and energy was available for exploratory expeditions, including many into Jarawa lands. While one Great Andamanese tribe after the other was contacted, their lands explored and friendly relations established, the Jarawa remained stubbornly uncommunicative and hostile. One reason contributing to the continued hostility was the use of Aka-Bea trackers by the British. These were paid with food, tobacco and alcohol and even issued with arms and ammunition. The British never seem to have questioned the practice on the principle that Andamanese are Andamanese. They were perpetually disappointed when their Aka-Bea allies found nothing but deserted villages. They also soon discovered that a Jarawa village, once it had been entered by outsiders, was abandoned by its owners as soon as the intruders had withdrawn. It was pure chance when, occasionally, elderly men, women and children were caught and taken to Port Blair. Most of these captives soon sickened and some died before they could be returned and the practice did nothing to endear the British to the Jarawa.

When on 25th March 1884 an expedition finally chanced on a Jarawa group that was collecting honey, a fight with bows and arrows ensued. One Jarawa man was killed and one wounded in the leg. The wounded prisoner, Talai, was taken to Port Blair and tended at the hospital there. He recovered and was soon on friendly terms with the British. He kept busy by learning the Hindi language and made himself agreeable to the Officer in Charge of the Andamanese, Mr. Portman, in whose house he lived. He accompanied Mr. Portman wherever he went and fraternized with other Andamanese at Port Blair. In June Mr. Portman led an expedition of 30 Indian convicts and 70 Andamanese (in this context a small army rather than an expedition) to the elusive Jangil tribe in yet an other attempt to track down Jarawa. Talai accompanied the expedition and was placed under no restraint. He was last seen shooting fish with two Andamanese boys when he quietly absented himself and disappeared. He was later tracked to the northern end of Rutland Island where he had made a raft and crossed the straight to south Great Andaman. Mr. Portman had high hopes that he would turn into a useful intermediary but Talai was never heard of again.

Indeed, British attempts at capturing Jarawa men, teaching them Hindi or English and then setting them free to function as intermediaries did not work. In one attempt in 1888 a Jarawa boy named Ike was captured and kept much as Talai had been. His behavior in semi-captivity was friendly, he learnt Hindi and was popular among other Andamanese at Port Blair. Then he disappeared, only to resurface briefly and violently in a Jarawa raiding party. During a skirmish Talai was recognized when he used his linguistic knowledge to abuse his opponents in foul Hindi. After this incident he, too, was never seen again.

Portman, after his diplomatic success with the Onge on Little Andaman, was hoping to repeat it with the Jarawa, especially since he thought them to be closely related to the Onge. It did not work. In 1884 the British authorities gave up trying to be friendly and concentrated on containing the Jarawa problem. Portman received orders to step up the fight and to remotivate the Aka-Bea trackers by withholding their rewards until they had some successes to show.

In 1872 the Jarawa had one on the attack and raided the settlement at Port Blair. What the British later called the Jarawa Wars had begun. Hardly a year has passed since then when they did not conduct a few raids. Mr. Portman had a genuine love and understanding for the Andamanese, including the Jarawa, and seems to have implemented his new instructions with some reluctance and much restraint. When he retired in 1900, the war against the Jarawa became much more brutal. Portman's successor was actually killed during a skirmish with Jarawa in 1902. Calls for their extermination had been heard before but Mr. Portman's moderating influence persisted. With the restraint gone, the genocidal party gradually gained the upper hand, helped along by a string of murderous Jarawa attacks. Many punitive expeditions between 1910 and the 1920s were in fact turned into undeclared attempts at extermination. As a retired, Portman told his successors: it could not work. Despite repeated heavy losses, today the Jarawa are still living in their jungles and at least in 1997 were still fighting. For later developments refer to chapter 1. It should be noted, however, that genocide was never official government policy. The slaughter was more in the nature of an attempt at problem solving by an increasingly desperate local authority in charge of an increasingly brutal penal colony.