Many of India’s protected tribal groups live in “beastly” conditions and the government should review long-standing laws that keep them in isolation, Indian Tribal Affairs Minister Kishore Chandra Deo said.
His comments were prompted by a scandal involving a video of naked Jarawa tribal women on the tropical Andaman Islands being told to dance for tourists, who had allegedly bribed a policeman to gain access to their reserve.
Contact with several tribes on the islands, set deep in the Indian Ocean, is illegal in a bid to protect their indigenous way of life and shield them from diseases against which they have no protection.
The policy means that while economic development is surging ahead in India’s main cities, there remain pockets of the country where conditions have hardly evolved in centuries and modernity is deliberately kept out.
“As far as my personal view is concerned it will be unfair to leave them like that in a beastly condition forever,” Deo said in an interview. “At the same time I would add that I am certainly not one who would like to expose them to shopping mall and junk culture.”
Not all of India’s vast number of indigenous groups are protected or live in reserves, but they consistently rank bottom in terms of human development alongside “untouchables” at the bottom of India’s caste system.
Deo, who has vowed to visit the Andaman Islands on a special trip within weeks, said that the issue of how to deal with protected tribal groups was highly divisive and the government needed to listen to tribal people.
“We have to start a dialogue,” he said. “A lot of the [Jarawa tribe] youngsters have learnt to speak Hindi, so one has to explain things to them and come to some conclusion. They have traditions, lots of indigenous knowledge and they also have to enjoy the benefits of development that have taken place, but it has to be a gradual process. There has to be a consensus.”
Other groups and campaigners, such as Survival International, say tribes such as the 402-strong Jarawa tribe should be left alone.
The London-based campaigner for tribal rights worldwide says the tribe is threatened by a road that brings traffic, tourists and trade into the heart of their land.
Britain’s Observer newspaper, which first published the video that triggered the controversy, said its journalist saw tourists toss -bananas and biscuits to tribespeople on the roadside.
It also said local traders had openly advised how much to bribe the police to spend a day out with the Jarawa.
Other tribes on the Andamans, such as the Sentinelese, shun all contact with the outside world and are known to be hostile to any encroachers.
Their last remaining territory, North Sentinel Island, is out of bounds even to the Indian navy in a bid to protect its reclusive inhabitants who number only about 150.
Some government officials in the capital of the Andaman Islands, Port Blair, say it is difficult to determine if the tribes want to be left alone or not.
“I communicate with the Jarawas and I see their willingness to contact us is increasing by the day,” the Andamans’ Tribal Welfare Department head Som Naidu said
Naidu said that the government in New Delhi had recently formed an expert panel to investigate the “hands-off” isolation policy, which was first enacted in the 1950s and further strengthened in 2004.
Suresh Babu, of Delhi’s Ambedkar University, said studies he had carried out in the Andamans suggested that observers should not idealize the tribes’ lifestyle.
“Tourists have a fanciful image of the great life of the hunter-gatherers of these beautiful islands,” the researcher wrote in the Indian Express.
“They fall ill from malaria and other common ailments, although they are not exposed to the deadly germs we carry, and survive employing whatever traditional medicines they can conjure up.”
His conclusions are disputed by Samir Acharya, a founder of the Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology environmental group, who opposes any weakening of the non-contact law.
“Their quality of life is quite good,” Acharya said from Port Blair, adding that efforts to bring tribal people on the island into the mainstream had been bad for them.
He cited the example of the Andaman’s largest tribal population, the Nicobarese, who have been given government jobs and modern homes and facilities.
“Their traditional food was coconuts and now they have been taught to eat rice although they do not grow any, and as a result they now need cash to buy food. The Nicobarese are unused to labor, but they now toil to find ways to fulfill their modern aspirations like whisky,” he said. “Is that a good life?”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of