The Jarawa tribe of the Andamans is known for its fierce and frenzied response to outsiders from the mainland. Expert archers, they have shot to kill intruders, and have resisted civilisation. The Sentinelese, another tribe which inhabits the North Sentinel Island in the Andamans Sea, are equally protective of their self-imposed isolation. Sujit Saraf has researched this part of India in great depth to write his new novel Island. His story is based on that of the American missionary, 26-year-old John Chau, who landed illegally on the island in an attempt to make contact with the Sentinelese and convert them to Christianity. Though accessing these islands is strictly forbidden, Chau bribed the local fishermen, who unwittingly ferried him to his death. The fisherman said they saw Chau being killed and then dragged along the beach and buried by the tribesmen.
Against this is the background of attempts by the Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI) to make peaceful contact through gifts of coconuts and bananas. Saraf places his main protagonist, Mattoo, a Kashmiri who is as fair as the tribesmen are dark, in the AnSI. He sees himself as a modern-day Verrier Elwin, who will successfully infiltrate the Sentinelese community and document their way of life. Unfortunately, Mattoo is in disgrace due to a scandal created by his own obsession with becoming Elwin and is forced to run a tourist shop in Port Blair.
Mattoo is blackmailed by his goods supplier Subhash to ferry an American missionary–another Chinese-origin young man–to North Sentinel and put him in contact with the tribe. Knowing the risk involved, but totally at Subhash’s mercy since his livelihood depends on the Bengali trader, he takes Li to North Sentinel and watches the missionary land on the beach despite the appearance of hostile tribesmen.
Chau’s body was never recovered–Saraf’s story is one of hide-and-seek, an infiltration of the island unlike much of the original episode. Along the way we learn why Mattoo was expelled from the AnSi and how attempting to make contact with primeval tribals entails putting their lives and culture at risk. It is a world peopled by politicians and the police, who have rules in place forbidding outsiders from invading tribal societies. The prime minister recently renamed three of the islands to remove any colonial taint from history–since as far as India is concerned, the Andamans are best known for the Cellular Jail to which freedom fighters were sentenced, and minority communities, especially those who speak no known language, are unimportant in the greater national scheme of things.
Saraf draws out his story about a place that few have visited–the last being the missionary in 2018. The descriptions of physicality and the differences between tribals and non-tribals are detailed. Saraf's characters–Mattoo and the missionary–are relatable, people who have their own obsessions to become famous either as scholars or apostles and who fail in the end because, despite their better judgement, they refuse to read the writing on the wall. Is anthropology and its relentless study of the past good or bad–or are the anthropologists only doing it for fame and fortune? Contact with the modern world has the power to destroy tribal societies and not just because of the contagions that inhabit so-called civilisation.
Those who remember Chau's story will be interested in Saraf’s take on the subject which captures the essentials. Those who don't will relate to a story that offers a different kind of Andamans experience.
No one has visited North Sentinel Island after the death of the missionary in 2018–at least, officially. Fisher folk too do not fish the waters after two of their kind were hacked to death when their boat got too close to the island. Is the tribe alive or dead? Or…Saraf has his own conclusion to share with readers.
