Physician's Journal Contains Clues to North Sentinel Residents

I was in Port Blair earlier this year and I had the opportunity to visit the small but impressive anthropological museum of Zonal. Most visitors to Andamans are curious about the indigenous inhabitants of these isolated islands between India and Thailand.

However, it is strictly forbidden to contact groups or even to take a picture. The museum offers a window onto their lives with models of thatched huts, canoes and images of islanders dancing or hunting fish and leading a life apparently untouched by the modern world. .

At the gift shop, a book entitled The Andaman Jarawas caught my attention. The author was not an anthropologist, but a doctor named Ratan Chandra Kar. Originally written in Bengali, the book was published in 2009 under the title Andamaner Adim Janajati Jarawa . According to his diaries, it was the story of an indigenous group called Jarawa, released from semi-isolation after an extended period. d & # 39; hostility. Kar was the doctor who monitored their health and worked in a basic health center in a thatched hut in Kadamtala village.

Over time, he became friends with the Jarawa and watched their habits and customs closely. It is also credited with bringing them back from extreme extinction during a measles epidemic in 1999. The book addresses all aspects of their lives. Observations on their state of health and their vulnerability to disease shortly after their release from isolation in 1996 are particularly relevant in the light of recent events.

Last week, North Sentinel Island made headlines in the international press when John Allen Chau, an American missionary found dead on his shores, was killed by arrows. The Sentinelese are fierce defenders of their small forested island lined with coral reefs and are among the most isolated communities on the planet.

is concerned about the actions of Survival International, which advocates for indigenous and unaffected populations. about the current situation on the island. "Their extreme isolation makes them very vulnerable to diseases against which they are not immune, which means that contact would almost certainly have tragic consequences for them," a statement said.

What happens to isolated communities when they come into contact with the outside world? The history of the Jarawa provides clues and they have old connections with the Sentinels. The homeland of the Jarawa is about 48 km from North Sentinel Island. Some scholars believe that the Jarawa migrated to the island using rudimentary boats once.

In an article on the genetic origins of Andaman Islanders, scientists at Oxford University use the term "Jarawa". describe Sentinelese "on the basis of their similar phenotype and similarity of language". Another study done by the Central Laboratory of Forensic Science of Kolkata indicates that the two groups share a link because they constitute "one of the world's oldest hunter-gatherer populations".

When he met the Jarawa for the first time in 1998, Kar found them in excellent health. He describes them as "well built and apparently healthier than any other tribal community on the continent, even better than rural people." Conditions such as obesity, hypertension, heart disease and even mental illness were alien to them and were virtually disease-free. Crocodile bites, worms, and skin ulcers were common ailments. Each Jarawa family made " alam ", powdered red clay mixed with pork fat, which she used to cure minor pains.

Traditional Methods of Delivery

Kar was once invited to witness what he calls the "rich traditional delivery system of a thousand years". The Jarawa were totally confident in their traditional delivery methods and never asked for help from a doctor. They used a variety of techniques rarely encountered in modern obstetrics.

To relieve labor pains, women in the community warmed their feet to the fire and applied a slight pressure on the belly of the pregnant woman. The husband was the obstetrician, extracting the baby and cutting the umbilical cord with a heated hunting knife. And the women usually gave birth in a squatting position, which, according to Kar, was beneficial for the mother and the baby.

Although physically strong, the Jarawa were weak in other respects. Contact with the outside world provoked the first measles epidemic and 40% of the population was affected. Kar treated them with the antibiotic ciprofloxacillin and they recovered. But he writes that activists and anthropologists feared that the Jarawa would be "exterminated from the earth".

Diseases like measles can be devastating for tribal people, observes Survival International: "In the 19th century, it destroyed at least half of the Great Andamanese on one island and all those on another island. This tribe, which once numbered 5,000, now has only 41 people.

Kar asked for caution about the issue of vaccination. "The inherent immunity" of the Jarawa, he said, was much better than "the immunity obtained if the modern vaccination system allowed it". The absence of hepatitis B is one example. Even if more than half of the population was a carrier. Other experts were however alarmed by the fact that 66% of Jarawa were positive for the hepatitis B antigen, a rate "probably the highest ever recorded in the world". Vaccination is now routine for all Jarawa children.

Relative Isolation

Today, the group lives relatively isolated in the Jarawa reserve. The main threat to their way of life is the Andaman National Road through their forest, one of whose leaders described the construction as an "act of monumental madness".

The Jarawa population has grown and they are better off than others. island. A related group, the Jangil of Rutland Island, died in 1931, while the Grand Andaman and Onge, who were integrated into society, saw their numbers decline sharply. The Indian government followed the advice of experts like Kar who warned that any attempt to "civilize" the Jarawa by giving them clothing or education could put their very existence at risk.

This week, the "leave them alone" policy was again put to the test while Survival International and Indian academics had begged Andaman officials to abandon their attempts to approach the shores of North Sentinel Island to recover Chau's body.

Sribala Subramanian writes on ecological problems and broadcasts tweets about @bsubram . She was previously with the magazine TIME .