Tribal dance to shame!

Suddenly the sleepy and often discarded Indian island has come alive on Indian television channels, albeit for wrong reasons. Looking for meaty and glamorous issues, these TRP-hungry channels happily grabbed it with both hands.

Confused? The hot issue of the day is nothing but the reports published by print media and repeatedly aired and discussed by leading television channels about dancing of half-naked women and children to “entertain” the visiting tourists at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Piqued by the development, the Indian government on Wednesday asked the Andaman and Nicobar administration to explain how it allowed such ‘unsocial’ event to happen?

Terming the incident as "obnoxious and disgusting", tribal affairs minister KP Singh Deo said, "It ... cannot be pardoned. It deserves exemplary punishment.” Another minister cried for strict action against those responsible for the event.

The Guardian has posted on its website footage filmed by a tourist showing half-naked Jarawa women being told to dance for tourists by an off-camera police officer.

The website said the Jarawa tribe has lived in peace in the Andaman Islands for thousands of years but tour companies are now running safaris through their jungle. Wealthy tourists pay police to make the women - usually naked - dance for their amusement.

It’s bizarre to the core. The incident has exposed the local government, which has failed to stop such acts being happening under its nose for quite some time. It’s now that when media has highlighted the issue that everyone creating hue and cry of the incident. For long, these tribal people have been living in acute penury and lack of basic infrastructure, which the government has failed to provide as per the constitutional norms. They have been denied the basic needs and several places in the Islands have, till date, not received the compensation announced for the 2004 tsunami victims and damages.

Probably the acute penury might have forced the locals to agree to the tourists’ bizarre amusement needs. Instead of discussing at length on various platforms these tribal people should be rehabilitated and provided basic needs such as education, employment, food and shelter.

According to a Wikipedia update, Jarawa tribes are one of the adivasi indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands. Their present numbers are estimated at between 250-350 individuals. Since they have largely shunned interactions with outsiders, many particulars of their society, culture and traditions are poorly understood. Along with other indigenous Andamanese peoples, they have inhabited the islands for at least several thousand years.

There is some indication that the Jarawa community regarded the now-extinct Jangil tribe as a parent tribe from which they split centuries or millennia ago, even though the Jarawa outnumbered (and eventually out-survived) the Jangil. The Jangil (also called the Rutland Island Aka Bea) were presumed extinct by 1931.

So, the facts show that the community is on the verge of getting extinct. We already lost one tribal reference from the history and another one is in the offing. Hope for some light for these hapless people after this hullabaloo.