Woman who befriended Andamans’ isolated Jarawa tribals

When the Election Commission recently enrolled the long-reclusive Jarawa tribals of Andamans as voters, one particular story lurked in the background. This was about Madhumala Chattopadhyay, a Kolkata-born researcher who participated in the first friendly contact ever made with the hostile Sentinelese of the Andamans way back on January 4, 1991. She later became the first woman anthropologist to make a friendly contact with another set of secluded natives, the Jarawas.

With four (Jarawa, Onges, Shompens and Great Nicobarese) of the five ‘particularly vulnerable tribal groups’ in the Andamans now registered as voters, The Tribune tracked down and spoke to Madhumala about her experiences of meeting people who have long lived in pristine isolation and what the milestone of recruiting the natives as voters meant.

“This is indeed a landmark moment in the history of human contact with the primitive tribes. It’s a fine culmination of years of efforts people like us put in to befriend and demystify the indigenous people,” said Madhumala, 63, who retired as a Joint Director in the Ministry of Social Justice.

The anthropologist recalls with pride her forays into the world of Andaman tribes, long perceived as hostile. Her finest memory is of January 4, 1991. “The MV Tarmugli anchored off Allen Point on the south-western part of North Sentinel island in Andamans. On board were 13 Anthropological Survey of India members, including myself. We had been chosen for a mission many had been afraid to undertake given the previous instances of hostilities,” she recalls about her first encounter with the Sentinelese, who remain the most uncontactable people in the world.

The friendly contact involved dropping off coconuts (stocked on MV Tarmugli) into the waters and waiting for the natives to accept them. “I still remember how the Sentinelese men stood ashore for a while, watching cautiously. Before long, they were all in the water collecting their bounty. There was no hostility. Soon, they were accepting coconuts from our hands.”

After meeting the Sentinelese, Madhumala and her team proceeded to the Jarawa settlement in 1991. There, she stayed periodically, earning enough trust of the natives for them to leave their infants with her. “There were occasions when the Jarawa women would ask me to tend to their babies as they collected food,” she says.

Asked how she managed to be part of missions deemed risky, Madhumala says she signed a declaration mentioning “proceeding at own risk”. “I would wear layered clothing, just in case of an attack. I spent six years from 1989 to 1995 researching tribals. Never did I feel discomfited,” recalls the researcher, whose published works remain essential reference to date. About her most abiding experience with the tribals, Madhumala says popular notions that the tribals were hostile were ill-founded.

“Civilisation, as we know it, may have bypassed these tribes, which still hunt with bows and arrows. But qualities of affection and sympathy make them socially advanced. At one level, it’s an enviable world,” says Madhumala, who had wanted to meet the natives as a child. “I was only 12 when my father was posted in the South Eastern Railways in Kolkata and would get an annual family pass for free travel across India. I remember pestering him to take me to the tribes of the Andamans. A newspaper picture of the Shompens welcoming a newborn had struck my impressionable mind. But my father said only researchers could visit the tribals,” says Madhumala, whose motivation to take up anthropology was rooted in her childhood. She went on to earn a PhD in anthropology, landed a job at the Anthropological Survey of India and chose Port Blair for her first posting. It was an ASI regional centre no one wanted to opt for those days.