“Please do not be angry at them or God if I get killed,”
These were the missionary’s last words. His body was seen being dragged across the shore and buried by the tribal locals, riddled by arrows of archaic design.
John Allen Chau, fond of traveling the world, made it his mission to introduce Christianity to the North Sentinel Island’s residents. There have been previous accounts of fishermen, anthropologists, and adventurers trying to get access to the Sentinelese by offering them food and supplies. It has, however, not been fruitful and resulted in them being either killed or wounded by the arrows shot by the tribesmen.
Consequently, Indian authorities have declared it off-limits, to ensure everyone’s safety The Indian Navy patrols the waters around the island.
Jon was able to pay off fishermen and reach close to the island.
He mentions in his journal “The Milky Way was above and God Himself was shielding us from the Coast Guard and Navy patrols.” As others have tried before him, John Allen Chau also went bearing gifts for the Sentinelese. At times they would be amused by his actions but then hostile. John’s attempt to bring them towards Jesus was answered by an arrow shot into his bible. He’d paddle back and forth unrelenting in his journey to preach God’s message, until one night, he was found dead.
Why are they this way?
This constant hostile behavior towards outsiders is not without cause.
In the late 19th century a British Naval officer named Maurice Portman working in the Andamans kidnapped a few of the islanders as a part of his experiment. They were molested and photographed; these photographs were then taken to Europe.
Said to be a pedophile, Portman was obsessed with the bodies of young Andamanese men. Specifically, their genitalia.
Some fled, but the ones he was able to recapture included an elderly couple and 4 children. The couple died since being unvaccinated, they are highly prone to epidemics of flu, measles, and outsider diseases that they cannot survive. The children were then dropped back at the island unaware of the consequences that might have had. The risk of diseases increases with every contact, hence anthropologists, activists including Survival International have pleaded the case for the tribesmen to be left alone. However, on the contrary, the director of police in the Andamans, Dependra Pathak said a crime has been committed and believes it to be their responsibility to investigate. It involves more visits to the island to enable the issuance of a death certificate of John Allen Chau although further endangering the tribesmen and themselves.
Further interference
As aggressive and unaccommodating as they may be, the Sentinelese still came under the shadow of colonialism in the late 19th century when Britishers aboard the Royal Navy Vessel declared the island to be a colonial holding. The legal status changed after India’s independence and soon it claimed the island under its territory. The vessel had originally arrived to rescue passengers of an Indian merchant ship that had run aground.
The passengers stayed there 3 days until the Sentinelese decided they’d overstayed their welcome. Instead of acknowledging the tribesmen’s autonomy over the island, the British forced their authority, naturally making an enemy out of the Sentinelese.
What followed was years of untrustworthy relationship with the outside world till the present day.
As things stand
A century after the incident with the British, a team of anthropologists led by Trinok Nath Pandit, landed on the North Sentinel Island. The people fled from their homes and Pandit’s team left gifts for them. Cloth, plastic buckets, candies, live pigs, metal pots, coconuts, etc. were among the things his team left for them over 25 years. Metal pots, pans, and coconuts were valued by them the most since coconuts do not naturally grow on Sentinel Island. They buried the rest of the things including the pigs.
Without any direct contact for over 25 years, on one particular expedition in January 1991 Pandit’s team went back to the Island. Unusually the tribesmen came unarmed this time and ventured closer to the outsiders with their baskets and adzes (a tool to cut open coconuts, which could be used for self-defense too) to receive the gifts. Later when they returned a peculiar event took place. One of the tribesmen had a bow raised towards the team and one of their women pushed the bow down. The man dropped the bow to the ground and proceeded to bury it. Followed by this was tribesmen rushing towards the boat to collect more supplies.
“Later some of the tribesmen came and touched the boat. The gesture, we felt, indicated that they were not scared of us now,” says Madhumala Chattopadhyay. Chattopadhyay was the first and only woman anthropologist in Pandit’s team to have been a part of the expeditions. She had to sign undertakings for the government and get their permission to be a part of this. The team and her would go on to climb to the shore however the tribe, still cautious, did not take them to their settlement. Chattopadhyay further recalls going back again with a bigger team and having a pleasant encounter that took an opposite turn. One of the team members tried to take an ornament a Sentinelese man was wearing, angry at that, the tribesman whipped his knife out and gestured to the team to leave.
“The tribes of the islands do not need outsiders to protect them, what they need is to be left alone,” said Chattopadhyay.
What does this mean for us?
In this globalized world, the Sentinelese takes one back to the dichotomy between a primitive man and a modern man.
Is the former right or the latter? For some, it may be a symbol of a post-colonial future, for some a sad remnant of the past. The act of the missionary goes a long way in exposing the idea that for many, religious, cultural, or technological “advancement” for the tribals would be better for them.
But really, who are we to decide?
