The tsunami’s effect on the Andaman & Nicobar islands was particularly shocking. Partly because a good friend spent three months last year on an Andaman island viewing it as the most amazing, least commercialised paradise ever (yes, I know this is Western-gap-year-bollocks; the relevant point here is that she won at the Western-gap-year-bollocks game), so it’s weird for that paradise to be destroyed.
The other reason is that in Indian culture, Nicobar is seen as the last refuge of the cannibals that they a) drove out of the rest of India b) forcibly converted to Hinduism c) killed, and therefore I’ve always had an image of it as pre-Aussie-imposition-of-arguably-sensible-Western-law Papua New Guinea.
While I’m not massively up for hanging out with too many cannibals any time soon, it feels like the world would be somehow a less interesting place were cannibal tribal culture fully extinguished. Reassuringly, it seems that at least some Nicobar tribespeople were doing well enough after the disaster to continue trying to shoot the Indian Air Force with arrows.
Admirable.
you have some facts wrong. the nicoabri are of malay origin. they are coastal people and are the most assimilated of the tribes. they live in the nicobars. the shompen are also malay origin, but are still hunter-gatherers and live inland on Great Nicobar. The four negrito tribes are in teh Andaman. the Great Andamanese are demographically extinct. the Onge are on their way. Jara are still on the safe side of teh fence. Sentinelese are the safest on their own island. It is the Sentinelese that fired arrows. yes we preseume they are safe based on stories conveyed from the Onge and Great Andamanese.
your statement in the second paragraph is not clear so I shall leave it at that.