RISHIKA PARDIKAR
It was less of an interview and more of a collection of storytelling sessions.
“This is lovely. What is your native name?” I asked after watching clips from an old documentary about tribes in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where Anstice Justin—whom I first contacted this year—described his work.
In the video, Justin passingly referred to his native name, which I could not catch without subtitles.
“Asenga Ta-aunj,” Justin said. But that wasn’t all. There was a lot more to share.
Justin is a former deputy director general of the Anthropological Survey of India and, importantly, a Nicobarese, one among the two native tribes—the other being the Shompen—who have inhabited the Nicobar islands for thousands of years before the coming of Hinduism and the evolution of Hindi, the twin banners under which the ruling party hopes to ‘unify’ India.
The Andaman and Nicobar archipelago comprises 836 islands, islets and rocky outcrops spread over about 8,200 sq km. This is more than seven times as large as Delhi but has a population of less than 400,000, far less than south Delhi. Of the 600-odd islands, less than 40 are inhabited.
The people of these islands, especially the native tribes, are racially diverse and sometimes speak languages that are incomprehensible to one another. For instance, Justin’s Nicobarese tribe speaks a Mon-Khmer language related to languages in Southeast Asia. The language of the Jarawa, a tribe of African origin, is incomprehensible to the Nicobarese.
The story of how the Jarawa came to reside in these islands thousands of years ago is yet to be ascertained because it pre-dates historical records. Indeed, the word Jarawa itself is not something they use to describe themselves.
“The so-called Jarawa had identified me in their native word, something like ‘Itchatavahau’ in initial contacts,” Justin said, elaborating in response to my question about what his native name was. So far, we have identified three: ‘Anstice Justin’, which was the baptismal name, ‘Asenga Ta-aunj, ’ which was the name given in the native tongue immediately after birth and then ‘Itchatavahau’ by the Jarawa.
“Later on, one lad memorised my name as ‘Zustin’. This was the lad who got multiple fractures on his left ankle in April 1994 in Bamboo Tekri (in the Middle Andaman island). Chik Baroi, a Bengali settler, found him adjacent to his house by the side of a streamlet…”
The story ends with the Bengali settler taking the Jarawa boy to a hospital in what was then the island capital of Port Blair. The boy recovers and is taken back to his tribe at Bamboo Tekri.
Justin refers to the Jarawa as ‘Ung’.
“It is the native name,” he said. “I have checked its veracity and re-authenticated several times with others.”
The term ‘Jarawa’ was coined by the Akabea, one of the then ten sub-tribes of the present-day Great Andamanese.
This was all new information to me, even though I had followed for three years the story of the union government’s project to build “a new Hong Kong” in Great Nicobar.
It only indicated how little I and the rest of India knew of the people of the islands, some of whose homes and lives we now intend to tear apart, in line with the ruling party’s united motto for India: Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat, or one India best India.
The move to build a port, tourist resorts, roads, a town, and an international airport in Great Nicobar is a part of the project to ‘develop’ India and guard against ‘Chinese threats’ in the Indian Ocean.
During the same time as the interview sessions with Justin, the union government renamed Port Blair Sri Vijaya Puram, a name that was irrelevant to the original inhabitants of the islands, their culture, or their languages.
The contrast was striking.
As an anthropologist, Justin had identified native names, including those used diversely by the island tribes, even acknowledging different names given to him by other tribes.
On the other hand, the union government was renaming places “to break free from the colonial mindset and celebrate our heritage”, according to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and destroying forests in the name of development and national security, showing no signs of understanding the people native to these islands.
“Sir, when I come to Port Blair, I will meet you,” I told Justin after many long phone calls and WhatsApp messages, over which he also shared photographs and slides from his old presentations. “Welcome to these islands,” he replied. “Goldmines of anthropology.”
You can read Rishika Pardikar’s full interview with Anstice Justin here.
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