Natwar Thakkar was one of the last Gandhians whose constructive work has made an invaluable contribution to peace-building, reconciliation and rural development in North East India.
Primarily based on archival research, especially an unpublished diary of Nicobarese stalwart leader John Richardson, this article gives a glimpse of the sufferings that the Nicobarese endured under the Japanese colonial regime during World War II. The regime exposed the indigenes to war, slavery, torture, and executions. At the same time it engendered leadership in the Nicobar Islands which consolidated these historically isolated people into a community and ended their prolonged economic and sexual exploitation.
The Andaman and Nicobar administration, vide its Extraordinary Gazette notification on 7 September 2015, lowered the minimum percentage of marks required for the Scheduled Tribe candidates for admission to the MBBS course and admitted eight Nicobarese students at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Institute of Medical Sciences. In March 2016, the Medical Council of India argued these admissions as illegal and discharged the concerned students, which has stirred resistance among the Nicobarese.
Rather than focusing on the role of the Jarawa man allegedly involved in the killing of an infant in the Andaman Islands, we should probe into the changing relationship of the Jarawa and non-Jarawa population of the island. A shift in the Jarawa identity and their changing relations with the non-Jarawa may have made them even more vulnerable.
The Nicobarese are not against "outsiders" and have a long tradition of embracing different cultures. They respect religious heterogeneity and even though the Hindu population in Kamorta and Katchal is small, there are numerous Hindu temples around, to which the Nicobarese have never objected. Their opposition to marriage alliances with outsiders is not religiously motivated but provoked by the undue advantage that the non-Nicobarese have taken by encroaching on their land and also disrupting the hitherto harmonious socio-economic dynamics. A response to Swapan K Biswas's article "Interreligious Marriage in Nicobar Islands: Opportunities and Challenges" (EPW, 30 May 2015).
Historically, the Nicobarese of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have lived in isolation with sporadic cross-cultural contact. Relying on the traditional knowledge and the resources provided by their ecosystem, the indigenes subsisted independently in their tribal reserve until the Indian Ocean tsunami inundated the Nicobar archipelago. Post-tsunami, the ANI administration undertook massive humanitarian interventions in the southern Nicobar Islands. This article analyses the post-tsunami sociocultural change among the Nicobarese against the backdrop of the humanitarian aid administration that began in December 2004. The article specifically inquires into the post-tsunami strategic-spatial interventions in the Nicobarese ecological niche and argues that the change after the tsunami has been tacitly engineered through humanitarian interventions.
In her article, “A Decade of Disaster Risk Management in India” (EPW, 31 January 2015), Malini Nambiar argues that building resilience, vertical synergies and community participation are significant for vulnerability reduction and successful disast
Government relief and rehabilitation measures, which included generous monetary compensation, for the tsunami affected Nicobarese tribals inhabiting the southern Nicobar Islands has spawned idleness and fuelled consumerism among them, threatening the very fabric of their society.
The premature death in 2012 of Paul Joora, the former chairman of the Nicobarese tribal council in the Great and Little Nicobar Islands, has left a void in Nicobarese society. This article briefly reflects upon Joora's vision for the rehabilitation of his community in the aftermath of the tsunami, which hit the Nicobar archipelago in 2004.
The premature death of Paul Joora, the former chairman of the Nicobarese tribal council in the Great and Little Nicobar Islands, in 2012 has left a void in the Nicobarese society. This article briefly reflects upon Joora’s vision for the rehabilitation of his community in the aftermath of the tsunami, which hit the Nicobar archipelago in 2004.
