CONTENTS
Map 9
Preface 10
Prologue: a Sense of Place 12
The island ecology 14
The passage to the field site 18
Setting up residence 23
Linguistic initiations at Dugong Creek 24
A Framework for Analysis 30
A Record of Fieldwork
Introduction 36
Fieldwork among the Onge 40
An extended conversation 40
The power of secrecy, the right to withhold 69
Gossip and anthropological practice 74
The Andamanese at Strait Island and Port Blair 75
Some notes on a distressing field trip 77
Conclusion 81
The Islanders in History
Introduction 86
The Andamanese and the first British
settlement: 1789-1796 89
The penal colony 1858-1899 92
British policies: the ideal and the reality 93
Questions of ownership: looting 94
Questions of justice: rape/murder 95
Colonial ethnology 96
The local and the metropole 98
Civilizing the savage: the "Andaman Homes" 101
The convicts and the savages 103
Disease and the islanders 106
The subjection of the Andamanese 108
A summary of events 109
Turn-of-the-century anthropology 110
The Jarawa 112
Who are the jarawa? 112
Aggression and hostility 115
The Orige 118
The Jarawa at North Sentinel Island 120
Population counts: a table of estimates 120
Conclusion 121
The Islanders in "India": Policies of "Planned" Change
The "independent" Andaman Islands 126
Post-independence anthropology 127
Two decades of policy 128
The situation of the Jarawa 132
The "breakthrough" 133
"Retrieval from Precipice" 136
Food for the islanders 138
The power of representations 140
An assessment of the welfare system 141
The content of policies: ethnocide/benevolent ethnocide 144
A matrix for subjection: individual autonomy 146
Subjection and power 148
Some observations on anthropology at Dugong Creek 150
Some alternatives? 151
Conclusion 152
Gender/Power
Introduction 156
Gender relations among the Onge
The gendered anthropologist 156
A view of Onge gender relations 158
Language and vomer 159
Clothes make/(un)make the Onge woman 161
The power of women 162
Pleasure as subversion 166
The path to collusion 166
A note on generalizations 167
Towards some explanations 168
A brief note on the Andamanese 169
Alcohol and the Andamanese 170
Conclusion 172
Strategies of Power: an Analysis of "Jarawa Contact"
Introduction 174
The politics of "contact" 174
The Onge 177
The anatomy of "contact" 178
"Friendly contact" 179
Markers for difference: race and culture 182
Markers of difference: gender and clothing 182
Constructions of difference: gender,
class and the anthropologist 184
Fields of power 185
Assembling the elements 189
A postscript on the Onge 192
Conclusion 192
The End of Fieldwork 196
Postscript 200
The Fate of the Jarawa: the End of the Road? An Epilogue 202
Court cases and committees 206
Of origins and genetics 209
Collaborative anthropology:
policy initiatives and new coalitions 210
Return to Port Blair 215
The battle ahead 217
A Final Word by Samir Acharya 220
Bibliography 224
Appendices
Draft policy on Jarawas
framed by Shri K.B. Saxena one of the members
of the expert committee on Jarawas 236
An alternative framework for Jarawa policy
Submitted by an independent group of experts and observers
at the jarawa Seminar, May 27, 2004, Port Blair 259