PROBASHI- A Cultural News Magazine Volume 2 Issue 2 | Page 10

Probashi-Cover Story

Creating Anthropological History
film’s director took an 8-foot-long
arrow in the thigh. On Jan 4, 1991 for
the first time to the surprise of
anthropologists worldwide, friendly
contact was established and in that
team
was
Dr.
Madhumala
Chadophadyay. This was repeated on
21 Feb 1991 in which also
Madhumala was a team member.
However never after was this
achieved again and in late 1990s
Government of India stopped the
contact attempts and left the
Sentinelese to live in peace. A 3 mile
exclusion zone around the island has
been designated and outside entry
prohibited. It was as recent as 2006
that two fishermen poaching in the
waters close to North Sentinel Island
were killed by the Sentinelese.
Unknown to the developments
happening in these far off
islands, a twelve year old girl one

A Jarawa mother trusted her 3 month old baby with Madhumala, this is a
gesture of acceptance of an outsider by the tribe. Jarawa mothers feed their
babies from their mouth directly into the baby’s mouth, in a similar manner as
the birds feed their young

resist outsiders and are prone to
attack. In 1880 a large, heavilyarmed party led by 20-year-old
Maurice Portman, landed on North
Sentinel and made what is believed
to be the first exploration of the
island by outsiders. Several days
passed before they made contact
with any Sentinelese, because tribe
members disappeared into the

jungle seeing the strangers
approach. Small contact parties
in the early 1970s were turned
away by arrows. A documentary
team
from
the
National
Geographic and some police
officers got the same fierce
welcome
in
1974.
The
documentary was interestingly
titled “Man in Search of Man”. The
8

morning in her home in ShibpurHowrah, a suburb of Calcutta,
happened to chance upon a small
news item in the Telegraph
newspaper which informed of the
birth of a baby amongst the almost
extinct Onge tribes of the Andamans.
Excited the girl ran to her father, an
accounts officer with the South
Eastern Railway, and demanded that
on their next vacation they visit the
Onges’. Her father in order to brush
off his pestering daughter remarked
that only a social scientist or a
journalist is allowed to visit the tribes
of the Andamans. This remark stuck
and the little girl- Madhumala,
determined to meet the Onges’,
decided to become a scientist when
she grew up. The rigour and the hard
work of being a field anthropologist –
a branch of science which studies
primitive tribes, was far from her
mind. The romance and adventure of
an unknown world beckoned this
young girl. After completing her