The Andaman Islanders and Indian Civilization

 

I am not on twitter, so I become aware of something on twitter only when someone brings it to my attention. Someone just brought to my attention the following tweet which mentions my name:

 

I wondered in what context this reference was made, and found out it was in response to the following earlier tweet:

 

 

It is clear from the above tweets that the first tweet above is by someone who respects the work done by me. In fact, I have seen the name Atharv Singh Baghel many times on different occasions. The second tweet above, however, is by someone unfamiliar to me, and, if I go by the first tweet, this M. Yuvan is presumably someone who would be identified with "left-liberals", or with the "Dravidian" equivalents of "left-liberals" represented by the Dravida Kazhagam brand of Breaking India politics.

Needless to say, my sympathies should logically be with the first tweeter and not the second.

But sorry to say (with due apologies to Atharv Singh Baghel), it is not. My sympathies in this case at least are entirely with the second tweeter — whatever his political affiliations and views on all other subjects, including Hindutva or the AIT-OIT issue or my own other writings.

In fact, I find that the above (first)  tweet represents a gross misrepresentation of whatever I have written about Indian Civilization.

If (as I deduce from the above exchange) the present government is thinking of denotifying the Onge Tribal Reserve and clearing the pristine forests of Little Andaman for a mega-tourist city, it is definitely an atrocity. In fact it is a massive and criminal mega-atrocity against Indian Civilization. And I certainly must put things in their proper perspective if my name is being misused in order to make it seem that my work on Indian Civilization suggests in any way that the culture of the Andaman Islanders is later than, subordinate to, or inferior to, the mainline historical Classical (Vedic/Sanskrit) Indian Civilization.

So let me make many facts very clear.

 

A. The Andaman Islanders have indeed been "living here for 60,000 years, far before [Classical Vedic/Sanskrit] Indian Civilization".

Neither I nor Koenraad Elst have claimed that Classical Vedic/Sanskrit Civilization is older than the culture of the Andaman Islanders.

I doubt if even Nilesh Oak, whose name is also mentioned in the first tweet along with that of Koenraad Elst and myself, and who does try to take the dates of this Classical Vedic/Sanskrit Civilization (and of the events of the Ramayana and Mahabharata) back by ten thousands of years, actually claims that Classical Vedic/Sanskrit Civilization goes back 60000 years. [Of course, I cannot speak for him, and he would have to clarify his actual position on this.]

And certainly, I don't think any of us (the three people named) would justify the denotification of the Onge Tribal Reserve and clearing of the pristine forests of Little Andaman for a mega-tourist city in any way. At least I very definitely do not, though again I suppose I should not presume to speak authoritatively on behalf of either Nilesh Oak or Koenraad Elst.

 

B. In fact, Indian Civilization is not exclusively Classical Vedic/Sanskrit Civilization, although Classical Vedic/Sanskrit Culture is the binding force, the Umbrella Culture and the International Classical and Historical Face of Indian Civilization.

I have made this fact clear repeatedly in my writings. As I put it in the 1997 Voice of India volume, “Time for Stock Taking”, Indian or Hindu culture refers to “every single aspect of India’s matchlessly priceless heritage: climate and topography; flora and fauna; races and languages; music, dance and drama; arts and handicrafts; culinary arts; games and physical systems; architecture; costumes and apparels; literature and sciences…” (p.227). And it refers not just to the “cultural practices springing from Vedic or Sanskritic sources, but from all other Indian sources independently of these: the practices of the Andaman islanders and the (pre-Christian) Nagas are as Hindu in the territorial sense, and Sanatana in the spiritual sense, as classical Sanskritic Hinduism” (ibid). Need I add, I have repeatedly pointed out throughout my writings that Vedic culture was originally the culture of one part of India — Haryana and surrounding areas — and that Vedic culture is not the source of Hindu culture but just one part of it (even if certainly the oldest recorded and most revered part).

In that article, in my definition of Hindutva, I pointed out that a true Hindutvavadi should feel deep pain and impelled to take strong action, not only when he hears of issues of conventional Hindutva discourse, but also “when he hears that the Andamanese races and languages are becoming extinct; that vast tracts of forests, millions of years old, are being wiped out forever; that ancient and mediaeval Hindu architectural monuments are being vandalised, looted or fatally neglected; that priceless ancient documents are being destroyed or left to rot and decay; that innumerable forms of arts and handicrafts, architectural styles, plant and animal species, musical forms and musical instruments, etc. are becoming extinct; that our sacred rivers and environment are being irreversibly polluted and destroyed…..” (Time for Stock Taking, 1997, pp.227-8).

I elaborated on this in great detail in my article  "Sita Ram Goel, memories and ideas", written for the Sita Ram Goel Commemoration Volume, entitled "India's Only Communalist", edited by Koenraad Elst, published by Voice Of India, New Delhi, in 2005. A major part of this article has been put up on my blogspot as "Hindutva or Hindu Nationalism".

In that article, I had described the criminal attack on Indian Culture progressively taking place in the Andaman islands in the mercenary name of  "Development", and quoted some Acharya (the then head of the Port Blair-based Society for Andaman and Nicobar Ecology) from a 1999 article in Asiaweek as saying about the Andaman islanders: "‘they will turn up as beggars and servants and prostitutes.’ That would surely be a sorry epitaph for one of the world’s proudest hunter-gatherer tribes." I had also pointed out: "The tragedy, described above is so great that no words can even begin to describe it. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the day on which the last of the Andamanese tribals breathes his last breath will be one of the blackest days in our modern human history, in more ways than one. Indian culture will be very much the poorer, by one of its three native races and by one of its six native language families, apart from the different other aspects, most of them probably unrecorded, of Andamanese culture [….] if the natives of Tasmania were ruthlessly wiped out from the face of this earth, in mediaeval times, in the fanatical name of religion, the natives of the Andaman islands will have been ruthlessly wiped out from the face of this earth, in modern times, in the mindless name of progress and development".

Therefore I certainly object strongly to my name being cited in support of any scheme to denotify the Onge Tribal Reserve and clear the pristine forests of Little Andaman for a mega-tourist city.

 

C. This brings up the question of tribal identities and rights, and the use of words like ādivāsī (aboriginal) to describe the tribal population of India's forests, hills and other isolated areas or even some specific parts of the country.

Hindu thinkers (myself included) have always objected to this word coined in modern times as a translation of the English word "aboriginal" to describe certain sections of the population of the country as native to India as distinct from certain others who are then presumably outsiders who do not originally belong to India. Clearly along with the AIT, the word is like a tool or weapon in the hands of the Breaking India forces. The RSS thinkers therefore choose to use the term vanavāsī, or "forest dwellers", and in general I concur with the term.

However, in certain matters, the word ādivāsī is more appropriate. If the word is taken in the sense of "aboriginal to the country" as pointed out above, then it is certainly wrong and malicious. But if it specifically means "aboriginal to the forest-etc. areas occupied by them", then it is very appropriate. Unlike the other castes and communities of India who have been shifting from one area to another in the course of history, the tribal people of most parts of India have indeed been occupying ancestral areas since thousands of years, and their rights to the areas they occupy are inalienable. This is true even in respect of the reserved or notified tribal areas within the Indian mainland. This is even more true in the case of the Andaman islanders, some of whom, like the Sentinelese, have lived in their areas for ten thousands of years with almost no contact with outsiders. No outsider to their areas has the right to take over their areas.

Yes, the Andaman islands are an inalienable part of India, and India has every right to undertake any measures it sees fit to protect the sovereignty and integrity of the Andaman islands and of India as a whole, but without trampling on the rights of the Andaman islanders.

In this case, what we are seeing is a ruthless attempt by cold-blooded mercenary elements to destroy the Andaman culture for profits, trampling on the very rights of the Andamanese people to even exist.

Earlier, I had written a blog "Leftists and Rightists" to condemn the mercenary rightist attempts to destroy India's priceless environmental heritage for profits in the name of Development in respect of the Aarey Forests in Mumbai. But this is even worse.

The exact parallel to the present attempts by the Indian government to destroy the ecology of the Andaman islands and trample on the rights of the Andamanese people is in the 2009 American film Avatar, which showed earthlings trying to completely destroy the ecology of an alien planet and wipe out its native population.

[Note added 6/2/2021: In respect of the fact that "the Andaman islands are an inalienable part of India", the following may be noted:

1. The Andaman islands (as per Wikipedia) were taken over by Rajendra Chola (1014-1042 CE), and have been connected to India ever since. Further, Buddhist records in China and India record a myth that the Buddha went to the Andaman islands and when he stepped into the water to bathe, the inhabitants stole his clothes, and so the Buddha declared that the people of the islands would never wear clothes or grow their hair. The historicity of this myth is not relevant, what is relevant is that it shows that the Andaman islands were familiar to Buddhist lore.

2. The very name of the Andaman islands is believed to be derived from the name of Hanuman who stopped there to rest during his search for the kidnapped Sita. The Chinese texts refer to these islands as Sundeman and the Malay people call them pulo Handuman.

3. Most important of all, as per even the notorious Reich papers and Tony Joseph's book, the "First Indian" or "Onge" genes, most purely represented in the Andaman islanders, is found in almost every caste and tribe within India, but nowhere outside the greater Indian area.

As I put it in my 2019 book "Genetics and the Aryan Debate" in the last paragraph of chapter 9:

"In conclusion, however, we owe a debt to these geneticists, including their spokesperson Tony Joseph, for presenting to us the ultimate scientific evidence for a genetic factor which distinguishes all Indians, whatever their caste, language, region or religion, and binds them together, and to this land, in one single identity distinct from all the other people of the world (who lack that factor): the First Indian ancestry, which is found right from the Andaman Islands (in its purest form) to the ancient BMAC area in Central Asia. Incidentally, this should also provide food for thought to anyone thinking that the inclusion of the Andaman islands within 'India' is an accident of British colonial history."]

 

D. And is all this in any way a part of an agenda for India or Indian/Hindu Civilization? Or, in other words, if these reports, about the intentions of the Indian government to denotify the Onge Tribal Reserve and clear the pristine forests of Little Andaman for a mega-tourist city, are true, should it come as a surprise? Or should it be excused in any twisted way as being part of a concern for India or Indian/Hindu Civilization?

Well, see what happened two years ago.

An American citizen (John Allen Chau, aged 27, probably, as per his surname and photograph, a person of Chinese or East Asian origin) on an Evangelist mission to the Sentinel Islands in the Andamans was shot dead by the tribals. (The quotations below are from the TOI Mumbai edition of 23/11/2018).

Notable facts:

1. "In June 2018, the Home Ministry passed a new notification allowing foreigners to visit 29 out-of-bound islands in the Andamans. On a complaint from anthropologist Vishwajit Pandya, the National Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Commission on July 13 asked the home ministry and the Andaman administration to clarify on RAP. The commission hasn't received a reply yet". Or shall we say the government refuses to reply, let alone take action.

2. Although there were still apparently "three layers of restrictions in place to protect the island's indigenous tribes and forests", this American Evangelist managed to bypass them all. He writes in his diary: "God sheltered me against the Coast Guard and the Navy": "God" or the new "Hindutvavadi" government?

3. The newspapers were full of reports about the detailed Evangelical Mission of this "daring" hero, who wrote in his diary about his mission to "establish the kingdom of Jesus on the island", and whose Christian spirit of forgiveness comes shining through: in his diary he gives details about the attacks on him by the tribals (including how the Bible served as a miraculous shield to protect his life from one of the heathen arrows), but writes "do not blame the natives if I am killed"!

And yet, the DGP of the Andaman Islands Depender Pathak tells us "It was a misplaced adventure. He cannot be called a preacher, but his diary indicates that he was a believer in Christianity", and "according to Home Ministry sources, there is no evidence so far to substantiate that he was visiting the protected island - which is out of bounds for both Indians and foreigners  unless they get mandatory approvals under the Protection of Aboriginal Tribe (Regulation) and Indian Forest Act - on an Evangelical mission". A clean chit from "God".

4. The Government registered an FIR against "unknown tribals" for this "murder", and "When asked, a home ministry officer said there was no plan as of now to review lifting of RAP relaxations in A&N Islands". So the crusades could now continue and intensify until the Divine Goal is achieved: it will be a no-holds-barred Evangelization drive to help  "establish the kingdom of Jesus" throughout India!

 

So, is this new present plan to "develop" the Andaman islands for money totally unexpected? And is it  born out of any kind of concern for the interests of "Indian/Hindu Civilization"?