

Excerpted with permission from And the Music Lives On, by Manek Premchand. Notion Press (2024)
In the Bay of Bengal, two and a quarter hours flying time from Kolkata or Chennai, and about 1300 kilometres away from them lies Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which are a part of India. These islands were recently in the news for two reasons. One was about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit there, on 30th December 2018. He renamed three islands, i.e., Ross Island, Neil Island and Havelock Island to Subhash Chandra Bose Dweep, Shaheed Dweep, and Swaraj Dweep respectively. But by far the bigger news from the region was of the death of a young American missionary named John Chau in a place called North Sentinel Island, a place considered too dangerous to approach.
The North Sentinel Island is part of the Andaman Islands and is the habitat of the Sentinelese aborigine people, who remain a bunch of uncontacted and uncontactable people, even in today’s interconnected world. For thousands of years, these tribes have been living there with a pathological resentment of civilization, and so they want to be left alone, thank you. No one has any idea what language they speak. Anthropologists know that these tribes have been in utter isolation forever, and since even other islanders have failed to get close enough to hear them, the Sentinelese people’s language may not have any contemporary relatives. We do know just a bit about their other lifestyle from the observations of a handful of people who have made quick and stealthy entries and exits over the decades.
These xenophobic people live in hutments, make and use bows and arrows, and thrive on fish and berries. They know how to light and douse fires for cooking. Since 1956, the Indian government has declared the island an exclusion zone, because the outside world is dangerous to these people, and the natives in turn are dangerous to any outsider who wants entry. As such, India’s Protection of Aboriginal Tribes regulation makes it unlawful to attempt contact or come within 5 kilometres of the island’s coastline. It is extremely hard to access this place anyway, not just because of the coral reefs that form a natural defence of the island, but also because of the antagonistic belief systems of its natives. To sustain this belief system, they invest a lot of time and resources in making bows and arrows. An economist would perhaps note that the islanders spend the highest amount of their GDP on defence! But since they have never been immunized against many diseases that exist in the civilized world, the Sentinelese are highly vulnerable to them. Even flu or chicken pox could manage to wipe off their entire, tiny population in weeks. Although no one knows how many of them are there on that island, estimates vary between 150 and 350 people.
If you try to get into their territory, they’ll immediately welcome you with arrows. You’ll be lucky if you can dodge these missiles. Many intrepid adventurers did manage to escape them in the 1970s, 1980s, and later. But the American John Chau persisted. He went near the island on 15th November, got hurt, withdrew, refreshed his resolve, and neared the colony again the next day. He was to learn a fatal lesson on 16th November 2018, when tribal archers eliminated him with arrows.
To avenge the death of its citizen, the Americans could have responded of course. They could have bombed the place in a matter of hours. But it’s not a good time to be an American, in geopolitical popularity. Besides, such a response would be seen as an attack on Indian soil, and so an act of war with us. Most importantly, in terms of the law, the natives didn’t go after John Chau without a reason; he was trespassing on their private space, which was an illegal act. It also gets a bit sticky for America’s image that the man was a missionary, going in there to spread the message of the Bible and convert the people to Christianity.
Saluting the Sentinelese
Arrows and bows are called teer and kamaan respectively in Hindustani. They are also called baan and dhanushya. Our poets have used teer and baan as metaphors in poetry, both to ignite love—in the Cupid way— as well as to injure it. Check out these songs from our films, that refer to such ammunition:
Nazron ke teer maare kus kus kus (Rafi, Asha/ Do Ustad, 1959)
Nainon ke baan ki reet anokhi (Shamshad, Ghulam Haider/ Khazanchi, 1941)
Playlist of the songs listed above:
Judging from the merit in the above songs, it is clear that they share a central quality with arrows: reusability. Many arrows and such songs can be recalled for repeated ‘use’. Seen in that light, firearms are not so much fun, which also may be why lyrics featuring them are few and far between. For instance, take the songs Sandook mein bandook hai, bandook mein goli (Shamshad/ Hoor-e-Arab, 1955) and Goli maar bheje mein (Mano/ Satya, 1998). To many of us, such songs are like spent bullets, i.e., finished after one use.
As for the 26-year-old John Chau, his excursion into North Sentinel Island has sparked a hot debate. Were the Sentinelese justified in killing a harmless intruder? Or did John Chau have no business to go in? Observes the dead man’s friend, Daniel Wesley in The Christian Post:
“Was John merely a rogue ‘adventurer’ harboring an unspoken death wish who foolishly went to a remote Island in the Indian Ocean to kick a soccer ball around with the most isolated tribe on the planet or is it possible he was someone much more?”
Adds he: “His desire was to become one of them, hunting alongside the North Sentinelese, sleeping in their huts, eating the same diet and learning their language. His intention was never to simply drop in and preach to them in English as some have erroneously suggested. In fact, one learns from his updates, his journal entries, and from conversations with his friends that John was fully committed to living there for the rest of his life, something that tragically came to pass far earlier than he hoped”.
Wonder what you think.
~~~~
The above was originally featured in DNA Jaipur on 12 January 2019. It has since been updated and enhanced.
Book: And the Music Lives On
Author: Manek Premchand
Publisher: Notion Press (2024)
Pages: 420
Binding: Hardcover and Paperback
Available on: Amazon
More to Read in Music Makers
Shakeel Badayuni: The Eternal Romantic
Bharat Vyas: Hindi Poetry Thrived in His Film Songs
Lata Mangeshkar Sings for Madan Mohan
Whether you are new or veteran, you are important. Please contribute with your articles on cinema, we are looking forward for an association. Send your writings to amitava@silhouette-magazine.com
We are editorially independent, not funded, supported or influenced by investors or agencies. We try to keep our content easily readable in an undisturbed interface, not swamped by advertisements and pop-ups. Our mission is to provide a platform you can call your own creative outlet and everyone from renowned authors and critics to budding bloggers, artists, teen writers and kids love to build their own space here and share with the world.
When readers like you contribute, big or small, it goes directly into funding our initiative. Your support helps us to keep striving towards making our content better. And yes, we need to build on this year after year. Support LnC-Silhouette with a little amount – and it only takes a minute. Thank you
Silhouette Magazine publishes articles, reviews, critiques and interviews and other cinema-related works, artworks, photographs and other publishable material contributed by writers and critics as a friendly gesture. The opinions shared by the writers and critics are their personal opinion and does not reflect the opinion of Silhouette Magazine. Images on Silhouette Magazine are posted for the sole purpose of academic interest and to illuminate the text. The images and screen shots are the copyright of their original owners. Silhouette Magazine strives to provide attribution wherever possible. Images used in the posts have been procured from the contributors themselves, public forums, social networking sites, publicity releases, YouTube, Pixabay and Creative Commons. Please inform us if any of the images used here are copyrighted, we will pull those images down.