The Andamans as a “sea of islands”: reconnecting old geographies through poaching

ABSTRACT

The rise of military and political tensions in the Indo-Pacific maritime zone has brought new attention to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. With this visibility has come a disturbing awareness in some quarters that this Indian archipelago is qualitatively different from the rest of the country. Whether defined in terms of unorthodox cultural practices or the unauthorized presence of other national bodies, the multicultural habitus of the Andamans is deeply unsettling from a geopolitical standpoint that imagines the islands as a natural extension of a homogeneous national-territorial space. This article argues that the persistence of cultural and other heterogeneities in the Andamans should be read as a trace of histories that are intimately tied to the location of this archipelago. Framing the archipelago as a “sea of islands” lying off the littoral of the Andaman Sea rather than as an extension of Indian national space permits unauthorized social relations to become visible again. Once we redraw island geographies, spectral presences begin to appear, taking the form of both foreign bodies as well as narrative contradictions. Currently, these specters are interpellated under the sign of “poaching,” a portmanteau of activities that joins indigenous, settlers, outsiders, and Nature in an illicit assemblage that is presumed to lie outside the law. Contradictions of the poaching discourse should be read as signs of recalcitrance: the complexity of the Andamans that cannot be erased by the violence of denial.

KEYWORDS:

• Andamans
• Nicobars
• poaching
• trace
• multiculturalism
• “sea of islands”
• Jarawas
• settlers

Acknowledgements

This paper would not have been possible with the generosity of Denis Giles and Zubair Ahmed, exemplary journalists whose daily commitment to their island home is an inspiration. My thanks also to Pankaj Sekhsaria, whose novel first made me think of the Andamans, my friend Mahesh Sharma, old resident of Port Blair, Francis Xavier Neelam, distinguished principal of the Jawaharlal Nehru Rajkeeya Mahavidyalaya, and his colleague Swapan Biswas, for their introductions and support. An earlier version of this paper was presented in the workshop, “Conviviality Beyond the Urban Centre: Theorizing the ‘Marginal Hub,’” held at the Inter-Asian Connections VI conference sponsored by the Social Science Research Council in Seoul in 2016. My sincere thanks to Madeleine Reeve and Magnus Marsden, organizers of the workshop, for their extensive comments and feedback. Workshop participants, especially Malini Sur, helped improve the paper considerably. Laavanya Kathiravelu participated in the initial stages of research and fieldwork. Kath Weston and Uditi Sen kindly shared their work on the Andamans with me. Willem van Schendel offered insightful comments on an early draft of this paper and Sankaran Krishna on a later one. Versions of the paper were also presented at McGill University, at the annual conference of the Association of Asian Studies, and the National University of Singapore. Finally, my grateful thanks to the editors and reviewers at Inter-Asian Cultural Studies journal for their support.

Notes on contributor

Itty Abraham is head of the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. His interests include international relations, science and technology studies, and the future of Asia. His most recent book is How India Became Territorial: Foreign Policy, Diaspora, Geopolitics, published by Stanford University Press.

Notes

1. Indian territories include federated states and Union Territories directly ruled from New Delhi.

2. R.S. Butalia, Chief Commissioner, A&N Islands, to A.D. Pandey, Joint Secretary, Home Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi. Copy. 25 November 1968. A&N State Archives, Port Blair. Emphasis added.

3. Interview, state official and pre-1942 resident of Port Blair, February 2016.

4. Interviews, Aberdeen Bazaar shopkeepers, Port Blair. June 2015 and February 2016.

5. “Marriages Between Nicobarese women and Outsiders,” reply of S.K. Gupta, Deputy Commissioner, 3/9/49. File 16/42/49. A&N State Archives, Port Blair.

6. DC to Chief Commissioner, 9 January 1958. “Edible Birds’ Nests.” File 12.53/59-Pub. A&N State Archives, Port Blair.

7. “Long Pending Issues by the Tribal Leaders, Car Nicobar, for Kind Consideration of his Excellent Shri I.P. Gupta Hon’ble Lt. Governor of A and N Islands Personally Handed Over to His Excellency When the Tribal Leaders were Allotted Time to Meet his Excellency on 8 February 1997 at the Circuit House at 6PM,” dated 19 February, 1997. File RD 349/Rev, A&N State Archives, Port Blair.

8. “Long Pending Issues,” 1–4.

9. Policy on Jarawa Tribe of Andaman Islands, Andaman and Nicobar Gazette no. 210. Port Blair, 21 December, 2004.

10. Samir Acharya and others to Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson, National Advisory Council. “Andaman and Nicobar Islands I: Violation of Supreme Court Orders and Marginalisation of the Jarawas,” dated 28 July 2005. File 34-422/97/Rev. A&N State Archives, Port Blair.

11. Interviews, Aberdeen Bazaar shopkeepers, Port Blair. June 2015 and February 2016.

12. Samir Acharya and others to Sonia Gandhi.

13. Interviews, police officers and journalists, Port Blair. June 2015 and February 2016.