Journal Article
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://ir.daiict.ac.in/handle/123456789/37
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Publication Metadata only Between nurture and neglect: providing welfare to the Ongees of Little Andaman Island(Iias, 01-10-2010) Pandya, Vishvajit; DA-IICT, GandhinagarPublication Metadata only How Do You ‘Know’ a Tribal When You See One? How Do You ‘See’ a Tribal When You Know One?(Sage, 01-07-2019) Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; DA-IICT, GandhinagarThis article considers the formation of anthropological knowledge and ethnographic implications in the course of understanding and framing the category of �tribe� on Andaman Nicobar Islands. Considering events from colonial and post-colonial histories of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the article argues that the process of classification and reclassification, motivated by anthropological knowledge and the drive for welfare, creates a discourse that tends to deny cultural and social differentiation or diversity among the various tribal communities that inhabit different parts of the Island archipelago. Statist definitions in other words serve to reduce the conditions and identities of tribal groups into categories of the �primitive�, �particularly vulnerable� or presently as just �vulnerable�. While such categorisations may have its uses in the allocation of welfare budgets, the sole focus on the category of �vulnerability� obfuscates a more nuanced understanding of the conditions of life and well being among such communities.Publication Metadata only Disruptive transactions: The complex configurations of sharing and the vulnerability of life in the Jarawa Reserve forest in the Andaman Islands(Hunter, 01-04-2019) Pandya, Vishvajit; Mazumdar, Madhumita; DA-IICT, GandhinagarThe murder of a mixed-race child in the Jarawa reserve territory of the Andaman Islands made headlines in the global media in March 2016. What caught the interest was the murder of the child, allegedly by a Jarawa man in collusion with an outsider, and the ethical and legal conundrum it purportedly posed to Indian state authorities. The murder of the child was in fact carried out at the behest of an outsider, a poacher in the forest who was apparently the father of the child and known to have been involved in multiple sexual relationships with a particular group of Jarawa women who formed a sorority and lived at the fringes of the reserve�s forest. Without the protective structures of a family, this sorority has forged alliances among themselves and consequently remained in an ambivalent relationship to the community, often facing overt restraints on their rights to participate in the practices of �sharing� within the community. The women�s proximity to outsiders and their participation in an alternative exchange economy with poachers and settlers is a mode of survival. This paper focuses on the precarious existence of this group of Jarawa women in the Andaman Islands, reflecting on the contingent and gendered configurations of sharing, non-sharing and transactional practices that have emerged in the context of the Jarawa community�s contact with the outsiders, their confinement in a territory close to non-tribal settlements, and their inclusion in a welfare system that erodes their values of sharing in deeply disruptive ways.Publication Metadata only When land became water: Tsunami and the ongees of little Andaman islands(01-05-2005) Pandya, Vishvajit; DA-IICT, GandhinagarPublication Metadata only Rathwa Pithoro: Writing about writing and reading painted ethnography(Taylor and Francis, 01-04-2004) Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; DA-IICT, GandhinagarBased on fieldwork among the Rathwa tribal community of Gujarat, this article is an analysis of the ritual and installation of wall painting known as Pithoro. The analysis of the culture's own construct of what constitutes writing and reading is considered to bring out the magical power in interpreting that which is written and/or drawn. As the reading capacity is more significant, especially the one undertaken by the ritual specialist, the ethnographic account treats the paintings installed not only for the sake of ritual but to alter politicoeconomic situations of the Rathwa tribals in the course of history. This article presents the paintings as a total communication system, which is not just the work of art drawn but also written within the culture, as their own ethnography for the culture itself.Publication Metadata only Do not resist, show me your body!': Encounters between the Jarwas of the Andamans and Medicine (1858-2004)(Taylor and Francis, 01-12-2005) Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; DA-IICT, GandhinagarBased on fieldwork and archival studies carried out since 1995, this paper is an analysis of the dialogue between the Jarwas and the outside world. The Jarwa tribal community on the Andaman Islands has a long history of voluntary isolation and pronounced hostility towards outsiders. This situation only started to change in the mid-1990s, when a young Jarwa was successfully treated at a local hospital. The Jarwas� sudden fascination with modern medicine was less to do with its therapeutic powers than the fact that, on each visit, hospital staff gave them food, clothes, and various consumer items. This paper describes events in the Jarwas� �junket to modernity�. Before discussing recent events, the paper first retraces the history of relations between the Jarwas and the outside world during the second half of the 19th century, when life on the Andaman Islands was dominated by a British Penal Settlement. In the face of epidemic outbreaks of pneumonia, malaria, and measles, tribal health has become a major concern for the Indian authorities. The paper discusses continuities and discontinuities in medical concerns with the tribal body, and argues that �marginalization� must be understood as a practice of mutual constitution.Publication Metadata only Time to move: winds and the political economy of space in Andamanese culture(Wiley, 01-04-2007) Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; DA-IICT, GandhinagarSeasons, or temporal duration, for Andamanese are created by the flow of winds through the Andamanese cultural construct of space, which is neither fixed nor constant. In order to organize the space for society, Andaman islanders have to move constantly out from the place where the winds are. Winds associated with temperamental spirits are powerful aspects of nature that culture has to negotiate. Within this worldview where winds affect individual body condition and the capacity to continue hunting and gathering, Andaman islanders negotiate space by creating conditions that invite winds to structure and sustain life. For this purpose, smells are ritualized and wind movements are manipulated. As a result, seasons are distinguished either by winds that are spirit-given, or by a lack of winds caused by islanders' actions. Based on ethnographic data from the Ongees and Jarwas, this analysis will focus on how various forms of movement in Andamanese culture are negotiated according to a political economy of winds and smells. The worldview of the Andaman islanders, within which winds are so central, has major implications for government authorities, who are keen to confine the translocating Jarwas to a specific and permanent location. But is this possible for the Andamanese, for whom space, like time, changes by the presence and absence of winds?Publication Metadata only Through lens and text: constructions of a 'Stone Age' tribe in the Andaman islands(01-03-2009) Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; Pandya, Vishvajit; DA-IICT, GandhinagarThe inhabitants of the North Sentinel Islands in the Bay of Bengal have for long been described as one of the last surviving Stone Age tribes of the world. The �truth value� of this assertion has been reinforced over time through a complex and often collusive representational order sustained by for instance the institutions of the Indian state, the global media, travel writers, anthropologists and the non-tribal communities of the Andaman Islands. This paper examines the visual and textual practices that constitute this representational order and pits against it the historical and ethnographic realities that render it vulnerable to radical inquiry. With its critical focus on the truth-bearing propensities of photographic images and their accompanying texts, this paper seeks to interrogate received ethnographic certitudes about an imputed Stone Age people and ponders the possibilities of acknowledging them as historical actors.Publication Metadata only Making sense of the andaman islanders: Reflections on a new conjuncture(03-11-2012) Mazumdar, Madhumita; Pandya, Vishvajit; DA-IICT, Gandhinagar