Zoos and zoo-people (prasad)

Travel to tribal portions of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is fairly restricted, and access to particular local tribes is (in theory) hard to accomplish. Rationales for isolating these peoples are probably varied - lack of disease resistance, the desire to protect unusual cultures blending into Rousseau-style noble savage stuff, the interesting genetic structure of the people, pretext for possible naval strategic concerns, etc. Of the lot, only the first seems ethically clean to me, but in any case much of this is fig-leaf stuff anyway, since Indian and foreign tourists visit quite routinely to gawk at the tribesmen.

Now there's video footage (taken by a British newspaper) in the news, showing tourists making naked indigenous women dance for food:    

Rights campaigners and politicians on Wednesday condemned a video showing women from a protected and primitive tribe dancing for tourists in exchange for food on India's far-flung Andaman Islands.

British newspaper The Observer released the video showing Jarawa tribal women -- some of them naked -- being lured to dance and sing after a bribe was allegedly paid to a policeman to produce them.

Under Indian laws designed to protect ancient tribal groups susceptible to outside influence and disease, photographing or coming into contact with the Jarawa is illegal.

The tribe, thought to have been among the first people to migrate successfully from Africa to Asia, lives a nomadic existence in the lush, tropical forests of the Andamans in the Bay of Bengal.

India's tribal affairs minister V Kishore Chandra Deo promised to take action over the incident, terming it "disgusting" on Wednesday, and the home ministry has sought a report.

Survival International, which lobbies on behalf of tribal groups worldwide, said the video showed tourists apparently enjoying "human zoos."

"Quite clearly, some people's attitudes towards tribal peoples haven't moved on a jot. The Jarawa are not circus ponies bound to dance at anyone's bidding," said Stephen Corry, the group's director, in a press release.

In June last year, Survival International accused eight Indian travel companies of running "human safari tours" so tourists could see and photograph the Jarawa. [emph added]

I think this 'Survival International' group is grandstanding to some extent in drawing the zoo analogy, but clearly this is pretty unsanitary stuff. Still, my own view is that this wouldn't ethically be that different from people visiting Amish country, if these people were treated like human beings to begin with and not fetishized, by people across the political spectrum, including foremost the government. People - all people - like gratifying their curiosity about strange people, and channeling that interest in ordinary ways (modulo health impact) would be on the whole harmless, doing little more than diluting cultural heritage, and might even create economic and other benefits. But with things as they are, such visits have an illicit character, and people tend to behave rather worse than is strictly necessary.

The Daily Mail [NSFW] has a video and additional details making the thing more vivid, including a picture showing a long line of cars that looks quite a bit like a safari. What particularly stood out to me is this:

The 403 tribe members should, in theory, be protected by strict laws on the Indian-run island. A sign at the gate to the 'enclosure' states: 'Don’t give any eatables to the Jarawas.

'Don’t indulge in photography, videography. Otherwise you will be liable for legal action ­including seizure of camera.' [emph added]

I can think of reasons to bar outsiders from entering this enclosure. [Although I hope - without having much expectation of being right - that such finickiness doesn't extend to medical care or education. Jarawa cancer patients should not be expected to die wholesomely just because they have done so for thousands of years...] Given whatever limited entry right there is though, with at least some people being allowed to walk, talk, sneeze and drive on tar roads, what possessed the government to put up signs warning those people off giving tribal children snickers bars? Are they monkeys or ducks that visitors must be barred from feeding them? If this is a zoo, who's the real zoo-keeper?

Comments

[Ruchira]

Thanks, Prasad. My husband I were supposed to make a trip to the Andamans this February, a place we have talked about for a long time for its scenic beauty and not for gawking at the protected tribes. He backed out, pleading deadlines at work. Now I will be going to India by myself and not to the Andamans.

This is very disturbing indeed. Hopefully, some bribe taking heads will roll. But knowing the corrupt and inept Indian bureaucracy, I wouldn't hold my breath. I agree with almost everything you said here including the mostly useless fetish for preserving ancient DNAs and cultures. As long as changes happen by the natural process of voluntary commerce, health care and education, such changes should not be resisted. But then what is lucrative tourism without a generous dose of exoticization?

[Elatia Harris]

If I somehow found myself on a tour like those you describe, Prasad, I would be so hideously miserable being a party to objectifying indigenous people in that way that I would have to leave. I think most people would feel the same way: they would know it was wrong, they would not take part in it. I know, I know -- we support foreign wars, we accept on behalf of others terrible risks, we let distant children be malnourished, and that ain't the half of it. But a taste for degrading others right up close is something special. Or so I would like to think.

[Sujatha]

The Jarawa don't seem to be quite that enamored with coming into full contact with 'civilization', whether for medical treatment and/or education. The Observer has additional details that present the full context: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/07/andaman-islands-tribe-tourism-threat
Survivor International seems to have a well-documented website, and many of the stories of not only the Jarawa, but also other isolated tribes worldwide and how they are exploited will undoubtedly make the reader's blood boil. I found the story of Boa Sr, the last speaker of the Bo language and her song about the earthquake and Tsunami of 2004 particularly intriguing, the phonetics remind me of Tamil, even if the meaning is undecipherable to a non-speaker. And then I wonder, was the recording and photographing of the last of the Bos in itself a sort of exoticization and exploitation?
http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/5509

[Norman Costa]

@ Prasad:

Thanks for posting this story. It was informative, sad, bizarre, and creepy. I can't bring myself to comment on it.

[Sujatha]

It would be nice to have the Jarawa take on this story. What do they think of strangers lining up to drive through their reserve and begging for dances in exchange for biscuits and bananas? Surely, there must be an intrepid reporter who can locate a Jarawa speaker to translate.

[prasad]

Sujatha, I don't think it would even be difficult to interview the locals; if you can *make* them dance for money, you can sit them down and talk to them. I saw the video, and they're basically conversing in Hindi, with a few words of English (!) mixed in. Any so-called isolation has long since vanished in practical terms. That there wasn't a long 5000 word interview with various Jarawa interview (specifically about this issue or otherwise), is frankly to me is a bigger symptom of these people being treated like children/animals than the story itself. Can you imagine an investigative report about Vegas strippers or prostitutes in some red-light district that made no attempt to interview the affected people?

[prasad]

Ruchira,

Hope you have a nice trip, I've heard only wonderful things about the natural beauty of the islands, though I've been. As a probe of the exoticization issue, I'm distressed by this:

"Those responsible for the tribe's welfare think the only solution is to keep them apart from outsiders for as long as possible. "Forced coexistence would be total genocide for them," says Dr Anstice Justin, head of the Anthropological Survey of India in Port Blair. He points to the case of Enmai, who became something of a minor celebrity before his interest waned and he stopped coming out of the jungle. Most of the Jarawa feel that way, Justin says. "The inner core feeling is not to have interaction with outsiders."

There's something very weaselly about this; you can't close off "forced" coexistence without also stopping all contact, including that initiated by the Jarawa themselves. Notice the weaselly stuff about "most" of the Jarawa feeling something and how he's discerned some "inner core feeling." In reality of course it's much more likely the case that (for better or for worse) curiosity extends both ways. There's no more "the" Jarawa feeling than there is "the" mainland feeling, and some individual Jarawa are going to be as curious about us as some of us are about them. More so probably since we have much more shiny stuff.

To me a more natural way of handling this would be to create some type of tribal sovereignty where the *tribe* (not the central government) controls access to its area, but individual tribespeople are allowed to enter and exit as per their wants. Of course there are risks, and the history of indigenous people interaction has pretty sordid moments, but there's something extremely patronizing to me about the way this Justin fellow's arguing. At least it seems to me *he* is the one in favor of cordoning them off as in some wildlife preserve. And then he acts all outraged when other people sit on elephants and go in with binoculars, so to speak.

[Ruchira]

@Prasad: "Yes" to everything you said.

[Sujatha]

For all we know, the 'dance for the tourists' is just the Jarawan form of rumspringa, similar to what the Amish do. I think Gethin Chamberlain ought to pack his(her?) bags and get back to interview a real live Jarawan, instead of just waving bananas at them and asking them to dance for the camera.

Amen to what Prasad says too, about the Dr. Justins of the world.

[Dean C. Rowan]

Is there nothing to the fact that the only tribal members dancing were women?

I don't necessarily read Justin's remarks as all that weasly. Ultimately we're talking policy, not anthropological rigor. Granted, the remarks are laconic. How do you get from a bored Enmai to genocide? Or from a quantity ("Most of the Jarawa") to a quality of "inner core feeling"? But even if many Jarawa are curious about us, that doesn't mean they can't also share a desire to be left alone. Facilitating that desire by imposing a mode of tribal sovereignty might or might not work. See, for instance, the U.S.'s Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

No need to travel abroad to encounter this problem, though. San Francisco has its own interests in exploitative tourism.

[Elatia Harris]

Do the Jarawa want to be protected by Justin from interactions they find unsavory? Did they ask him to get between them and the world? Unless a scene very much like that happened, who does he think he is? -- their Cesar Milan? Take the frigging pith helmet off, Mr. Justin...

[Sujatha]

While we are bashing Dr.Justin, it behooves us to look at his background as well. It makes it clear that he is coming from the position of being an insider rather than an outsider peering in.

http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/app-b/b-justin.htm

[Sujatha]

Another fascinating look at the Jarawa and their interactions with the settlers and tourists.
http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/originals/PandyaJarawa/Pandya-Jarawareport.htm

Dean: Of course, jiggling breasts make for more prurient photos/video for the passers-by. Dancing men would apparently not have the same effect. You could call it sexploitation. But are we denying the Jarawan women the ability to freely do what they want, when we bemoan these transactions? They get handouts that they want, in exchange for something they are not averse to doing. Who is the exploiter here?

From the linked article (ATR is the Andaman Trunk Road, which runs through Jarawa territory):
"Similarly it is reported that at the crossing of middle strait some Jarawas provide a little amount of resin packed over much of dry clay lumps to passing passengers on ATR. Jarawas insist on getting a paper currency as opposed to coin, reflecting a visual association with economic value. Moreover it shows the Jarawa capacity to calculate the economic advantage by 'cheating' the passengers who are in a hurry. In fact it should not be assumed that Jarawas are simple folks unable to understand economic exchange. For example in early phase of contact at various jetties small shop owners had pretty much got the Jarawas trained to return back unopened food packs that the bus passengers purchased for them and re-sale it to the passengers, and giving Jarawas what they wanted at the end of the day (Pandya 20). Similarly Jarawas at roadside pose for cameras and expect in return to be paid in token form of chewing tobacco."

[prasad]

Sujatha, thanks for digging up these links. I'm less angry with Justin than before :) If perhaps his views are condescending at least he would seem to have come by them honestly thru earnest mental toil. The report makes for good reading. I couldn't figure out if it was commissioned by anyone important, but hope so. It's quite thoughtful and sober in its recommendations re roads, health and schools.

[Sujatha]

Justin's views are perhaps an echo of his feelings of loss of culture when he moved out of his Nicobarese tribal milieu into the larger world. It isn't unnatural for him to impute similar feelings to other tribes of the Andamans.
The report is written by Vishwajit Pandya, who appears to have worked closely with the tribals, he is a researcher with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from U Chicago, currently teaching in New Zealand and India.

I also looked up Gethin Chamberlain, the reporter who broke the original story. He is a fantastic photographer who specializes in photographs of the underprivileged and downtrodden the world over (with the exception of the UK, naturally), but tends to be a less than truthful or exaggerating reporter whenever roped in to supply articles rather than photos.

[Ruchira]

This is on the front page of Indian Express today.

[prasad]

Thanks for the link. I couldn't figure out what to make of the story; it just wasn't vivid enough - just what are these people being asked to do?

As usual I find the target of the reporter's outrage somewhat ill-chosen - isn't the problem that they're being paid terribly low sums of money per day? I bet it's a tiny fraction of what the government (plus whatever contractor they've hired, babus etc etc) makes per day from tickets. Instead the reporter seems to object to the fact that they're being put in the spotlight to begin with. I just don't see why the latter is a problem (the more so since these aren't isolated peoples to begin with). Delhi Haat (for example) is one of the few things in the city that actually showcases and sustains traditional crafts and cultures, especially what we call 'indigenous' culture. I also noticed the familiar ban on photography...why on earth do people think it's enlightened policy to prevent someone from photographing another?