Sentinelese-An Isolated Tribe Of India
India is home to more than 700 tribes in which majority of the tribes come under the category of contacted tribes. Here, ‘contacted’ means tribal people who are civilized and make healthy interactions with non-indigenous people. Primitive, geographically isolated, shy and socially, educationally, and economically backwardness are traits that distinguish Scheduled Tribes of the country from other communities.
One such tribe of India is the Sentinelese or North Sentinel Islanders which are the only surviving uncontacted tribe in the world.
Today, we will learn the historical, geographical, cultural, and linguistic aspects of these tribes.
The Sentinelese are one of the most isolated tribes in India. They inhabit North Sentinel Island which is part of the string of Andaman islands in the Bay of Bengal. North Sentinel Island is quite remote. It is about 60 square kilometers in size.
The tribe of North Sentinel Island speaks Sentinelese. This language is considered unclassified due to the lack of contact between the tribal people with the external world. There is no clarity about their language or its vitality. It is believed that their language is related to the Ongan languages, such as Jarawa, rather than to Great Andamanese.
Sentinelese comes under the Vulnerable Tribal Group and a Scheduled Tribe. They belong to the broader class of Andaman people.
Along with the Great Andamanese, the Jarawas, the Shompen, the Onge, and the Nicobares, the Sentinelese are one of the six natives and often solitary peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Sentinelese are negrito tribe that is believed to be migrated from Africa thousands of years ago. These people want to remain isolated from the outside world. They have killed people who approached or landed on the island.
Recently, an American missionary named John Allen Chau was killed by this tribe as he illegally traveled to North Sentinel Island, in an attempt to convert the tribe to Christianity.
Most of the tribes in the Andamans, including the Sentinelese are animists. They worship nature. Sentinelese is a very small community as the population size of this tribe is estimated at around 35–400.
These tribal people hunt and gather in the forest, and fishing is their favorite past-time. Unlike the neighboring Jarawa tribe, they make boats. These boats can only be used in shallow waters.
Sentinelese have two different types of houses; large communal huts with fireplaces for several families and more temporary shelters, with no sides, which can sometimes be seen on the beach with space for one nuclear family.
Anthropologist describes the Sentinelese tribe from the time of the Stone Age. But, this tribe has evolved over thousands of years as they started using metal that has been washed up or which they have recovered from shipwrecks on the island reefs. The iron is sharpened and used to tip their arrows.
It has been observed that their immunity is very weak and can’t resist any external species. It is because of their isolation which has hollowed their immunity system. It is not well developed to fight against deadly diseases like measles, malaria, etc.
