Presentation on Dr madhumala Chattopadhay

1. Dr Madhumala Chattopadhyay
The woman who made the Sentinelese put their
arrows down
Arobindo Gupta
1st Semester, M.Arch,
Anna University.

4. Early life
Dr Chattopadhyay was brought up in Shibpur, a small suburb in Kolkata, West Bengal. Her
father was an accounts officer with the South Eastern Railway. Her mother was Pronoti
Chattopadhyay.
She finished her schooling from Bhabani Balika Vidyalaya, Shibpur. She did her B.Sc (Hons) in
Anthropology from the University of Calcutta. She wrote a dissertation on Genetic Study
among the Aborigines of the Andaman. She applied to a PhD fellowship with the
Anthropological Survey of India for doing field research with the tribes of the Andamans.
Her Dream
A twelve-year-old girl one morning in her home in Shibpur, Howrah, a suburb of Kolkata,
happened to chance upon a small news item in The Telegraph newspaper, which informed
of the birth of a baby amongst the almost-extinct Onge tribes of the Andamans. Excited, the
girl ran to her father, an accounts officer with the South Eastern Railway, and demanded
that on their next vacation they visit the Onges’.

5. Her father in order to brush off his pestering daughter remarked that only a researcher or a
journalist is allowed to visit the tribes of the Andamans. This remark stuck and the little girl,
Madhumala, was subsumed with the thought of becoming a researcher. The rigour and the
hard work of being a field anthropologist – a branch of science which studies primitive tribes
– was far from her mind. The romance and adventure of an unknown world beckoned this
young girl.
Career
After a brilliant academic track record as an undergraduate and a post-graduate student,
including a seminal dissertation on “Genetic Study among the Aborigines of the Andaman”,
Madhumala applied for a PhD fellowship to the Anthropological Survey of India for doing
field research with the tribes of the Andamans. The committee tasked to decide on the
fellowship demurred — the prevalent notion being that it was not safe for a woman
researcher to do field work amongst the tribes. However, Madhumala’s impeccable
academic record, her previous research work and a sterling approach paper for the
fellowship was hard to overlook. So, a way was proposed by the fellowship committee:
Madhumala would be allowed to work in the

6. Andamans on an Anthropological Survey of India fellowship if Madhumala’s parents were to
sign an undertaking that if anything untoward happened to their daughter while doing
research amongst the primitive tribes, including loss of life, Anthropological Survey of India
was not to be held responsible. It is to the credit of Madhumala’s mother Pronoti
Chattopadhyaya (her father being no more) that she signed the dotted line fully aware of
the dangers involved, refusing to let her daughter’s childhood dream go unfulfilled.
On 4 January 1991, Chattopadhyay was part of a team, that made the first ever contact
with the Sentinelese tribe of Andamans. She at that time was a research associate with the
Anthropological Survey of India. She went to the North Sentinel Island with the support of
local administration's ship MV Tarmugli. She was a part of a team of 13. The key team
members were S. Awaradi (Director, Tribal Welfare, A&NI administration) who was the Team
Leader, Arun Mullick who was the Medical Officer (for providing medical attention in case
of sickness or injury) accompanied by Chattopadhyay as an anthropologist. The rest were
support crew. On day 2 of this expedition, Chattopadhyay escaped from an arrow attack
and the team retreated. On February 21 of the same year, the team came back to a
successful contact with the tribe. The Indian government banned any more expeditions
citing the possibility of the ancient tribe contacting epidemics due to frequent visits by
outsiders.

8. The Sentinelese
Perhaps no people on Earth remain more genuinely isolated than the Sentinelese. They, to
date, resist outsiders and are prone to attacking them. In 1880, a heavily-armed British
expedtion led by Maurice Portman landed on North Sentinel Island and made what is
believed to be the first exploration of the island by outsiders. Several days passed before
they made contact with any Sentinelese. An elderly couple and four children were
captured and brought back to Port Blair. While the elderly couple died in captivity, the four
children were given gifts and released back to the Sentinel Islands, never to be seen again.
The British did not pursue any further expedition to this island.
Small contact parties sent by the Anthroplogical Survey of India in the early 1970s were
turned away with arrows. A documentary team from the National
Geographic accompanied under police protection got the same fierce welcome in 1974.
The documentary was interestingly titled ‘Man in Search of Man’. The film’s director took an
8-foot-long arrow in the thigh.

9. She spent six years researching the various primitive
tribes of Andaman and Nicobar islands. She last visited
Andamans in 1999.
Contact
On 4 January, 1991, MV Tarmugli, the Andaman
Nicobar Administration ship, put down its anchor off
Allen point on the southwest part of the North Sentinel
Islands. The purpose was to attempt a friendly contact
with the Sentinelese. Not much was expected,
probably like many futile missions in the past, this would
also to go down in the file as another wasted attempt.
However, unlike in the past, this mission had one
difference, there was a women anthropologist in the
contact team. At around 8 am in the morning, the
team of 13, including Madhumala, set sail for the island
in a small craft. The key team members were team
leader S. Awaradi (director, tribal welfare, A&NI
administration), medical officer Dr Arun Mullick (for
providing medical attention in case of sickness or injury)
and anthropologist Madhumala Chattopadhyay. The
rest were support crew.

10. It was now up to the contact team to take initiative, and they started dropping coconuts in
the water, which they had brought with them. Then something that had never been seen
before happened. After a bit of trepidation, a few Sentinelese men came sprinting and
waded through the shallow continental shelf to collect the floating coconuts. The team was
awestruck; the Sentinelese had accepted a friendly gesture. The team leader instructed that
more coconuts be dropped, and this time the Sentinelese brought a canoe to collect the
coconuts in cane baskets. The women and children, however, maintained a distance and
remained on the shore. An invisible wall stood between the islanders and the contact team.
No party made the first move to bridge the gap further. Four hours rolled by, the contact
party kept floating coconuts and the Sentinelese kept collecting them. Perhaps this was the
farthest that the Sentinelese would go.
With their stock of coconuts over, the team went back to the ship to replenish. It was 2 pm
when the team returned. The process of dropping coconuts started again, and this time the
tribe welcomed the contact party with shouts of “Nariyali jaba jaba”. Madhumala
recognised this cry to mean “more and more coconuts”, a distinct Onge dialect, given her
knowledge of a number of Andamanese languages.

11. The Sentinelese in the second round had become bolder. A young Sentinelese youth waded
up to the boat and touched it with his hands. Following him, more men closed in to collect
the coconuts. In this moment of ice-breaking, a Sentinelese youth who was sitting on the
shore got up and aimed his arrow at the contact party. Fazed but not betraying fear,
Madhumala gestured at the youth to come over and take his share of the coconuts. This
was a moment of standoff — Madhumala refusing to remove eye contact and the arrow
refusing to go down. The arrow was released but Providence intervened. As the marksman
was about to release, a Sentinelese woman standing nearby gave a push to the marksman,
and the arrow missed its mark and fell harmlessly in the water. The woman had done that on
purpose, thus saving the contact party from severe injury or even death.
Undeterred, the team persisted. It was now the turn of the Sentinelese to be surprised. The
contact party, including Madhumala, decided to jump into water. Knee-deep in water, the
space-age man (woman) was looking eye-to-eye with one of the most primitive people on
earth. It was not a meeting with a finger on the trigger or with a bow string pulled, it was a
meeting between equals, with dignity and respect. The coconuts were not being floated in
the water anymore, but were being handed over in person. This was the making of
anthropological history.

12. The Jarawas
Madhumala continued her research for many more
years in the Andamans, primarily with the Jarawa
tribe. The first friendly contact with the Jarawas had
been made in 1975 by a joint team from the
Anthropological Survey of India and the A&NI
Administration.
Since then, systematic contacts were made by administration, who took bananas, coconuts etc.
as gifts. However, there were instances of hostile reactions from the tribe, and authorities had
banned inclusion of women in contact parties.
In 1991 when Madhumala went, she was the first woman from outside to visit the Jarawas. As a
precaution, Madhumala remained in the motor boat while the men went ashore to meet the
tribe. Seeing Madhumala, the Jarawa women began to gesture her to come ashore with the
shout “Milale chera (friend come here)”. They started an impromptu dance to express their joy at
seeing a woman in the contact team.

13. This unexpected welcome from the Jarawa women
for Madhumala prompted the team leader to send
for the boat to bring Madhumala ashore. As the boat
neared the shore, five Jarawa men climbed on to the
boat and sat across Madhumala looking at her with
curiosity. Heart beating hard, Madhumala maintained
her composure. Other members of the contact team
were not sure how to react; a wrong move could
have been disastrous.
It was at this juncture that a Jarawa woman climbed onto the boat and sat besides
Madhumala. The Jarawa woman gestured to the five men that the visitor like her was a woman.
Madhumala embraced the woman, which signified a gesture of friendship. No anthropology
text book had taught her this, it came from experience, empathy and a sense of self
preservation. The Jarawa woman was thrilled at this gesture and made all the five Jarawa men
lie down on the floor of the boat like admonished children.

14. THE END