indigenous people of north sentinel island

In this regard, the rights of a specific group of people to their own land should be respected, meaning that while they might be trained, they should ultimately administrate and govern themselves. Hence, the imposition of alien values inapplicable to a specific tribal group should be avoided. The first of these principles is that any group of peoples should be allowed to develop on their own terms based on their own capacities. Thus, concrete parameters were set forth with five governing principles as a guiding light to any future policies. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, developed the idea of Tribal Panchsheel, which allowed for tribal injustice to be addressed through principles valuable to the tribes themselves. His teachings inspired several policy makers of India. Verrier Elwin attributed the deplorable and impoverished conditions of tribes to their contact with the outside world, which had led to indebtedness and loss of control over their land and forests. In his study, Elwin pleaded for the protection of tribes, but his views were often attacked and deemed controversial. This made him a passionate partisan as is seen from his war-time comparative study “Loss of Nerve.” He was British and quite fond of the tribes in general, with a great concern for their welfare. Verrier Elwin was a great champion of the rights of tribes situated within the borders of India. Image Credits: Ministry of Tribal Affairs Government of Indiaĭr. India’s tribal policy Sentinelese tribe members on the beach. This was done by a group of anthropologists from India.

In fact, it wasn’t until 1991 that researchers first got in touch with them. To this day, the tribe remains a pre-neolithic, Negrito tribe, which lives in complete isolation from the rest of civilization.

The Indian government has sought to preserve the Sentinelese way of life essentially by respecting the tribe through the adoption of an eyes-on and hands-off approach. The Sentinelese are for all intents and purposes still in isolation and rely on highly primitive practices for sustenance. They attain their food through fishing, hunting, and collecting wild plants and restrict themselves to life on their indigenous lands of the island. Instead, the community seems to follow the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. Surveys of this island have not found any evidence of agriculture. Hence, it has been estimated that the North Sentinel Island specifically is inhabited by roughly fifty to one hundred individuals As per an Indian government policy document shared by the country’s Press Information Bureau, as a result of lack of contact, census-taking on the Sentinelese has relied primarily on photographing of the island from a distance.

Indigenous people of north sentinel island